Compose such nectar to go dance withal,—
As on that day ye broached for us, O Nymphs,
Before the altar of Earth's generous Mother?
Oh may I riot in her heaps again
With a great winnow; while she stands and smiles,
Holding, in either hand, poppies and wheat.
ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION.
THE chief characteristic both of this Sicilian poet Moschus and his friend Bion was a tender and elegant sweetness. We have endeavoured to modulate our version accordingly.
This is the pastoral poetry of books, as distinguished from that of real life; yet it has a real echo in the minds of those who can pass from one region to the other; nor is it wanting in some touches exquisitely human, as we have seen in the famous passage already quoted from the Elegy respecting the (supposed) difference between the transitory nature of man and the rejuvenescence of flowers:
Moan with me, moan, ye woods and Dorian waters,
And weep, ye rivers, the delightful Bion;
Ye plants, now stand in tears; murmur, ye groves;
Ye flowers, sigh forth your odours with sad buds ;
Flush deep, ye roses and anemones;
And more than ever now, oh hyacinth, show
Your written sorrows: *-the sweet singer's dead.
* Alluding to the letters AI, which simply signifies "Alas," and which are to be found (so to speak) in the dark lines or specks observable in the petals of the Turk's Cap Lily; which Professor Martyn has shown to be the true Hyacinth of the ancients.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Ye nightingales, that mourn in the thick leaves,
Tell the Sicilian streams of Arethuse,
Bion the shepherd's dead; and that with him
Melody's dead, and gone the Dorian song.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Weep on the waters, ye Strymonian swans,
And utter forth a melancholy song,
Tender as his whose voice was like your own;
And say to the Oeagrian girls, and say
To all the nymphs haunting in Bistony,
The Doric Orpheus is departed from us.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
No longer pipes he to the charmed herds,
No longer sits under the lonely oaks,
And sings; but to the ears of Pluto now
Tunes his Lethean verse; and so the hills
Are voiceless; and the cows that follow still
Beside the bulls, low and will not be fed.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Apollo, Bion, wept thy sudden fate:
The Satyrs too, and the Priapuses
Dark-veiled, and for that song of thine the Pans,
Groan'd; and the fountain-nymphs within the woods
Mourn'd for thee, melting into tearful waters;
Echo too mourn'd among the rocks that she
Must hush-and imitate thy lips no longer;
Trees and the flowers put off their loveliness;
Milk flows not as 'twas used; and in the hive
The honey moulders, for there is no need,
Now that thy honey's gone, to look for more.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Not so the dolphins mourn'd by the salt sea,
Not so the nightingale among the rocks,
Not so the swallow over the far downs,
Not so Ceyx called for his Halcyone,
Not so in the eastern valleys Memnon's bird
Scream'd o'er his sepulchre for the Morning's son,
As all have mourned for the departed Bion.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Ye nightingales and swallows every one
Whom he once charm'd and taught to sing at will,
Plain to each other midst the green tree boughs,
With other birds o'erhead. Mourn too, ye doves.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Who now shall play thy pipe, oh most desir'd one!
Who lay his lip against thy reeds? who dare it?
For still they breathe of thee and of thy mouth,
And Echo comes to seek her voices there.
Pan's be they; and ev'n he shall fear perhaps
To sound them, lest he be not first hereafter.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
And Galatea weeps, who loved to hear thee,
Sitting beside thee on the calm sea-shore;
For thou did'st play far better than the Cyclops,
And him the fair one shunn'd: but thee, but thee,
She used to look at sweetly from the water.
But now forgetful of the deep, she sits
On the lone sands, and feeds thy herd for thee.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
The Muse's gifts all died with thee, O shepherd,
Men's admiration, and sweet women's kisses.
The Loves about thy sepulchre weep sadly,
For Venus loved thee, much more than the kiss
With which of late she kiss'd Adonis, dying.
Thou too, O Meles, sweetest-voic'd of rivers,
Thou too hast undergone a second grief;
For Homer first, that sweet mouth of Calliope,
Was taken from thee; and they say thou mourned'st
For thy great son with many-sobbing streams,
Filling the far-seen ocean with a voice.
And now, again, thou weepest for a son,
Melting away in misery. Both of them.
Were favourites of the fountain-nymphs; one drank
The Pegasean fount, and one his cup
Fill'd out of Arethuse; the former sang
The bright Tyndarid lass, and the great son
Of Thetis, and Atrides Menelaus;
But he, the other, not of wars or tears
Told us, but intermix'd the pipe he played
With songs of herds, and as he sung he fed them;
And he made pipes, and milk'd the gentle heifer,
And taught us how to kiss, and cherish'd love
Within his bosom, and was worthy of Venus
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Every renowned city and every town
Mourns for thee, Bion;-Ascra weeps
Than her own Hesiod; the Baotian woods
Ask not for Pindar so; nor patriot Lesbos
For her Alcæus; nor th' Ægean isle
Her poet; nor does Paros so wish back
Archilocus; and Mitylene now,
Instead of Sappho's verses, rings with thine.
All the sweet pastoral poets weep for thee,-
Sicelidas the Samian; Lycidas,
Who used to look so happy; and at Cos,
Philetas; and at Syracuse, Theocritus ;
All in their several dialects: and I,
I too, no stranger to the pastoral song,
Sing thee a dirge Ausonian, such as thou
Taughtest thy scholars, honouring us as all
Heirs of the Dorian Muse. Thou didst bequeath
Thy store to others, but to me thy song.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Alas, when mallows in the garden die,
Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill,
They live again, and flower another year;
But we, how great soe'er, or strong, or wise,
When once we die, sleep in the senseless earth
A long, an endless, unawakeable sleep.
Thou too in earth must be laid silently:
But the nymphs please to let the frog sing on;
Nor envy I, for what he sings is worthless.
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
There came, O Bion, poison to thy mouth,
Thou did'st feel poison; how could it approach
Those lips of thine, and not be turn'd to sweet!
Who could be so delightless as to mix it,
Or bid be mix'd, and turn him from thy song!
Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
But justice reaches all;-and thus, meanwhile,
I weep thy fate. And would I could descend
Like Orpheus to the shades, or like Ulysses,
Or Hercules before him: I would go
To Pluto's house, and see if you sang there,
And hark to what you sang. Play to Proserpina
Something Sicilian, some delightful pastoral,
|