None in those days their pastured oxen drove,
O Daphnis, to cool streams; no quadruped
Or sipped the brook, or touched a blade of grass.
O Daphnis, that e'en Afric lions wailed
Thy death, both mountains wild and forests tell.
Eke Daphnis taught to yoke unto the car
Armenian tigresses; ['twas] Daphnis [taught]
Bacchus' procession-dances to bring in,
And with soft leaves to enwreathe the limber spears.
As is the vine the grace to trees, as grapes
To vines, as bulls to herds, as standing corn
To teemful tilths,—
-so thou all grace to thine.
After the Weirds reft thee away, the fields
E'en Pales and Apollo e'en forsook.
Upon the furrows, whereunto we oft
Plump grains of barley have consigned, now grow
The fruitless darnel and the barren oats;
For violet soft, for purple daffodil,
Thistle and paliurus with sharp thorns
Spring up. Bestrew the ground with leaves, bring shades
Upon the springs, O shepherds: such behests
Doth Daphnis charge to be for him observed.
Eke form a tomb, and on the tomb [this] lay
Do ye inscribe: "I, Daphnis, in the woods,
With what sad accents, and what piercing cries,
She fill'd the grove, and importuned the skies,
And every star upbraided with his death,
When, in her widow'd arms, devoid of breath,
She clasp'd her son."
Line 32. So Spenser says of Dido's death: Sh. Cal. Nov. 133:
"The feeble flockes in field refuse their former foode,
And hang their heades as they would learne to weepe."
53. Instead of an inscription on Albino's tomb, Philips introduces Angelot praying:
Hence even to the constellations famed,
Of a fair flock the guard, fairer myself."
Such is thy song to us, O heavenly bard,
As slumber to the weary on the grass,
As in the summer-tide to slake the thirst
By some delicious water's skipping rill.
Nor is 't alone on reeds, but in thy voice
Thou rivallest thy master: happy swain,
Thou now shalt be the second after him.
Still we these [strains] of ours, howe'er [we may],
To thee in turn will chant, and Daphnis thine
Raise to the stars; we Daphnis to the stars
Will waft away: us too did Daphnis love.
"Oh! peaceful may thy gentle spirit rest! The flowery turf be light upon thy breast; Nor shrieking owl nor bat thy tomb fly round, Nor midnight goblins revel o'er the ground." Past. 3. Line 57. Sopor strictly means "deep sleep," but the Latin poets use it for "sleep" in general. In the same lax way, "slumber" is used by English poets to represent "sleep," though strictly it means "light sleep." Still, though there is so marked a difference between sopor and "slumber," yet as the poet does not seem to use the word here in the accurate signification attached to it in Æn. iii. 173, "slumber" may well be admitted, being far more harmonious in this passage than "sleep." The same liberty, if liberty it be, I have taken in rendering En. iv. 522.
V. 45-47 are amplified by Spenser in his exquisite description of the "Bower of Bliss:" Faerie Queene, ii. 5, 30:
"And fast beside there trickled softly downe
A gentle streame, whose murmuring wave did play
Emongst the pumy stones, and made a sowne,
To lull him soft asleepe that by it lay:
The wearie traveiler, wandring that way,
Therein did often quench his thristy heat,
And then by it his wearie limbes display,
(Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget
His former payne,) and wypt away his toilsom sweat."
Can any thing to us than such a boon
Be greater? Both the swain was of himself
Worthy of being sung, and those thy lays
Long ago Stimicon hath praised to us.
Bright Daphnis marvels at th' unwonted gate
Of th' Empyrean, and beneath his feet
Beholds the clouds and stars. Hence lively joy
The woods and other country scenes, and Pan,
And shepherds doth possess, and Dryad maids.
Neither doth wolf an ambush for the flock,
Nor any toils for harts their craft devise:
Good Daphnis loveth peace. The very mounts,
Unshorn, in glee their voices to the stars
Fling forth; now do the very cliffs the lays,
The very vineyards ring them out: "A god,
A god is he, Menalcas!"
Line 71. So Spenser of Dido, in Sh. Cal. Nov. 175; see also 195,
"She raignes a goddess now emong the saintes,
That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light,
And is enstalled nowe in heavens night."
"Now, free from earth, thy disencumber'd soul
Mounts up, and leaves behind the clouds and starry pole."
Dryden, Abs. and Achit. 850, 1.
More directly imitated in Amyntas, 66-73;
"Damon, behold yon breaking purple cloud;
Hear'st thou not hymns and songs divinely loud?
There mounts Amyntas; the young cherubs play
About their godlike mate, and sing him on his way.
He cleaves the liquid air, behold, he flies,
And every moment gains upon the skies.
The new-come guest admires the etherial state,
The sapphire portal, and the golden gate."
And gracious to thine own! Lo! altars four:
Behold, O Daphnis, twain of them for thee;
Twain altars high for Phoebus. Drinking-cups
A pair, with new milk frothing, every year,
And craters twain of fatty oil I'll set
For thee; and with much Bacchus specially
Enlivening the feast,-before the hearth,
If winter it shall be; if harvest [-tide],
Within the shade,- the Ariusian wines,
New nectar will I from the tankards pour.
[The while] shall sing to me Damœtas, and
The Lyctian Ægon; frisking satyrs ape
Alphesibous. These shall aye be thine,
Both when our yearly offerings we shall pay
Unto the nymphs, and when we shall perform
The circuit of the fields. While mountain-brows
The wild boar, while the fish shall love the floods,
And while upon the thyme the bees shall feed,
While cicads on the dew,-thy glory aye,
And thy renown, and praises shall endure.
As unto Bacchus and to Ceres, so to thee
Their vows each year shall husbandmen perform:
Thou also shalt oblige them to their vows.
What [boons] to thee, what boons can I requite
Line 83. Ara and altare are used of the same altar in Æn. ii. 514, 515.
106. Milton similarly in Par. Lost, viii. 5:
"What thanks sufficient, or what recompense
Equal, have I to render to thee, divine
Historian ?"
108. "Colin, to heare thy rymes and roundelayes,
Which thou wert wont on wastefull hilles to sing,
For such a song? For neither me so much
The rising Auster's whisper, nor the shores
Lashed by the billows, so delight, nor brooks
Which rill adown among the rocky glens.
We'll first present thee with this brittle reed.
This taught us," Corydon with fervour loved
The fair Alexis ;" this same,- "Whose the flock?
Is 't that of Melibœus?"
Accept this crook, which, though he begged me oft,
Antigenes hath never borne away,
(And he was worthy then of being loved,)
With even knobs and bronze, Menalcas, fair,
I more delight then larke in sommer dayes,
Whose eccho made the neighbour groves to ring."
Spenser, Sh. Cal. June, 49.
A. Philips happily imitates verses 45-47, 81-84: Past. 4:
"Oh, Colinet! how sweet thy grief to hear!
How does thy verse subdue the listening ear!
Soft falling as the still, refreshing dew,
To slake the drought, and herbage to renew:
Not half so sweet the midnight winds, which move
In drowsy murmurs o'er the waving grove;
Nor valley brook, that, hid by alders, speeds
O'er pebbles warbling, and through whispering reeds;
Nor dropping waters, which from rocks distil,
And welly grots with tinkling echoes fill."
This idea of the streams running through the rocky glens tempts me to quote one stanza from the fragment of a book of the Faerie Queene, in the two cantos of which Spenser puts forth transcendent poetical powers. He is describing an Irish river-nymph, whom he calls "Molanna, daughter of old father Mole:"
"For first she springs out of two marble rocks,
On which a grove of oakes high-mounted growes,
|