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_Title:_ Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece
_Date of first publication:_ 1880
_Author:_ John Stuart Blackie 1809-1895
_Date first posted:_ Dec. 15, 2022
_Date last updated:_ Dec. 15, 2022
Faded Page eBook #20221232

This eBook was produced by: Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Tony Browne, Pat
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                          [Cover Illustration]




                            LAYS AND LEGENDS

                                   OF

                             ANCIENT GREECE

                                   BY
                          JOHN STUART BLACKIE
           PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

                             SECOND EDITION

                       WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
                          EDINBURGH AND LONDON
                               MDCCCLXXX

                         _All Rights reserved_




                                   TO
                           JOHN HUNTER, ESQ.
                    AUDITOR OF THE COURT OF SESSION.

    Dear Friend, who by Corstorphine’s bosky bower,
    From the shrill strife of wrangling law remote,
    Reapest the mellow fruits of quiet thought,
    Receive in Jeffrey’s quaint and ivied tower
    This little book. Though from the grand parade
    Of printed verdicts thou hast long been free,
    The man who loved the Muse still found in Thee
    A judge to value, and a friend to aid.
    Thou, the nice student of fine-thoughted Keats,
    Mayst find my rhymes cast in too rough a mould
    For thy keen sense, fed with essential sweets:
    If so, speak free; I’ll take thy blame for gold,
    And count their coin for brass, with false fair phrase
    Who blow the flattering trump before my Lays.




                            PREFATORY NOTE.

From this second edition of the ‘Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece’ I
have excluded all the miscellaneous poems, which occupied about the half
of the original edition, but which had no connection with the part which
gave the title to the volume. I have also excluded one Hellenic
poem—the “Pythagoras”—because its dramatic treatment naturally removed
it to my ‘Wise Men of Greece,’ in which company, accordingly, in an
expanded and improved shape, it will be found. The best of the other
poems were republished either in my ‘Lays of the Highlands and Islands,’
or in my ‘Songs of Religion and of Life,’ in accordance with the
category to which they seemed naturally to belong.

                                                              J. S. B.
  OBAN, _1st October 1880_.




                               CONTENTS.

                                                        PAGE
              INTRODUCTION,                                1
              PANDORA,                                    17
              PROMETHEUS,                                 32
              THE NAMING OF ATHENS,                       37
              BELLEROPHON,                                46
              IPHIGENIA,                                  78
              WAIL OF AN IDOL,                            88
              ARIADNE,                                    95
              GALATEA,                                   105
              THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS,                     115
              THESEUS,                                   125
              THE FEAST OF PALLAS ATHENA,                148
              ÆSCHYLUS,                                  161
              MARATHON,                                  166
              SALAMIS,                                   176
              HERACLITUS,                                189
              ANAXAGORAS,                                194
              POLEMO,                                    195

              NOTES,                                     201




   LAYS AND LEGENDS.




                             INTRODUCTION.


                                   I.

    Muse of old Hellas, wake again!
      Thou wert not born to die—
    And mingle sweet the Classic strain
      With Gothic minstrelsy!
    I feel a tingling in my veins,
      My heart is beating strong;
    Let novel-writers count their gains,
      I’ll pipe my Doric song.
    The wood has warblers great and small;
    God scatters free; let carpers cavil!
    There’s room in Helicon for all
      That swell the tuneful revel.
    On flaming chariot Shelley soars
      Through starry realms serene;
    His volleyed thunder Byron pours
      With lurid flash between;
    Lone in far mountains Wordsworth strolls
      And hums a thoughtful lay,
    As a deep river slowly rolls
      Through beds of fruitful clay.
    Like a fair country stretching wide
    With woods on woods in leafy pride
      And fields of golden grain,
    And moors with purple heather glowing,
    And healthful breezes bravely blowing,
      Spreads Scott his vast domain.
    Not I with these may dare to vie;
      Nor with thy learnèd lay,
    Kehama’s bard! nor prophesy,
      With deep oracular bay,
    Like him who sate on Highgate hill
      And taught, with mystic care,
    The suckling priests who owned his skill
      To syllogise their prayer.
    Far from such eagle-flight be mine!
    But while I feel the thrill divine,
      I will not clip my wing;
    The beetle, ‘neath his horny case,
    Hath gauzy pinions that with grace
      Uplift the creeping thing.
    Though sober friends forbid the verse,
    My old Greek rhyme I will rehearse,
      Like a lone wandering bee
    On a hillside, that sips sweet dew
    From fragrant blooms of purple hue,
      And drones low minstrelsy.
    The modest lay be slow to blame,
    Piped more for pleasure than for fame:
    Music to harmless souls belongs,
    Cold worldly hearts are scant of songs.


                                  II.

    The old Greek men, the old Greek men,
      No blinking fools were they:
    But with a free and broad-eyed ken
      Looked forth on glorious day.
    They looked on the Sun in their cloudless sky,
      And they saw that his light was fair;
    And they said that the round full-beaming eye
      Of a blazing god was there.
    They looked on the vast spread Earth, and saw
    The various-fashioned forms with awe
      Of green and creeping life,
    And said—“In every moving form
    With buoyant breath and pulses warm,
    In flowery crowns, and veinèd leaves,
    A goddess dwells, whose bosom heaves
      With organising strife.”
    They looked and saw the billowy ocean,
    With its boundless swell of sleepless motion,
    Belting the firm earth, far and wide,
    With the flow of its deep untainted tide;
    And wondering viewed in its clear blue flood
    A quick and scaly-glancing brood,
    Sporting innumerous in the deep,
    With dart, and plunge, and airy leap;
    And said—“Full sure a god doth reign
    King of this watery wide domain,
    And rides in a car of cerulean hue
    O’er bounding billows of green and blue;
    And in one hand a three-pronged spear
    He holds, the sceptre of his fear,
    And with the other shakes the reins
    Of his steeds, with foamy flowing manes,
      And courses o’er the brine;
    And when he lifts his trident mace,
    Broad Ocean crisps his placid face,
      And mutters wrath divine;
    The big waves rush with hissing crest,
    And beat the shore with ample breast,
      And shake the toppling cliff;
    A wrathful god hath roused the wave,
    Vain is all pilot’s skill to save,
    And lo! a deep black-throated grave
      Engulfs the reeling skiff.
    Anon, the flood less fiercely flows,
    The rifted cloud blue ether shows,
      The windy buffets cease;
    Poseidon chafes his heart no more,
    His voice constrains the billowy roar.
      And men may sail in peace.”
    Thus every power that zones the sphere
    With forms of beauty and of fear,
    In starry sky, on grassy ground,
    And in the fishful brine profound,
    Were to the hoar Pelasgic men
    That peopled erst each Grecian glen,
    Gods, or the functions of a god.
    Gods were in every sight and sound,
    And every spot was hallowed ground
    Where these far-wandering patriarchs trod.
    In the old oak a Dryad dwelt,
    The fingers of a nymph were felt
      In the fine-rippled flood;
    At drowsy noon, when all is still,
    Faunus lay sleeping on the hill,
    And strange and bright-eyed gamesome creatures
    With hairy limbs and goat-like features,
      Peered from the prickly-wood.
    Nor less within that mystic realm
    Where passions swell and thoughts o’erwhelm,
      Strong ruling powers divine
    Were worshipped. All-controlling Jove
    With clear-discerning eye did prove
    Each human heart. The thoughts that move
    To pity of the houseless poor,
    The kindly hand that opes the door
    Of refuge to a wandering wight,
    Storm-battered on a starless night,
      Obeyed his law benign.
    And when unreined wild passion flew,
    And evil hate sharp daggers drew,
      And deathful blows were given,
    Dream not that he who fled from man
    Escaped the sleepless eyes that scan
      All sinful deeds in Heaven.
    Far from the fell avenger’s tread
    The pale guilt-haunted murderer fled;
    O’er many a blasted heath he sped,
    The dewy sky his curtain made,
      No sleep might reach his eyes;
    For, when he fain would rest, a crew
    Of murky-mantled maids from Hell,
    Snuffing his blood, his track pursue
    And pierce his ears with baleful yell,
      That blissful slumber flies:
    Haggard he lives a little space,
      No fatness rounds his eyes;
    The Furies’ mark is on his face;
    Grim leaders of the airy chase
    Perplex his path from place to place,
    Till stumbling with a blinded fall,
    With never a god to hear his call,
      The wasted outcast dies.


                                  III.

    Old fables these and fancies old!
      But not, with hasty pride,
    Let Logic cold and Reason bold
      Cast these old dreams aside.
    Dreams are not false in all their scope;
      Oft from the sleepy lair
    Start giant-shapes of fear and hope
      That, aptly read, declare
    Our deepest nature. God in dreams
      Hath spoken to the wise;
    And in a people’s mythic themes
      A people’s wisdom lies.
    O’er the brown moor some love to roam,
      And with the hammer’s dint
    To strike from its old chalky home
      The curious-rounded flint;
    Or they with brightening eye will bring,
      From bed of dingy clay,
    Some bony frame of a scaly thing
      Unused to garish day,
    Lizard or crocodile or snake,
      Or mingled of the three;
    Creatures of huge unwieldy make
      That in the primal sea
    Paddled, or through the marsh did stalk
      With round and staring eyes,
    Before the Serpent learned to talk
      With Eve in Paradise.
    Others there be that love to soar
      Sublime in starry realms,
    ’Mid seas of worlds without a shore,
      Where vasty space o’erwhelms
    Man’s shrinking soul. From star to star
      With glass in hand at leisure
    They wander, and can tell how far
      The blue highway doth measure
    From Earth to Phœbus, and from him
      To the star that wears a belt,
    And to our system’s extreme rim
      Where never a ray was felt
    Of throbbing heat. These men can write
      The Moon’s authentic history,
    And of its mass, here dark, there bright,
      Expound the spotted mystery;
    How like an apple by the fire
      It swells and cracks, and bubbles,
    That no live creature can aspire
      ’Mid its volcanic troubles
    To breathe; it hath no atmosphere
      For men or salamanders,
    But with obedient pale career
      Through old grey Space it wanders
    To lamp our Earth. I cannot say
      If this be true or no;
    But in a far-diverging way
      My best-loved fancies go.
    Man is my theme; Earth is my sphere!
      The struggling fates pursuing
    Of earth-born men, I would not hear
      What Sun and Moon are doing.
    Give me a tale of human passion,
    Of oldest or of newest fashion,
    Hard facts, or fictions that contain
    Deep-pondered truth’s clear-running well,
    Like mysteries hid from ken profane
    In evangelic parable;
    Hoariest oracles that linger
    Round Parnassus’ rifted hollow,
    Where the pale tripod-seated singer
    Raved out thy mystic will, Apollo;
    Ballad or song, or plaintive ditty
    Chanted through the drizzly night,
    Amid the hum of peopled city,
    By some maimed and woe-worn wight.
    Tell me how erst the Lydian king,
      Whom Pelops called his father,
    Was borne sublime on eagle’s wing
      Where gods immortal gather
    To eat ambrosia, and to quaff
      The nectared cup at leisure:
    There sate the king at jovial board,
    With Heaven’s dark-locked high-thundering lord,
    And shared Olympian jest and laugh,
    And blew dull care away like chaff,
      And sipped the deathless pleasure.
    O Tantalus! thou wert a man
    More blessed than all, since Earth began
      Its weary round to travel;
    But placed in Paradise, like Eve,
    Thine own damnation thou didst weave
      Without help from the Devil.
    Alas! I fear thy tale to tell,
    Thou’rt in the deepest pool of Hell,
      And shalt be there for ever.
    For why?—When thou on lofty seat
    Didst sit, and eat immortal meat
      With Jove, the bounteous Giver,
    The gods before thee loosed their tongue.
    And many a mirthful ballad sung,
    And all their secrets open flung
      Into thy mortal ear.
    And thou didst know what no man knows,
    How gossip in Olympus goes,
    When radiant glasses circle round,
    And tinkling Muses beat the ground,
    And gods to music’s thrilling sound
      Relax their brows severe.
    Then Hermes spins his finest fibs,
    And grinning Momus splits his ribs,
    And Phœbus bright recounts his loves
    On grassy slopes, in laurel-groves.
    Thou saw’st, when awful Jove unbent
      O’er cups of sparkling sheen,
    And on the rounded shoulder leant
      Of Juno, white-armed queen;
    But she, with jealous reprobation,
    Rated his partial conversation
      With Thetis, not unseen;
    Which, when he heard, the Olympian Sire
    Gathered his brows in anger dire,
    And straight was hushed the festive lyre;
    No sound of joyance shook the hall,
    Dumb fear sate on the lips of all,
    And the sweet nectar turned to gall.
    And thou didst see how every god
    Quailed at the wrathful father’s nod;
      But sooty Vulcan then,
    With cup in hand and napkin white,
      Tired like a waiting knave,
    On that divine assembly bright
      Such rare attendance gave,
    And limped with such quaint grace, that they
    With peals of unextinguished laughter
    Shook the wide welkin’s beamy rafter;
    Nor frowned again, while all were gay,
      The king of gods and men.
    All this, and of the heavenly place
      More secrets rave were known
    Of mortal men, by Jove’s high grace,
      To Tantalus alone.
    But witless he such grace to prize;
      And with licentious babble,
    He blazed the secrets of the skies
      Through all the human rabble,
    And fed the greed of tattlers vain
      With high celestial scandal,
    And lent to every itching brain
      And wanton tongue a handle
    Against the gods. For which great sin,
      By righteous Jove’s command,
    In Hell’s black pool, up to the chin,
      The thirsty king doth stand:
    With parched throat, he longs to drink,
      But, when he bends to sip,
    The envious waves receding sink,
      And cheat his pining lip.
    Such tales delight me roaming free,
      At dusky eve o’er heathy common;
    And such I’ve rhymed—a few—for thee,
      Of kindred fancy, man or woman.
    There’s labour in a learnèd life
    And many a tome with dulness rife
      The patient scholar reads;
    He scrapes the ground, and breaks the crust,
    And from deep heaps of choking dust
      Redeems the buried seeds;
    But here I’ve cropped the bloom for thee:
    Accept these old Greek flowers, free
      From thorns and hateful weeds.




                                PANDORA.


                  Ὀνόμηνε δε τήνδε γυναῖκα.
      Πανδώρην, ὁτι πάντες Ολύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες
    δῶρον ἐδώρησαν, πῆμ’ ἀνδράσιν ἀλφηστῇσιν.—HESIOD.


                                   I.

    Prometheus was a famous moulder
      In the old Greek time,
    Ere the blind Smyrnéan minstrel[1]
      Wove his pictured rhyme.
    Sprung from oldest Earth and Heaven’s
      Titan progeny,
    Hardy-limbed, and sturdy labour’s
      Primal type was he.
    One day, ’neath the slanting chariot
      Of the cooler sun,
    He did sweat, his task to finish
      Ere the day was done.
    With the finely plastic finger’s
      Soft-subduing sway,
    He did shape the breathing feature
      From the senseless clay,
    Like a god: and therefore jealous
      Of such godlike skill,
    Mighty Jove the purpose nursed
      To break his hardy will.
    Vainly; for Jove’s fire the Titan
      In a smoking reed,
    From the glowing empyrean
      Drew with furtive speed;
    And by might of all subduing
      Chymick fire had taught
    Arts to crudest-witted mortals
      From wild wanderings brought.
    Him and them the harsh Olympian,
      From his throne sublime,
    Feared, lest they with strong invention
      To the stars should climb
    And mar his new dominion. Wherefore
      He to daze the sight
    Of the Titan wise prepares,
      With sensuous splendour bright.
    With Apollo’s slanting chariot,
      And the cooler ray,
    He hath sent his minion Hermes,
      Winged with speed to-day,
    Shod with guile to where the Titan
      Kneads the pliant clay.
    Lo! ho comes, the nimble-sandalled
      Airy-footed god,
    And with softly-soothing motion
      Waves his golden rod.
    Nor comes alone: behind him breathing
      Rosy beauty warm,
    Veiled with glory iridescent,
      Floats a gentle form.
    Oh, she is fair beyond compare!
      Her the thunderer high
    With all beauty’s bravery pranked
      To trick the Titan’s eye.
    Her thy forging wit, Hephæstus,
      Cunningly did frame;
    Every god his virtue gave
      To make a perfect dame.
    With soft-swelling smoothness Venus
      Rounded every limb,
    And her full deep eye cerulean
      Dashed with wanton whim.
    Round her chiselled mouth the Graces
      Wove their wreathings rare,
    All his sunny radiance Phœbus
      Showered upon her hair.
    Juno gave the lofty stature
      That beseems the queen,
    Dian the light-footed grace
      That trips the springy green.
    Tuned her throat the grace of Muses
      To the perfect bird;
    Hermes from her tongue sweet-suasive
      Winged the witching word.
    With a various-pictured vesture,
      Woven thin and fine,
    From subtle-threaded loom Athena
      Clad the shape divine.
    Thus with gifts well-dowered, Pandora,
      Now by Hermes led,
    With a sudden beauty glorious,
      Floods the sober shed
    Where the patient Titan labours;
      Him in wonder lost
    Thus with glib address Jove’s courier
      Smartly doth accost:
    “Son of Themis, lofty-counselled,
      This from Hermes know,
    Jove the patient cunning honouring
      Of his whilom foe,
    Sends for solace of thy labour,
      And thy thanks to claim,
    Gift of gods this glory-garnished
      Beauty-breathing dame.
    Shake the dust from off thy vesture;
      Pleasure after pain,
    The just meed that virtue merits,
      Clears the cloudy brain.”
    Thus the god; but wise Prometheus
      Turns his face away,
    And with cool design deep-thoughted
      Kneads the yielding clay:
    Nay, quoth Hermes, surely madness
      Makes the wise her own,
    Or he to stony labour used
      Himself is grown a stone!
    Charm his ear attendant Muses,
      With quick rapture thrill
    Every life-string! mighty Music
      Tames the stoutest will.
    Spake the god; and like bright wavelets
      Of the sounding sea
    Filled the Titan’s ear a gentle
      Rush of melody;
    Sounds as when the quire of Phœbus
      Trip with tinkling feet
    Round thy fair fount, Aganippe,
      Singing clear and sweet;
    Sounds as when goat-footed Faunus
      In a mossy nook
    Pipes his drowsy reed at noon-day
      To the murmuring brook;
    Sounds so rare as Jove Olympian
      Drinks with ravished ears
    When he hears the beat canorous
      Of the travelling spheres;
    Every sound that voiceful April
      Lends the floating breeze,
    Laden with the fragrant burden
      From the fresh-tipt trees:
    With such sweet assailing voices
      Cunning Hermes plied
    Wise Prometheus; but the Titan
      The strong spell defied.
    Eye and ear from soft seducement
      Stern he turned away,
    Till his faithful hand had ended
      With its task the day.


                                  II.

    On a grassy slope recumbent,
      Epimetheus lies;
    Epimetheus, witless brother
      Of Prometheus wise.
    In the pleasant sun he basketh,
      And with dreamful eyes,
    Weeting half, and half unweeting,
      Follows, as it flies,
    Every shade that sweeps the meadow;
      And with cradled ear,
    The mingled hum of summer voices
      Drowsily doth hear.
    Thus at ease supine he lieth,
      Nursing fancies vain,
    Every frothy thought that bubbles
      From an idle brain,
    Every wish that fond belief
      May shape into a creed,
    Every floating loose ideal
      That begets no deed,
    Thoughts of light and cloudy tissue,
      Thoughts of sunbeams wove,
    Thoughts of rapture more than earthly,
      Thoughts of rosy love.
    Him thus in luxurious musing
      Cunning Hermes found,
    From his airy pathway lighting
      With a nimble bound,
    And with him the fair Pandora;
      By the wise rejected,
    On the witless now she beams
      With beauty unexpected,
    And veiled in rosy splendour glorious.
      Epimetheus gazes
    On the fair with blank emotion;
      While with smooth-trimmed phrases,
    Thus the courier speaks—“Brave Titan,
      This from Hermes know,
    Jove, whom thy proud brother vainly
      Deems the Titan’s foe,
    Sends me here on blissful mission,
      Gracious to impart
    Fruitage to the fairest dreams
      That stir thy lofty heart.
    Earth-born thou, but not for earthy
      Plodding wert thou born,
    With axe and spade to drudge inglorious
      From the mist-wreathed morn
    To the grey-veiled eve; thy spirit’s
      Climate is the sky;
    Traitor to himself who feareth
      Where it points to fly.
    Flesh and blood with bread he feedeth,
      But immortal Jove
    Feeds the soul that pants for beauty
      With immortal love.
    Lo! thy heart’s divinely-thirsting
      Fever to abate,
    He hath sent this glory-garnished,
      Beauty-breathing mate.”
    Mute the spell-struck Epimetheus
      Eyed the wonder rare,
    Heedless of what wiles Kronion
      Screened beneath the fair.
    And in tranceful adoration
      Kissed his knees the ground;
    While from rapture-glowing breast
      He poured the vow profound—
    “Bless thee, bless thee, gentle Hermes!
      Once I sinned and strove
    Vainly, with my haughty brother,
      ’Gainst Olympian Jove.
    Now my doubts his love hath vanquished;
      Evil knows not he
    Whose free-streaming grace prepared
      Such gift of gods for me.
    Henceforth I and fair Pandora,
      Joined in holy love,
    Only one in Heaven will worship,
      Cloud-compelling Jove.”
    Thus he; and from the god received
      The glorious gift of Jove,
    And with fond embracement clasped her,
      Thrilled by potent love;
    And in loving dalliance with her
      Lived from day to day,
    While her bounteous smiles diffusive
      Scared dull care away.
    By the mountain, by the river,
      ’Neath the shaggy pine,
    By the cool and mossy fountain
      Where clear waters shine,
    He with her did lightly stray
      Or softly did recline,
    Drinking sweet intoxication
      From that form divine.
    One day when the moon had wheeled
      Four honeyed weeks away,
    From her chamber came Pandora
      Decked with trappings gay,
    And before fond Epimetheus
      Fondly she did stand,
    A box all bright with lucid opal
      In her smooth white hand.
    Dainty box! cried Epimetheus,
      Dainty well may’t be,
    Quoth Pandora,—curious Vulcan
      Framed it cunningly;
    Jove bestowed it in my dowry:
      Like bright Phœbus’ ray,
    It shines without; within what wealth
      I know not to this day.
    Let me see, quoth Epimetheus,
      What my touch can do!
    And swiftly to his finger’s call
      The box wide open flew;
    O Heaven! O Hell! what Pandemonium
      In the pouncet dwells!
    How it quakes, and how it quivers!
      How it seethes and swells!
    Steams in snaky twine upwreathing,
      Wave on wave is spread!
    Like a charnel-vault ’tis breathing
      Vapours of the dead!
    Fumes on fumes as from a throat
      Of sooty Vulcan rise,
    Clouds of red and blue and yellow
      Blotting out the skies.
    And the air with noisome stenches,
      As from things that rot,
    Chokes the breather,—exhalations
      From the infernal pot.
    And amid the writhing vapours
      Ghastly shapes I see
    Of dire diseases, Epimetheus,
      Launched on Earth by thee;
    A loathsome crew! some lean and dwindled,
      Some with boils and blains
    Blistered, some with tumours swollen,
      And water in the veins.
    Some with purple blotches bloated,
      Some with humours flowing
    Putrid, some with creeping tetter
      Like a lichen growing
    O’er the dry skin scaly-crusted;
      Some with twisted spine
    Dwarfing low with torture slow
      The human form divine:
    Limping some, some limbless lying;
      Fever with frantic air,
    And pale consumption veiling death
      With looks serenely fair.
    All the troop of cureless evils
      Rushing reinless forth
    From thy damned box, Pandora,
      Seize the tainted Earth;
    And to lay the marshalled legions
      Of our fiendish pains,
    Hope alone, a sorry charmer,
      In the box remains.
    Epimetheus knew the dolours,
      But he knew too late;
    Jealous Jove himself now vainly
      Would revoke the Fate.
    And he cursed the fair Pandora,
      But he cursed in vain;
    Still to fools the fleeting pleasure
      Buys the lasting pain.




                             PROMETHEUS.[2]


   Πᾶσας τέχνας βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.—ÆSCHYLUS.


                                   I.

    Blow blustering winds; loud thunders roll!
    Swift lightnings rend the fervid pole
    With frequent flash! his hurtling hail
    Let Jove down-fling! hoarse Neptune flail
    The stubborn rock, and give free reins
    To his dark steeds with foamy manes
    That paw the strand!—such wrathful fray
    Touches not me, who, even as they,
    Immortal tread this lowly sod,
        Born of the gods a god.


                                  II.

    Jove roles above; Fate willed it so.
    ’Tis well; Prometheus rules below.
    Their gusty game let wild winds play,
    And clouds on clouds in thick array
    Muster dark armies in the sky;
    Be mine a harsher trade to ply,
    This solid Earth, this rocky frame
    To mould, to conquer, and to tame;
    And to achieve the toilsome plan,
        My workman shall be MAN.


                                  III.

    The Earth is young. Even with these eyes
    I saw the molten mountains rise
    From out the seething deep, while Earth
    Shook at the portent of their birth.
    I saw from out the primal mud
    The reptiles crawl of dull cold blood,
    While wingèd lizards with broad stare
    Peered through the raw and misty air.
    Where then was Cretan Jove? where then
        This king of gods and men?


                                  IV.

    When naked from his mother Earth,
    Weak and defenceless, man crept forth,
    And on mis-tempered solitude
    Of unploughed field and unclipt wood
    Gazed rudely; when with brutes he fed
    On acorns, and his stony bed
    In dark unwholesome caverns found;
    No skill was then to till the ground,
    No help came then from him above,
        This tyrannous-blustering Jove.


                                   V.

    The Earth is young. Her latest birth,
    This weakling man, my craft shall girth
    With cunning strength. Him I will take,
    And in stern arts my scholar make.
    This smoking reed, in which I hold
    The empyrean spark, shall mould
    Rock and hard steel to use of man;
    He shall be as a god to plan
    And forge all things to his desire
        By alchemy of fire.


                                  VI.

    These jagged cliffs that flout the air,
    Harsh granite blocks so rudely bare,
    Wise Vulcan’s art and mine shall own,
    To piles of shapeliest beauty grown.
    The steam that snorts vain strength away
    Shall serve the workman’s curious sway
    Like a wise child; as clouds that sail
    White winged before the summer gale,
    The smoking chariot o’er the land
        Shall roll, at his command.


                                  VII.

    Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! my home
    Stands firm beneath Jove’s thundering dome,
    This stable Earth. Here let me work!
    The busy spirits, that eager lurk
    Within a thousand labouring breasts,
    Here let me rouse; and whoso rests
    From labour let him rest from life.
    To live ’s to strive; and in the strife
    To move the rock, and stir the clod,
        Man makes himself a god.




                        THE NAMING OF ATHENS.[3]


    Παρθένοι ὀμβροφόροι
    ἔλθωμεν λιπαράν χθόνα Πάλλαδος, εὔανδρον γᾶν
    Κέκροπος ὀψόμεναι πολυήρατον.—ARISTOPHANES.

    On the rock of Erectheus the ancient, the hoary,
      That rises sublime from the far-stretching plain,
    Sate Cecrops, the first in Athenian story
      Who guided the fierce by the peace-loving rein.
    Eastward away by the flowery Hymettus,
      Westward where Salamis gleams in the bay,
    Northward, beneath the high-peaked Lycabettus.
      He numbered the towns that rejoiced in his sway.
    Pleased was his eye with the muster, but rested
      At length where he sate with an anxious love,
    When he thought on the strife of the mighty broad-breasted
      Poseidon, with Pallas, the daughter of Jove;
    For the god of the earth-shaking ocean had sworn it,
      The city of Cecrops should own him supreme,
    Or the land and the people should ruefully mourn it,
      Swamped by the swell of the broad ocean-stream.
    Lo! from the North, as he doubtfully ponders,
      A light shoots far-streaming; the welkin it fills;
    Southward from Parnes bright-bearded it wanders,
      Swift as the courier-fires from the hills.
    Far on the flood of the winding Cephissus,
      There gleams like the shape of a serpentine rod,
    Shimmers the tide of the gentle Ilissus
      With radiance from Hermes the messenger-god.
    ’Twas he: on the Earth with light touch he descended,
      And struck the grey rock with his gold-gleaming rod,
    While Cecrops with low-hushed devotion attended,
      And reverent awe to the voice of the god.
    “Noble autochthon! a message I bear thee,
      From Jove in Olympus who regally sways;
    Wise is the god the dark trouble to spare thee,—
      Blest is the heart that believes and obeys.
    On the peaks of Olympus, the bright snowy-crested,
      The gods are assembled in council to-day;
    The wrath of Poseidon, the mighty broad-breasted,
      ’Gainst Pallas, the spear-shaking maid, to allay;
    And thus they decree—that Poseidon offended,
      And Pallas shall bring forth a gift to the place;
    On the hill of Erectheus the strife shall be ended,
      When she with her spear, and the god with his mace,
    Shall strike the quick rock; and the gods shall deliver
      The sentence as Justice shall order; and thou
    Shalt see thy loved city established for ever
      With Jove for a judge, and the Styx for a vow.”
    He spake; and, while Cecrops devoutly was bending,
      To worship the knees of the herald of Jove,
    Shone from the pole, in full glory descending,
      The cloud-car that bore the bright gods from above,
    Beautiful, glowing with many-hued splendour.
      O what a kinship of godhead was there!
    Juno the stately, full-eyed; and the tender
      Bland-beaming Venus, so rosily fair;
    Dian the huntress, with arrow and quiver,
      And airily tripping with light-footed grace;
    Apollo, with radiance poured like a river
      Diffusive o’er Earth, from his joy-giving face;
    Bacchus the rubicund; and with fair tresses,
      The bright-fruited Ceres, and Vesta the chaste;
    And the god that delights in fair Venus’ caresses,
      Stout Mars, in his mail adamantine encased.
    Then, while wild thunders innocuous gather
      Round his brow, diademed green with the oak,
    On the rock of Erectheus descended the Father,
      And thus to good Cecrops serenely he spoke:
    “Kingly autochthon! the sorrow deep-rooted
      That gnaweth thy heart, the Olympians know;
    Too long with Poseidon hath Pallas disputed,—
      This day shall be peace, or great Jove is their foe.”
    He spake; and a sound like the rushing of ocean,
      From smooth-grained Pentelicus, seizes their ears;
    From his home in Eubœa, with haughty commotion,
      To the place of the judgment, the sea-monarch nears.
    On the waves of the wind his blue car travelled proudly,
      Proudly his locks to the breeze floated free,
    Snorted his mane-tossing coursers, and loudly
      Blew from the tortuous conch of the sea
    Shrill Tritons the clear-throated blast undisputed,
      That curleth the wild wave, and cresteth the main;
    While Nereids around him, the fleet foamy-footed,
      Floated, as floated his undulant rein.
    Thus on the rock of Erectheus alighted
      The god of the sea, and the rock with his mace
    Smote; for he knew that the gods were invited
      To judge of the gift that he gave to the place.
    Lo! at the touch of his trident a wonder!
      Virtue to Earth from his deity flows:
    From the rift of the flinty rock cloven asunder,
      A dark-watered fountain ebullient rose.
    Inly elastic with airiest lightness
      It leapt, till it cheated the eyesight; and, lo!
    It showed in the sun, with a various brightness,
      The fine-woven hues of the rain-loving bow.
    “WATER IS BEST!” cried the mighty broad-breasted
      Poseidon; “O Cecrops, I offer to thee
    To ride on the back of the steeds foamy-crested,
      That toss their wild manes on the huge-heaving sea.
    The globe thou shalt mete on the path of the waters,
      To thy ships shall the ports of far ocean be free;
    The isles of the sea shall be counted thy daughters,
      The pearls of the East shall be treasured for thee!”
    He spake; and the gods, with a high-sounding pæan,
      Applauded; but Jove hushed the many-voiced tide;
    “For now, with the lord of the briny Ægean,
      Athena shall strive for the city,” he cried.
    “See, where she comes!”—and she came, like Apollo,
      Serene with the beauty ripe wisdom confers;
    The clear-scanning eye, and the sure hand to follow
      The mark of the far-sighted purpose, was hers.
    Strong in the mail of her father she standeth,
      And firmly she holds the strong spear in her hand;
    But the wild hounds of war with calm power she commandeth,
      And fights but to pledge surer peace to the land.
    Chastely the blue-eyed approached, and, surveying
      The council of wise-judging gods without fear,
    The nod of her lofty-throned father obeying,
      She struck the grey rock with her nice-tempered spear.
    Lo! from the touch of the virgin a wonder!
      Virtue to Earth from her deity flows:
    From the rift of the flinty rock cloven asunder,
      An olive-tree greenly luxuriant rose—
    Green, but yet pale, like an eye-drooping maiden,
      Gentle, from full-blooded lustihood far;
    No broad-staring hues for rude pride to parade in,
      No crimson to blazon the banners of war.
    Mutely the gods, with a calm consultation,
      Pondered the fountain, and pondered the tree;
    And the heart of Poseidon, with high expectation,
      Throbbed, till great Jove thus pronounced the decree:
    “Son of my father, thou mighty broad-breasted
      Poseidon, the doom that I utter is true;
    Great is the might of thy waves foamy-crested,
      When they beat the white halls of the screaming sea-mew:
    Great is the pride of the keel when it danceth,
      Laden with wealth, o’er the light-heaving wave;
    When the East to the West, gaily floated, advanceth,
      With a word from the wise, and a help from the brave.
    But Earth, solid Earth, is the home of the mortal,
      That toileth to live, and that liveth to toil;
    And the green olive-tree twines the wreath of his portal,
      Who peacefully wins his sure bread from the soil.”
    Thus Jove; and aloft the great council celestial
      Rose, and the sea-god rolled back to the sea;
    But Athena gave Athens her name, and terrestrial
      Joy, from the oil of the green olive-tree.




                            BELLEROPHON.[4]


    Ὃς τᾶς ὀφιώδεος υἱόν ποτε Γοργόνος
       ἦ πολλ’ ἀμφὶ κρουνοῖς
    Πάγασον ζεῦξαι ποθέων ἔπαθεν
    Πρίν γέ οἱ χρυσάµπυκα κούρα χαλινὸν
    Παλλὰς ἤνεγκε.—PINDAR.

    Ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ καὶ κεῖνος ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν
    ἤτοι ὁ κὰπ πεδίον τὸ Άλήιον οἷος ἀλᾶτο
    ὃν θυμὸν κατέδων πάτον ἀνθρώπων ἀλεείνων.—HOMER.


                                   I.

    The sun shines bright on Ephyre’s height,
    And right and left, with billowy might,
        Poseidon rules the sea;
    But not the Sun that rules above,
    Nor strong Poseidon, nor great Jove,
    Can look with looks of favouring love,
        Bellerophon, on thee.
    There’s blood upon thy hands; the hounds
        Of hell pursue thy path;
    Nor they within rich Corinth’s bounds
        Shall slack their vengeful wrath.
    Black broods the sky above thy head,
    The Earth breeds serpents at thy tread,
        The Furies’ foot hath found thee;
    A baleful pest their presence brings,
    A curse to peasants and to kings;
    The horrid shadow of their wings
        Turns day to darkness round thee.
    Flee o’er the Argive hills, and there,
    With suppliant branch and pious prayer,
        Thou shalt not crave in vain
    Some prince, whose hands not worthless hold
    The sceptre of Phoroneus old,
    To cleanse thy guilt, and make thee bold
        To look on men again.


                                  II.

    Darkly the Nemean forests frown,
        Where Apesantian Jove
    From his broad altar-seat looks down
        On the Ogygian grove.
    Fierce roars the lion from his den
    In Tretus’ long and narrow glen;
        And many a lawless man
    Here by the stony water-bed
    Lists the lone traveller’s errant tread,
        And wakes the plundering clan.
    Here be thy flight, Bellerophon,
        But danger fear thou none;
    For she, the warlike and the wise,
    Jove’s blue-eyed daughter, from surprise
        Secure shall lead thee on.
    He flees: and, where the priestess bears
        To Hera on the hill
    The sacred keys, he pours his prayers,
        And drinks the scanty rill.
    He flees: and now before his eye,
    With wall and gate and bulwark high,
    And many a tower that fronts the sky,
        And many a covered way,
    Strong Tiryns stands, whose massy blocks
    Were torn by Cyclops from the rocks,
        And piled in vast array.
    Here Prœtus reigns; and here, at length,
    The suppliant flings his jaded strength
        Before a friendly door;
    And now from hot pursuit secure,
    And from blood-guiltiness made pure,
        His heart shall fear no more.


                                  III.

    The princely Prœtus opes his gate,
    And on the fugitive’s dark fate
        Smiles gracious; him from fear,
    And terror of the scourge divine,
    He purifies with blood of swine
        And sprinkled water clear.
    O blessed was the calm that now
    Lulled his racked brain, and smoothed his brow!
        Nor wildly now did roll
    His sleepless eyes; from gracious Jove
    Came down the gentle dew of love,
        And soothed his wounded soul.
    And grateful was the face of man
    To heart now free from Furies’ ban,
        And sweet the festive lyre.
    Fair was each sight on that fair day,
    Spread forth in beautiful array,
        To move the heart’s desire.
    Each manly sport and social game
    Thrilled with new joy his re-strung frame,
        And waked the living fire.
    Antéa saw him poise the dart,
    In the fleet race the foremost start,
    And lawless Venus smote her heart;
        She loved her lord no more:
    As no chaste woman sues she sued,
    Her guest the partial hostess wooed,
        And lavished beauty’s store
    Of luminous smiles and glistening tears,
    And silvery speech; but he reveres
    The rights of hospitable Jove,
    Chastely repels her perilous love,
        Nor hears her parley more.


                                  IV.

    Who slights a woman’s love cuts deep,
    And wakes a brood of snakes that sleep
        Beneath a bed of roses.
    The lustful wife of Prœtus now
    To earthly Venus vows a vow,
        And in her heart proposes
    A fiendish thing. She, with the pin
    That bound her peplos, pierced the skin
        Of her smooth-rounded arm;
    And when the crimson stream began
    To trickle down, she instant ran,
        And with a feigned alarm
    Roused all her maids, and in the ear
    Of the fond Prœtus, quick to hear,
        She poured the piteous lie,
    That the false guest had sought to move
    Her loyal-mated heart with love,
    And with rude hands had dared assail
    Her virtue, cased in surer mail
        Than Dian’s panoply:
    Then, more to stir his wrathful mood,
    She bared her arm that streamed with blood,
        And scared his jealous eye.
    Hot boiled his Argive heart; his eyes
    Flash vengeance; but himself denies
        The reins to his own spleen.
    His public face in smiles is dressed,
    He joins the banquet with the rest,
    And tells the tale, and plies the jest,
        With easy social mien;
    And to his high Corinthian guest
        Lets not a thought he seen.
    “Take here,” quoth he, “thou high-souled knight,
    To Iobates the Lycian wight,
        The brother of my queen,
    These tablets; he will honour thee
    Even more than I; and thou shalt see
    A famous and a fruitful land,
    With all Apollo’s beauty bland,
        And leafy splendour green.”
    Uprose the knight with willing feet,
    His heart was light, his pace was fleet;
    Girt for the road and venture bold,
    He left the strong Tirynthian hold,
        And gaily wends his way
    O’er steep Arachne’s ridge, till he
    Passed Æsculapius’ sacred fane,
    Whose virtue soothes each racking pain,
    And reached, with foot untired, the sea
    That beats with billows bounding free
        The Epidaurian bay.


                                   V.

    Thoughtful a moment here he stood,
    And watched the never-sleeping flood,
        The ever-changing wave:
    He knew no danger, feared no foes,
    But from his heart a prayer uprose
        To her that guards the brave.
    Wise prayer; for scarce the words are gone
    From thy free mouth, Bellerophon,
        When, smote with holy awe,
    Even at thy side, in light arrayed,
    Serene with placid power displayed,
    The chaste strong-fathered blue-eyed maid
        Thy wondering vision saw;
    And in her hand—O wondrous sight!—
        A wingèd steed she led,
    That bent the knee before the knight,
        And bowed its lofty head.
    “Fear not, thou son of Æolus’ race,—
        Dear to the gods art thou;
    This steed, by strong Poseidon’s mace
    That leapt to life, through airy space
        Shall safely waft thee now.”
    Thus spake the goddess, wise as fair;
    And with the word, dissolved in air,
        Was seen no more. The knight
    Brushed from his eyes the dazzling glare,
        And scarce believed his sight.
    But, when he saw the steed was there,
    He winged to Heaven a hasty prayer,
        And for the airy flight
    Buckled his purpose. Mounted now
        With rapid wheel he soars,
    O’er creek and crag, and rocky brow,
        And swift-receding shores.
    A lovely sight was there, I trow,
        Where high on wingèd oars
    He clove the blue. The broad sea’s face
    With multitudinous-dimpled grace,
        Immense before him lay,
    With many a coast far-stretching seen,
    And many a high-cliffed isle between,
        And many a winding bay.
    High o’er Œnone’s isle he sails,
    Where Æacus’ justest law prevails,
        And masted armies ride;
    O’er rocky Sunium’s pillar’d steep,
    Where Pallas guards the Attic deep,
        He swept with airy pride.
    Seriphus, Ceos, Syros, saw
    His meteor-steed with wondering awe;
        And sacred Delos deemed
    Apollo’s self was travelling o’er
    The empyrean’s fervid floor,
        That with such brightness gleamed.
    Swift o’er the Bacchic isle he glides,
    Where music mingles with the tides
        From many a Mænad throat.
    And nigh to Caria’s craggy shore,
    Cos with her blushing winy store
        His sweeping view may note.
    Anon, sublime he soars above
    Thy temple, Atabyrian Jove,
        The lord of cloudless Rhodes,
    Where Telchins wise, with busy clamour,
    Who shape the steel ’neath skilful hammer,
        Possess their famed abodes:
    And swiftly then he swoops, I ween,
    Down on the steeps of Cragus green,
        Into the pleasant plain,
    Where Xanthus rolls his yellow stream,
    And Phœbus lights with glorious gleam
        The Patarean plain.
    Here he alights. His heavenly steed,
    With instant eye-outstripping speed,
        Scorning the earthly loam,
    Wheels eastward far with vans sonorous,
    And o’er the rosy peaks of Taurus
        Sails to his starry home.


                                  VI.

    The Xanthian gate is wide and free:
        The Xanthian towers are high;
    The Xanthian streets are fair to see;
        The knight, with wondering eye,
    Beholds, and enters. To the king
    Close-circling throngs the stranger bring,
        And scan him o’er and o’er;
    Curious that one so bright and trim,
    And with such light unwearied limb,
        Had reached the Lycian shore.
    With kindly heart the Xanthian lord
    Opes his high hall and spreads his board
        And pours the Coan wine;
    Nor question asked (for Jove gives free
    To all a questless courtesy)
        Till days were numbered nine.
    His tablets then the knight presents;
    The monarch scans their dire contents,
        For here ’twas written plainly,
    “If thou dost hate who works amiss,
    Let not his hand that beareth this
        Have sinned against me vainly;
    Thy Prœtus.” Sore vexed was the king
    That he must do no gracious thing
        Against so brave a guest;
    Put vows were strong, and family bonds;
    Therefore, composed, he thus responds—
        “Brave knight, a fearful pest
    Afflicts this land: a monster dire,
    With terror armed, and breathing fire,
        In Cragus holds her den,
    Chimera named: with savage jaw
    She bites, and with voracious maw
        Consumes both beasts and men.
    This hideous form its birth did take
    From hoar Echidna, virgin-snake,
        Who to that fiery blaster,
    Typhon, Cilicia’s curse of yore,
    This triform goatish portent bore,
    With serpent’s sting and lion’s roar,
        Our Lycian land’s disaster.
    Harmless at first, for sport ’twas bred
        By Caria’s thoughtless king,
    And by his innocent children led
        Obedient to a string.
    Anon its hellish blood grew hot;
        It breathed a breath of fire,
    And tainted every household spot
        With gouts of poison dire.
    Full grown at length, and fierce and bold,
    She ranges freely through each fold,
        And licks the fleecy slaughter;
    And, when her humour waxes wild,
    No flesh she spares of man or child,
        Echidna’s gory daughter.
    Now hear me, noble Glaucus’ son,
    Most valiant knight, Bellerophon;
    Thou hast a face that seems to court
    A dangerous business as a sport—
        This thing I ask thee then;
    Wilt thou go forth, and dare to tame
    This murtherous monster breathing flame,
    And win thyself a deathless name
        Among the Xanthian men?”


                                  VII.

    Thus he—(for in his heart he thought
    Such venture must with life be bought).
        But brave Bellerophon
    Guileless received the guileful plan,
    And, as an eager-purposed man,
        Buckled his armour on.
    Alone he went: of such emprise
        With this bold-breasted stranger
    No one shall share, a herald cries,
        The glory or the danger.
    By Xanthus’ stream he wends him then,
    And leftward up the hollow glen,
    Where Pandarus’ city, like a tower,
    Rises begirt with rocky power;
        Then upward still he goes,
    Where black-browed mountains round him lower
    And, ’neath chill winter’s grisly bower,
        The sunless water flows.
    Upon a steep rock hoar with eld
    A yawning cave his eye beheld,
    High-perched; and to that cave no trace
    Of road upon the mountain’s face,
        But, like an eagle’s nest,
    Sublime it hung. He looked again,
    And from the cave a tawny mane
        Shook o’er the rocky crest:
    And now a lion’s head forth came,
    And now, O Heaven! long tongues of flame
        Ran wreathing round the hill.
    No fear the son of Glaucus knew,
        But pricked his forward will,
    The rock-perched monster to pursue:
    Now right, now left, he sought a clue
        To thread that steep-faced hill;
    Hour after hour no pause he knew,
    Till night came down with sable hue,
        And found him searching still.
    Hid in the tangled brakes around
    Next morn a rugged chasm he found,
    That oped into an archway wide,
    Right through the hollow mountain-side:
        Here plunged the knight; and then
    With fervid foot emerging, speeds
    Along a rocky ledge, that leads
        To dire Chimera’s den.
    The monster hears his quickening tread,
        And with a hideous roar
    Trails forth its length, and shows its head
        And mouth that dripped with gore.
    The brave knight drew his sword, and flew
        Like lightning on the foe,
    And on its hide of horny pride
        Dealt ringing blow on blow.
    In vain; that hide, Bellerophon,
    Dipt in the flood of Acheron,
        Is proof at every pore;
    And where thy steel doth vainly hack,
    A goat’s head rising on its back
        With living fire streams o’er;
    And from behind, a serpent’s tail,
        With many mouths that hisses,
    Rears round about thee like a flail,
        To give thee poisoned kisses.
    The flame, the smoke, the sulphurous breath
        Doth choke thy mortal life:
    Spare that dear life, for only death
        Can grow from such a strife.
    Backward the flame-scorched hero sped,
    And as he went, upon his tread
        The roaring Terror came.
    Along the ridge, so sharp and jaggy,
    Huge-limbed it strode, stiff-maned and shaggy,
        And swathed with sevenfold flame.
    Down through the archway opening wide,
    Bar through the hollow mountain-side,
        It drove him wrathful on;
    Then through the black jaws of the rock
    Down hurled him with a rumbling shock,
        And heaved a huge sharp stone
    Blocking the rift. There in the vale,
    With flickering life, all scorched and pale,
        Was left Bellerophon.


                                 VIII.

    The evening dew was clear and cold:
    Upon the harsh ungrateful mould,
    All stiff and stark the hero bold
        Lay through the dreamless night;
    But when the face of peering day
    Shot o’er the cliff its crimson ray,
    With aching frame, as low he lay,
        Sleep seized the weary knight,—
    A blissful sleep; for, when the sense
    Was bound with blindness most intense,
        With sharp-eyed soul he saw,
    Ev’n at his side, in light arrayed,
    Serene with placid power displayed,
    The chaste strong-fathered blue-eyed maid,
        And worshipped her with awe;
    And in her hand—a well-known sight—
        The wingèd steed she led,
    That bent the knee before the knight,
        And meekly bowed its head.
    Raptured he woke; with sense now clear
        He saw the Jove-born maid,
    And in her hand a massive spear,
        Firm-planted, she displayed;
    And thus she spoke: “Ephyrian knight,
        Dear to the gods art thou;
    Not vainly did thy prayer invite
    My aid, to wing thy airy flight
        To Cragus’ rocky brow.
    A friendly god is thy provider;
        If thou hast wisely planned,
    Fear not; the steed doth wait the rider,
        The spear doth claim the hand.
    That snake-born monster’s horny hide,
        That was not made to feel,
    May never yield life’s crimson tide
        To sharpest Rhodian steel:
    But with this spear from Vulcan’s forge,
    Bight through the mouth in the deep gorge
        If thou shalt pierce it, then
    The dire Chimera breathing flame
    Thou with a hero’s hand shalt tame,
    And win thyself a glorious name
        Among the Xanthian men.”
    Upstood the knight, with hope elate,
    And felt the aching pain abate
        From all his sore-bruised limbs;
    The wingèd steed he straight bestrode,
    And to Chimera’s black abode
        Through liquid air he swims.
    The deep-mouthed Terror ’gan to bray,
    The forky fire-tongues ’gan to play,
    The fretful serpents hissed dismay
        Round all the rocky wall;
    But, with direct unwavering speed,
    The rider and the heavenly steed
    Rushed to achieve the fearless deed,
        At glorious danger’s call.
    The knight, with searching eye, did note
    The centre of the roaring throat,
    And, while it gaped with gory jaws
        To thunder fear around,
    Forward he rode—nor any pause,
    But right into Chimera’s gorge
    He drove the spear from Vulcan’s forge,
        And fixed it in the ground.
    Up from the hack the fell goat’s head
        Rose, rough with tumid ire,
    And right and left long tongues were spread
        Of forky-flaming fire;
    But with immortal strength the steed
        Flaps his huge vans around,
    And straight the eager spires recede,
        And harmless lick the ground.
    Cowed lie the snakes, and, with quick eye.
    A tender place the knight did spy,
        Where the neck joined the back;
    There with a fatal swoop he came,
    And through the fount of living flame
        He cuts with fierce attack.
    Down dropt the goat’s head in its gore.
    And with a sharp and brazen roar
        The writhing lion dies.
    The palsied snakes, with stiffened fang,
    Like lifeless leaves unconscious hang;
    And, belching rivers of black gore
    Upon the clotted rocky floor,
        The smoking carcass lies.


                                  IX.

    A famous man was Glaucus’ son
        Then when Chimera died;
    In Lycian land like him was none
        In glory and in pride.
    At public feast beside the king
    He sate; him did the minstrel sing
        With various-woven lays;
    And old men in the halls were gay,
    And maidens smiled, and matrons grey,
    And eager boys would cease their play
        To sound the hero’s praise.
    The Xanthian burghers, wealthy men,
    Chose the best acres in the glen
        Beside the fattening river,—
    Acres where corn would goodliest grow,
    Or vines with richest purple glow;
    These, free from burden, they bestow
        On Glaucus’ son for ever.
    The Xanthian king, to Prœtus bound,
    For other dangers looks around,
        And finds, but finds in vain.
    ’Gainst the stout Solymi to fight
    He sent the brave Ephyrian knight,
        With hope he might be slain;
    But from the stiff embrace of Mars
    He soon returned, and showed his scars,
        To glad the Xanthian plain
    A Lycian army then he led
    Against the maids unhusbanded,
        Where surly Pontus roars.
    Before his spear the Amazon yields;
    The breastless host, with moonèd shields,
    Far o’er Thermodon’s famous fields
        He drove to Colchian shores.
    The Xanthian king despairs the strife—
    “Let Prœtus fight for Prœtus’ wife;
    Not I will tempt the charmèd life
        Of valiant Glaucus’ son!”
    Nor more against the gods he strives,
    But with free hand his daughter gives
        To brave Bellerophon.


                                   X.

    A prosperous man was Glaucus’ son
    Then when the queenly maid he won,
        The pride of Lycian land:
    The Lycian lords obey his nod,
    The people hail him as a god,
        And own his high command.
    Fearless he lived without annoy,
    Plucking the bloom of every joy;
        For still, to help his need,
    Jove’s blue-eyed daughter, when he prayed,
    Was present with her heavenly aid,
        And lent the wingèd steed.
    His heart with pride was lifted high
    Beyond the bounds of earth to fly
    Impious he weened, and scale the sky,
        And sit with Jove sublime.
    Upward and northward far he sails,
    O’er Carian crags and Phrygian vales,
        And blest Mæonia’s clime.
    The orient breezes round him blowing
    He feels; with light the ether glowing;
    And from the planets in their spheres
    Beating wise march, with charmèd ears
        Drinks in the mystic chime.
    Bursts far Olympus on his view
    Snowy, with gleams of rosy hue;
        And round the heavenly halls,
    All radiant with immortal blue
    The golden battlements he knew,
        And adamantine walls.
    And on the walls, with dizzy awe,
    Full many a shapely form he saw
        Of stately grace divine:
    The furious Mars with terror crested,
    Poseidon’s power the mighty-breasted,
        Who rules the billowy brine;
    And, linked with golden Aphrodite,
    The heavenly smith, in labour mighty,
        Grace matched with skill he sees;
    And one that in his airy hand
    Displayed a serpent-twisted wand,
        And floated on the breeze,
    Both capped and shod with wings; and one
        That lay in sumptuous ease
    On pillowed clouds, fair Semele’s son,
        And quaffed the nectared bowl;
    And one from whom the locks unshorn
    Flowed like ripe fields of Autumn corn,
    And beaming brightness, like the morn,
        Showered radiance on the pole;
    And matron Juno’s awful face;
    And Dian, mistress of the chase;
    And Pallas, that with eye of blue
    Now sternly meets the hero’s view
        Whom erst she met with love;
    And, like a star of purer ray,
    Apart, whom all the gods obey,
        The thunder-launching Jove.
    The ravishment of such fair sight
    Thrilled sense and soul with quick delight
        To bold Bellerophon:
    Entranced he looked; his wingèd steed,
    Dazed with the brightness, checked its speed,
        Nor more would venture on.
    Deaf to the eager rider’s call,
    Who spurred to mount the Olympian wall,
        It stood like lifeless stone
    A moment—then, with sudden wheel,
    And headlong plunge, it ’gan to reel;
    For awful now were heard to peal
        Sharp thunders from the pole,
    And lightnings flashed, and darkly spread
    O’er that rash rider’s impious head,
        The sulphurous volumes roll.
    With rapid gust the fiery storm
    Resistless whirls his quaking form
        Down through the choking air.
    Loud and more loud the thunders swell
    Him with blind speed the winds impel;
    Three times three days and nights fell
        Down through the choking air.
    At length, in mazy terror lost,
    Him the celestial courser tossed
        With fiercely-fretted mane;
    And, by the close-involving blast
    Impetuous hurried, he was cast
        On the Aleian plain.


                                  XI.

    Senseless, but lifeless not, he lay.
        The gods had mercy shown,
    If they had slain, on that black day,
        The blasted Glaucus’ son:
    But all the gods conspired to hate
    The man, with impious pride elate,
        Who dared to scale the sky.
    Year after year, from that black day,
    He pined his dreary life away,
    Weak as a cloud or vapour grey,
        And vainly wished to die.
    On a wide waste, without a tree,
    The unfrequent traveller there might see
        The once great Glaucus’ son.
    Far from the haunts and from the tread
    Of men, a joyless life he led;
    Less kin to living than to dead,
    On folly’s fruitage there he fed,
        With his blank self alone.
    Even as a witless boy at school
    Would sit and gaze into a pool
        The moody Glaucus’ son,
    Or to bring forth the blindworm red
    That, creeping, loves a lightless bed,
        Would turn the old grey stone.
    And thus he lived, and thus he died,
    And ended to the brute allied,
        Who like a god began;
    And he hath gained a mournful fame,
    And marred immortal praise with blame,
    And taught to whoso names his name,
        PRIDE WAS NOT MADE FOR MAN!

   1850.




                             IPHIGENIA.[5]


    Λιτὰς δε καὶ κληδόνας πατρῴους
    παρ’ ουδὲν αἰῶνα παρθένειόν τ’
    ἔθεντο φιλόμαχοι βραβῆς
    φράσεν δ’ ἀόζοις πατὴρ μετ’ εὐχὰν
    δίκαν χιµαίρας ὕπερθε βωμοῦ
    πέπλοισι περιπετῆ
    παντὶ θυμῷ προνωπῆ
    λαβεῖν ἀέρδην στόµατός τε καλλιπρώρου φυλακὰν κάτασχεῖν
    ϕθόγγον ἀραῖον οἴκοις.—ÆSCHYLUS.

    The ships are gathered in the bay,
      A thousand-masted army,
    All eager for the Trojan fray,
      But the sky looks black and stormy.
    From Strymon’s shore, with surly roar,
      The Thracian blasts are blowing;
    With fretted breast, and foamy crest,
      The adverse tide is flowing.

    And Aulis’ shore, so bright before,
      Is bleak, and grey, and dreary;
    With dull delay, from day to day,
       The seamen’s hearts are weary.
    Dire omen to their ears the roar
      Of Jove’s loud-rattling thunder;
    The shivered sail, the shattered oar,
      The cable snapt in sunder.

    What man is he that stands apart,
      In priestly guise long-vested,
    Communing deep with his own heart,
      By sombre thoughts infested?
    He hath a laurel in his hand,
      And on the dark storm gazing,
    He broods, as he would understand
      The secret of its raising.

    ’Tis Calchas, whose divining mind
      The secret thought can follow
    Of Jove, who shows to human kind
      His counsel by Apollo.
    And they who trust in prophet’s skill,
      On the lone rock have found him,
    And throng, to learn the Supreme will,
      In eager crowds around him.

    He stands; he looks, and reads the ground:
      He will nor see nor hear them;
    But still they press, with swelling sound
      Of blameful murmurs, near him.
    He goes; against a host in vain
      He plants his single freedom;
    And to the tent o’ the king of men
      With fretful force they lead him.

    The Atridan stood without his tent,
      And scanned the welkin curiously,
    If that the storm at length had spent
      Its gusty burden furiously.
    Small help got he from cloud or sky,
      From sad thoughts that oppressed him;
    But blithe was his eye, when the seer came nigh,
      And thus the king addressed him:—

    “O son of Thestor! thou art wise,
      Thou see’st what wintry weather
    Scowls on our bright-faced enterprise,
      And with a close-drawn tether
    Holds us hound here against our will;
      What cause doth so delay us?
    Speak, sith thou hast a prophet’s skill,
      To me and Menelaus.”

    The seer was dumb; his fixed eye read
      The insensate sand demurely;
    “Nay, speak the truth,” the Atridan said,
      “For thou dost know it surely.
    Thou need’st not fear the strong man’s arm,
      The king of men doth swear it,
    Even by this kingly staff—no harm
      Shall touch thee, while I bear it!”

    The seer was dumb; the king was wroth:
      “Thou sellest dear thy prayers,
    Thou sour-faced priest, and by my troth,
      Like thee are all soothsayers.
    A mouthing and a mumping crew,
      With all things they will meddle;
    And when they have made much ado,
      They speak a two-faced riddle!”

    The seer was dumb. “Nay, not for me,
      Stiff priest, for love of Hellas,
    If Jove hath shown the truth to thee,
      Untie thy tongue and tell us.
    If, in our sacred things, a vice
      Some god hath sore offended,
    Declare, and, at a tenfold price,
      I vow it shall be mended.

    “If fault there be in me or mine,
      Or in the chiefs the highest,
    I will not swerve, but so incline
      As Jove shall point, unbiassed.
    My crown, my wealth, my blood, my all,
      Myself and Menelaus,
    Will give, if so we may recall
      The blasts that now delay us.”

    Then spake the prophet: “King, not well
      Apollo’s priest thou chidest;
    But I the unwelcome truth will tell,
      And follow where thou guidest.
    The best-loved stag of Dian thou
      Hast slain with evil arrow;
    Therefore this vengeful tempest now
      Consumes the Argive marrow.

    “And thou, even thou, whose was the guilt,
      Must work the just atoning;
    When blood for blood is freely spilt,
      To joy will turn thy moaning.
    If thou wilt ferry thee and thine
      Safe o’er the smooth-faced water,
    Thou to the goddess must resign
      Blood of thy blood, thy daughter.”

    The monarch stood, and with his staff
      He smote the ground in sorrow;
    Nor spake: the cup that he must quaff
      Is fire that burns his marrow.
    No aid Laertes’ son supplied,
      Nestor, or Menelaus;
    For we must stay the winds, they cried,
      From Thrace, that so delay us.

    And they have choked the father’s prayer;
      And this their general will is,
    To bring the maid, with promise fair
      To wed her to Achilles.
    And they have sent a courier far
      To Argos steed-delighting,
    And Clytemnestra reins the car,
      To answer their inviting.

    And they have come in trim array,
      The mother and the daughter,
    As hasting to a bridal gay
      Beside the briny water.
    But, when they reach the Aulian strand,
      No sight of gladness meets them;
    Hushed lies the camp; with outstretched hand
      No forward father greets them.

    And she is led, the daughter fair,
      By will that may not falter,
    Where priests a sacrifice prepare
      For Dian’s gloomy altar;
    Where Calchas stands with folded hands,
      And dense beholders gather;
    And with grief bent, on a plane-tree leant
      With backward gaze, her father.

    Ah, woe is me! and can it be,
      That, with sharp knife, thou darest
    Strike such a neck, and forceful break
      This flower thy first and fairest?
    Will he not hear, her father dear,
      When her shrill plaint she poureth;
    Nor Jove above look down in love,
      When guiltless youth imploreth?

    She stretched her hands to the standers by,
      And tenderly besought them;
    With shafts of pity from her eye,
      The lovely maiden smote them.
    O! like a picture to be seen
      Was she, so chaste and beautiful,
    And to her father’s will had been
      In all so meek and dutiful.

    How often, at his kingly board,
      With filial heart devoted,
    To grace the banquet, she had poured
      The mellow lay clear-throated!
    But now that voice shall sing no more;
      They gag her mouth, lest, dying,
    A curse on Argos she should pour,
      With evil-omened crying.

    And, as stern Calchas gives behest,
      They with a cord have bound her;
    And she hath wrapt her saffron vest
      In decent folds around her.
    And as a kid supine is laid,
      They on the altar lay her;
    As bleeds a kid, so bleeds the maid,
      To the knife o’ the priestly slayer.

    But a weight is rolled from the heart of Greece,
      And the clouds from the sky are driven;
    And the sun looks down with an eye of peace
      From the fresh blue face of heaven.
    The westering breeze the seamen hailed,
      That smoothed the Ægean water;
    But with sad heart the monarch sailed,
      For he had lost a daughter.




                          WAIL OF AN IDOL.[6]


    Mὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, ϕαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ·
    Bουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἑὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
    Ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρω, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
    Ἠ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταϕθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.—HOMER.

    O dreary, dreary shades!
    O sad and sunless glades!
    O yellow, yellow meads
      Of asphodel!
    Where the dream-like idol strays,
    On lone and lifeless ways,
    Through Hades’ weary maze,
      And sings his own sad knell.

    O sullen, solemn, silent clime!
    O lazy pace of noiseless time!
    O where is the blythe and gamesome change
      Of the many-nurturing earth?
      The dance of joy, the flush of mirth,
    Life’s vast and varied range?

    O dreary, dreary vales!
    O heavy, heavy gales!
    Fraught with the dreamy dew of sleep,
    Over the joyless fields ye sweep;
    O sullen, sullen, streaky sky,
    Where the changeless moon, with a leaden eye,
       Aloft hangs languidly,
    And yellow vapours mount up high,
    And flickering lights in a wild dance fly,
    Like the last fleet flash when the strangled die,
    Shooting across the darkling eye.

          O sullen, sullen sky!
      Where the brown bat wings,
      And the lone bird sings
    A chant like the chant of death;
            While sad souls wake
            The stagnant lake
    With a sobbing, struggling breath.
    O sad, O sad is the wail of the stream,
    Mingling its sighs with the dead man’s dream:
          Winding, winding nine times round,
          Weary, wandering, ’scapeless bound!
              And the black, black kine,
                  In lazy ranks,
          Are cropping the sickly herb
              From the reedy Stygian banks;
              And hissing things,
          With poisoned blood,
          Are crawling through the bubbling mud.
          O sad, O sad is the endless row
          Of poplars black; oh, sad and slow
          Is the long-drawn train of the sons of woe,
              The silent-marching ghosts!
    And they share no more in the feast of glee,
    And the dance, and the song, and the wine-cup free;
    Where the bard divine, with mellow lays,
    Is singing the gods’ and the heroes’ praise;
            And they share no more
            Loud laughter’s roar,
          The silent-marching ghosts!
            I hear their cry,
            As they flit swift by
              On noiseless wing,
    Hurrying through the wide outspread
    Gates that gape for the countless dead:
            I hear the cry
          Of the wailing ghosts;
            Their voices small,
            Like a drowning thing,
    Drawn echoless along the long dim hall;
            And some are whirled,
      In the mighty void,
      Like a leaf in the gurgling tide
            And some are hurled,
            With a gusty fit,
      Into the deep Tartarean pit;
            And some do sway,
            Like a blind thing stray,
      To and fro in the pathless air;
    And some, whom chance less stormy rules,
    Sit sipping the blood from crimson pools.

              O sad is the throne,
              Dark, drear, alone,
          Of the stern, relentless pair!
              With gloom enveiled,
              In judgment mailed,
          A joyless sway they bear.
              No circling years,
              No sounding spheres,
              No hopes and fears,
                  Are there;
              They sit on the throne,
              Dark, drear, alone,
          A stern relentless pair.
              And beside them sits
              A monster dire,
      Watching the darkness with eyes of fire,
        The dog of the triform head;
              And his harsh bark splits,
              Like thunder fits,
        The realm of the silent dead.
            Oh, sad is the throne,
            Dark, drear, alone,
        Of the stern, relentless pair!
            O dreary, dreary shades!
            O sad and sunless glades!
            O yellow, yellow meads
              Of asphodel!
            O loveless, joyless homes!
            O weary, starless domes!
            Where the wind-swept idol roams,
              And sighs his own sad knell.

            O sullen, solemn, silent clime!
            O lazy pace of noiseless time!
    O where are the many-coloured joys of earth?
    O where is the loud strong voice of mirth?
              The jubilant shout,
            Of the light-heeled rout,
    Where the dance is whirling about and about;
              The roving joy
            Of the bright-faced boy,
    When he plays with life as he plays with a toy.
            O where is the change
              Of joy and woe?
            The love of friend,
              The hate of foe?
    O where is the hustle of many-winged life,
    And of man with man the many-mingling strife?
          Where to live was to fight,
          And to fight was delight,
    Where the fair face smiled on the strong-armed knight.
        O Hermes! leader of the dead,
            Thou wingèd god
            Of the golden rod,
        O lead me, lead me further still!
      Lead me to Lethe’s silent stream,
        That I may drink, deep drink my fill,
      And wash from my soul this long life-dream!
        O lead me, lead me to Lethe’s shore,
        Where Memory lives no more!




                              ARIADNE.[7]


    Χρυσοκόμης δε Διώνυσος ξανθὴν Ἀριάδνην
    κούρην Μίνωος, θαλερὴν ποιήσατ’ ἄκοιτιν
    τὴν τὲ οἱ ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήρω θῆκε Κρονίων.—HESIOD.

    “Protinus adspicies venienti nocte coronam
    Gnossida; Theseo crimine facta dea est.”—OVID.


                                   I.

    Ariadne, Ariadne,
    Thou art left alone, alone!
    And the son of Attic Aegeus,
    Faithless Theseus, he is flown.
    Ariadne, Ariadne,
    In a sea-cave left she sleepeth;
    In her dreams her bosom heaveth,
    Through her dreams the maiden weepeth.
    With an ugly dream she struggles;
    In the bright and sunny weather,
    O’er the meadows green and flowery,
    She and Theseus walk together.
    Suddenly there sweeps a change;
    O’er a moor of hard brown heather,
    O’er a bare and treeless waste,
    She and Theseus walk together.
    Cold and loveless is the air,
    Huge white mists are trailing near her:
    And the fitful swelling blast
    Pipes with shrill note clear and clearer.
    By an old grey tower she stands,
    Where the ruin starts and crumbles;
    Wandering by a lone black lake,
    On a cold grey stone she stumbles.
    “Theseus! Theseus!”—to his arms
    Close she clings; but like a trailing
    Mist he flees; and o’er the waste
    Laughter answers to her wailing.
    Dim confusion blinds her eye,
    Through her veins the chilly horror
    Shoots: she stands; she looks; she runs
    O’er the moor with mazy error.
    And she screams, with rending cries,
    “Save me, Jove, save Ariadne!
    Theseus, Theseus, in the waste
    Hast thou left thy Ariadne?”
    And the Spirits of the storm
    Shout around her—“Ariadne!
    Thou art left alone, alone,
    In the waste, O Ariadne!”


                                  II.

    From the painful dream she wakes,
    Starts, and looks, and feels for Theseus;
    On the cold rock-floor her hand
    Falls, and feels in vain for Theseus.
    “Theseus, Theseus!”—he is gone;
    Dost thou see that full sail swelling?
    There he hies, with rapid keel,
    Soon to find his Attic dwelling.
    “Theseus! Theseus!”—she doth beat
    The breasted wave with idle screaming.
    Like a white sea-bird so small,
    Now his distant sail is gleaming:
    Now ’tis vanished. O’er the isle
    Hurries vagrant Ariadne;
    None she sees, and, when she calls,
    Answers none to Ariadne.
    ’Neath a high-arched rock she rests,
    Weary, and, with meek behaviour,
    Stretched upon a stony floor,
    Plains her prayer to Jove the Saviour:—

          Mighty Jove, strong to destroy,
              Stronger to save,
          Hear; nor in vain may Minos’ daughter
              Thy mercy crave!
          Weak is a maiden’s wit: I saw
              The galliard stranger,
          And, with wise clue, I brought him through
              The mazy danger.
          My father’s halls I left; I gave
              My heart’s surrender;
          He loved the flower, and plucked the fruit,
              With hand untender.
          Mighty Jove, the suppliant’s friend,
              My supplication
          Hear thou, and touch my prostrate woe
              With restoration!
    She spake; and, on the stony floor,
    Stretched she lay in tearful sorrow;
    Slumber, sent from Saviour Jove,
    Bound her gently till the morrow.


                                  III.

    Wake, Ariadne!
    Wake from thy slumbers;
    Wake with new heart,
    Which no sorrow encumbers!
    Black Night is away now,
    And glorious Day now
      Reddens apace.
    The white mists are fleeing,
    And o’er the Ægean,
    His shining steeds follow
    The call of Apollo,
      And snort for the race.
    Hark! through thy slumbers,
    Undulant numbers
      Quicken the air!
    O’er the Ægean
    Swells the loud pæan
      With melody rare;
    The clear-throated flute,
    And the sweet-sounding lute,
    The cymbals’ shrill jangle,
    And tinkling triangle,
      And tambour, are there.
    Wake, Ariadne!
    Look through thy slumbers!
    The Mænads, to meet thee,
    Marshal their numbers.
    Down, from the sky
    Dionysus has sent them;
    Rosiest beauty
    Venus has lent them.
    Hovering nigh,
    Their thin robes floating,
    With balm in their eye,
    Thy wounds they are noting,
      O Ariadne!
    Blest be the bride
    (So echoes their song)
    That shall sleep by the side
    Of the wine-god strong,
      Fair Ariadne!
    Daughter of Minos,
    A mortal betrays thee,
    But a god for his bride
    To Olympus shall raise thee!
    Like a gem thou shalt shine
    ’Mid the bright starry glory;
    A name shall be thine
    With the famous in story.
    Wake, Ariadne,
    From Earth’s heavy slumbers;
    Wake to new life,
    Which no sorrow encumbers!


                                  IV.

    Ariadne from her slumber
    Woke and rose, and smiled benignly,
    Radiant from the rapturous dreams
    That stirred her inmost soul divinely.
    Round her stood the Mænad maids,
    Round her swelled their tuneful chorus;
    Round her wheeled their floating dance,
    To a piping reed sonorous.
    With them wheeled a prick-eared crew,
    Hairy-limbed, with goatish features;
    Pans and Satyrs strange to view,
    Forest-haunting, freakish creatures.
    Old Silenus, bald and broad,
    Stood beside, his bright face showing
    Ploughed with laughter; his full eye
    Brimmed with mirth to overflowing.
    Strange; but Ariadne saw,
    With broad eyes, a sight yet stranger;
    Troops of shaggy forest whelps
    Thronged around, and brought no danger.
    Bearded goat, and tusky boar,
    Fox that feasts on stealthy slaughter,
    Tawny lion, tiger fierce,
    Harmless looked on Minos’ daughter.
    Lo! a spotted pard appears
    At the feet of Ariadne;
    Comes, and, like a prayerful child,
    Kneels before thee, Ariadne.
    Pleased the savage brute she sees
    Stretch its brindled length demurely;
    Mounts the offered seat, and rides
    On the panther’s back securely.
    Forward now the spotted pard
    Moves with measured pace and wary;
    Then aloft (O wonder strange!)
    Paws the heavenward pathway airy.
    Fear thee not, thou Gnossian maid,
    Gods are with thee where thou fliest;
    Dionysus waits for thee,
    Near the throne of Jove the Highest.
    In Olympus’ azure dells,
    Waits the god in ivy bowers,
    Where for thee immortal Hebe
    Twines the amaranthine flowers;
    Where the purple bowl of joy
    Brims for thee; where bitter sorrow
    Grows not; where to-day’s keen thrill
    Leaves no languid throb to-morrow.
    Flourish there, immortal bride,
    In sculptor’s stone and minstrel’s story;
    Shine, to sorrowing hearts a sign,
    High amid the starry glory!




                                GALATEA.


   Δωρὶς καὶ Πανόπη καὶ εὐειδὴς Γαλάτεια.—HESIOD.


                                   I.

    Hast heard the ancient story,
      The worthy old Greek theme
    Of lovely Galatea
      And ugly Polypheme?
    It is a tale of sadness,
      As many tales there be:
    Attend, and I will tell it,
      As it was told to me.
    There lived a heathen giant
      In ancient Sicily,
    A son of strong Poseidon,
      Who rules the stormy sea;
    A huge unsightly monster;
      Beneath his shaggy hair
    (So learnèd Virgil sayeth),
      One big round eye did stare.
    His trunk was like a huge tree
      Dug from an old brown moss;
    His skin was hard and horny,
      Like a stiff rhinoceros.
    On bloody food he feasted;
      As ancient tales relate,
    Each blessed day to supper
      Two living men he ate,
    A score of goats’ milk cheeses,—
      And, mingled with black gore,
    Red wine he drank in rivers,
      Till he could drink no more.
    This monster loved with hot love
      (That such a thing should be!)
    The lovely Galatea,
      A daughter of the sea.
    His love he plied full stoutly;
      He fell upon his knees,
    And swore she might command him
      In all that she should please.
    He filled the seas with weeping;
      His big round eye was red;
    His hair he tore like forests
      From off his clumsy head.
    He beat his breast—by Neptune
      He swore, and with wild nails
    Digged his rude cheeks; and Ætna
      Re-echoed with his wails.
    But the maid was cold as marble,
      She would nor see nor hear;
    And shrank with fear and loathing
      When his brutish bulk came near.
    “What shall I do?” quoth Cyclops;
      “This sin she shall atone:
    Me shall she scout?—a sea-girl
      Strong Neptune’s son disown?”
    He asked advice of Proteus;
      Old Proteus said, “Behold!
    I change myself; but can I
      Change thy lead into gold?”
    He asked advice of Nereus:
      The hoary god appeared;
    He could not give the monster
      His own white snowy beard,
    The beard that charmed young Doris
      More than mad Triton’s eye,
    But Nereus had an eye, too,
      Of calm blue prophecy.
    Quoth. Nereus, “Son of Neptune,
      If thou wilt win her love,
    Eat not the flesh of mortals,
      Revere the name of Jove:—
    And yet thy case is hopeless,
      Even wert thou free from blame,—
    She loves a gentle shepherd,
      And Acis is his name.”
    He spake: the Cyclops bellowed,
      And, like a cloven rock,
    His monstrous jaws were sundered;
      Earth trembled at the shock.
    Quoth he, “By Father Neptune,
      It will be wondrous strange
    If this same piping shepherd
      Oust me—I vow revenge!”
    And Ocean from his blue depths
      Replied, “It will be strange!”
    And from their hollow caverns
      The rocks replied—“Revenge!”


                                  II.

    It was an hour of stillness,
      In the green and leafy June,
    Midway between the cool eve
      And the sultry ray of noon.
    Thin clouds were floating idly,
      And with his changing rays
    The playful sun bedappled
      The green and ferny braes.
    The birds were chirping faintly,
      It scarcely was a song;
    But the breath of green creation
      And fragrant life was strong.
    The lazy trees were nodding,
      The flowers were half awake,
    And toilsome men were basking,
      Like the serpent in the brake.
    The Borean winds were sleeping,
      Asleep was ocean’s roar,
    And ripple was chasing ripple
      On the silver-sounding shore.
    The countless ocean-daughters
      Were weaving from the waves
    Bright webs of scattered sunlight
      To deck their sparry caves;
    And in her sapphire chamber,
      Of lucent beauty rare,
    The sea-queen Amphitrite
      Was plaiting her sea-green hair.
    But the chase, and the dance, and the gambol,
      And the tramp of Triton war
    Were dumb—for father Neptune
      Had reined his billowy car.
    The lovely Galatea,
      Within a silent bay,
    With her dear shepherd Acis
      In blest seclusion lay.
    High craggy rocks steep-rising,
      The bosomed beach enclose;
    And at the feet of the goddess
      The rippling wavelet flows.
    The shepherd sang to please her:
      He piped a simple air,
    And as he sang gazed alway
      Into that face so fair;
    He drank the dew of heaven,
      Deep draughts of beauty rare,
    And he never could weary gazing
      On the face of the sea-nymph fair.
    He sang the shepherd of Latinos,
      Endymion the blest;
    He sang his sweet day labours,
      And his sweeter night of rest:
    His labours sweet and easy,
      Beneath the sunny cope,
    To watch the fleecy wanderers
      That cropped the Carian slope;
    His rest more sweet, when Dian,
      Fleet huntress of the woods,
    Came bounding over the mountains,
      Came leaping over the floods,
    Came dancing over the rivers,
      That with her beauty shone,
    To see in mellow moonlight
      The sleep of Endymion.
    She looked on the lovely sleeper,
      The soul that knew no strife;
    He looked like some spotless marble
      God-wakened into life.
    She bended gently o’er him;
      Beneath his breast of snow,
    She heard the pure blood flowing,
      So musical below.
    She smoothed the mossy pillow
      All softly where he slept,
    And a fragrant flower sprang near him,
      Each tear the goddess wept.
    She kissed his cheeks so downy,
      So beautiful, so brown,
    And amid his locks so golden
      She wove a silver crown.
    Her breath was music round him,
      And her presence fancies fair,
    That cradled the happy dreamer
      In a winged and rosy lair.
    She looked on the sleeping shepherd,
      And her love with gazing grew,
    And the limbs of the lovely mortal
      She bathed in immortal dew.
    O happy shepherd of Latmos,
      What sleeping bliss divine!
    I might close mine eyes for ever,
      To win one sleep like thine!
    Thus sang the gentle Acis,
      And rose to pluck a bloom,
    With the hair of the lovely sea-nymph
      To mingle its sweet perfume.
    A noise was heard—a rumbling,
      A crashing sound.—“Oh stay!
    O Acis, Acis!”—Buried
      Beneath a rock he lay.
    The rock came from the high cliff,
      A huge and pointed stone,
    By the hand of the savage monster,
      The bloody Cyclops, thrown.
    He stood on the craggy coping,
      And laughed with a laughter wild;
    “I have slain at once, and buried,
      False goddess, thy mortal child!”
    The lovely Galatea,
      She fell in speechless woe;
    On the rock that covered her Acis
      Her tears unceasing flow.




                         THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.


      ἐκρίθη δ’ ἔρις ἃν ἐν Ἴδᾳ
        κρίνει τρισσὰς μακάρων
          παῖδας ἀνὴρ βούτας
    ἐπὶ δορὶ καὶ ϕόνῳ καὶ ἐμῶν μελάθρων λώβᾳ·
      στένει δὲ καί τις αμϕὶ τὸν εὔρουν Εὐρώταν
          Δάκαινα πολυδάκρυτος ἐν δόμοις κόρα,
            πολιὸν δ’ επὶ κρᾶτα μάτηρ
              τέκνων θανόντων τίθεται χέρα
                δρύπτεταί τε παρειὰν
          δίαιμον ὄνυχα τιθεμένα σπαραγμοῖς.

                                                          —EURIPIDES.


                                   I.

    On lofty Ida’s grassy slope
      Sat Priam’s shepherd son,
    What time Apollo’s beaming car
      Its course had wellnigh run,
    One radiant day in June. He leant
      Upon his curvèd crook,
    Musing; and to the sky around,
    And to the various-dappled ground,
    And the slow-oozing mossy rill,
    On the green bosom of the hill,
      Sent many a wandering look.
    And with intenter gaze he eyed
    The palace of his father’s pride,
      That in the vale below
    Rose regal; battlement and tower
    And massy porch of brazen power
      To stay the battering foe:
    And many a dwelling sheltered well,
    ’Neath Ilium’s sacred citadel
    Far-smoking; and the firm-faced line
      Of the high-gated wall,
    That rose with upright strength divine,
      At strong Poseidon’s call.
    And in his heart the hopeful thought
    Swelled venturous; and fair fancies float
    Before him; and the secret germ
    Of manhood’s ripening fate grew warm.
    The pomp of life in rolling splendour,
      Bright wealth and purple power,
    And rosy smiles and twinings tender,
      In love’s fresh-blossoming hour
    O’ercame his spirit, and possessed
    With pleasant tumult his young breast.
    Thus finely rapt, he mused, and leant
      Upon his curvèd crook;
    And, as the shadows came and went,
    Upon the hill, he, like a seer,
    Saw flitting shapes of hope and fear,
      In the heart’s shadowy book.


                                  II.

    Serene and still the sun doth set,
      The wave with gold is gleaming;
    But see a glory brighter yet
      From high Olympus streaming!
    The shepherd lifts his eye, and looks:
      A splendour like a star
    Sails westward; like a watch-fire now—
      Now ’tis a flaming car.
    O Heavens! what glorious sight he sees!
      With sweep of breezy lightness
    Down Ida’s slope the car descends,
      And fills the mount with brightness;
    Then lights at Paris’ foot. The god
    That bears a serpent-cinctured rod,
    And guides, a winged charioteer,
    That radiant cloud-car’s swift career,
    Checks the keen steeds with cunning rein,
    And thus bespeaks the princely swain:
    “Beautiful son of Ilium’s king,
    To thee from Jove on flaming wing
    This word I bring: A contest rare,
    Which is the fairest of the three,
    Between Jove’s daughter and his wife
    And Aphrodite golden-fair
    Breaks Heaven’s sweet peace. Great Jove to thee
    The judgment yields. This hour prepare
      Thy doom to end the strife.”
    He spake; and forth from out the cloud
    That doth the Olympian car enshroud,
    Steps lofty Hera, with the mien
    And posture of a queen.
    “Shepherd, thou seest the Queen of Heaven,
      Jove’s thunder-hall is mine,
    To me if beauty’s prize be given,
      Attend what meed is thine.
    I give thee sway and lordly rule;
      This populous Asian land
    Shall be to thee a training school,
      To mould with plastic hand
     The pliant millions of mankind;
      Thy lofty thought shall be
     A law to ages, that resigned
      Shall take their stamp from thee.
    Where to Apollo swells the pæan,
    From the bright isles of the Ægean—
    Where the white peaks of Caucasus shine
    O’er the dark Euxine’s horrent brine—
    Where blest Arabia’s sunny shore
    Teems with the fragrant spicy store—
    Where Ganges rolls his ample flood,
    And spreads wide leagues of pregnant mud,
    Far as the wine-god tiger-borne
    Travelled the bright realms of the morn;
    So far, if beauty’s prize be mine,
    Shall wealth, and state, and power be thine.”
    She spake; and her proud form back drew
    Into the cloud; when forth with spear,
    And casque, and large round buckler clear,
    Jove’s blue-eyed daughter stept to view.
    “Thou seest the warrior-maid of Heaven,
      The strength of spears is mine,
    To me if beauty’s prize be given,
      The hero’s fame is thine.
    I give the strength of sinewy arm,
      And the sure-levelled blow,
    To stay the march of haughty harm,
      And lay the lawless low.
    The daring thought, the piercing eye,
      The free and fearless breath,
    The grasp that snatches victory
      Even in the throat of death.
    Where forests of the threatful spear
    Flash o’er the line from van to rear;
    Where furious Mars in scythèd car
    Leads the hot chase of panting war;
    Where quakes the air with arrowy storm,
    And man to man works mortal harm,
    Thou shalt not fear; but to the cry
    Of freedom, and of fatherland,
    Shalt feel thy manhood mounting high,
    And, with a chosen true-sworn band,
    Breasting wars crimson tide shalt stand
    Firm as a rooted tree. Thy name
    Shall be a charm to smother shame,
    A travelling watchword to the free;
    The peasant’s song shall tell of thee,
    And little children shout for glee;
    The hearth by thee shall blaze more brightly,
    And loving hearts shall beat more lightly;
    Thou shalt be blest of mothers; thou
    Shalt see the ploughman turn his plough
      O’er fields of recent slaughter;
    The full-eared corn shall wave its pride,
    Where wisdom was true valour’s guide,
      From me, Jove’s blue-eyed daughter.”
    She spake; and back the maid withdrew;
      When forth, in beauty mighty,
    Stept radiant to the ravished view
      The golden Aphrodite.
    “Shepherd, the strongest power in Heaven,
      All-conquering love, is mine;
    To me if beauty’s prize be given,
      Earth’s fairest fair is thine.
    I give thee beauty; being fair,
      A fairer thou shalt find,
    And mated live the loveliest pair,
      From Gaul to furthest Ind.
    The clear smooth brow, the glowing eye,
      The shining hue of health,
    The living grace that none may buy
      With mines of golden wealth,
    I give to thee. In fragrant beds,
    Where violets nod their purple heads,
    Where odorous jessamine and roses
    Twine the cool bower where peace reposes,
    Where glimpses of the stray sunshine,
    Pierce the broad-leaved dark-clustered vine;
    There thou shalt look in beauty’s face,
    And gently twine the soft embrace,
    Till thy full liquid eye shall swim
    With ecstasy, and overbrim
    Thy soul with joy, and every limb
    Thrill with rare transport. Gods above
    No keener joy have known than love,
    Than when with impulse fresh and mighty,
    It stirs the soul and elevates,
    And every throbbing sense dilates,
    By gift of golden Aphrodite.
    Such bliss, if beauty’s prize be mine,
    Shepherd of Ida, shall be thine.”
    She spake; and the full-floating view
    Of her bright fairness overthrew
    All sterner purpose. “Thou art fair,”
    He cried, “beyond the dull compare
    Of meaner forms! Henceforth my duty,
    With fervid heart-resolve, shall be
    To win the fair, and worship beauty
    In thee, and those most like to thee.”
    He said; and straight the vision flew,
    Dissolving from his tranceful view,
      And all the air was clear.
    A wonder-stricken wight he stood,
    Like poet, when in tranceful mood
      He feels the Muses near;
    But, as he homeward bent his way,
    ’Neath the last streaks of rosy day,
    Jove’s thunder from the hill-top grey
      Rolled ominous on his ear.




                              THESEUS.[8]


    Θησεὺς εἰς τὴν νῦν πόλιν οὖσαν
    ξυνῴκισε πάντας καὶ ἠνάγκασε
    μιᾷ πόλει ταύτῃ χρῆσθαι.—THUCYDIDES.


                                   I.

    ’Tis the eighth of Pyanepsion,
      The vintage-time is o’er,
    And the Attic crowds are thronging
      To the bright Phalerian shore.
    From the shrine of Dionysus,
      In the city, forth they fare,
    And wave the green vine-branches
      In the breezy morning air.
    Old men, and maids, and matrons,
      From household labour free,
    And working men, red-bonneted,
      And boys with noisy glee.
    The noble and the ploughman,
      The freeman and the slave,
    In festal march commingling,
      The viny branches wave.
    And ever, as they march along,
      They raise their blithe halloo,
    And shout the name of Theseus,
      With Ἰοῦ ἰοῦ ἰοῦ.
    “O son of Ægeus, fetched at last,
      Across the briny foam,
    We welcome thee, again to see
      Thy long-lost Attic home!”
    And some with godlike Theseus’ name
      The gallant Cimon join,
    Who brought the bones of Ægeus’ son
      Across the foamy brine:
    “O Cimon, gallant Cimon,
      Thou o’er the watery track
    From the wild men of Scyros
      Didst win our hero back!”
    And thus they sing, and thus they march,
      And like a stream they pour,
    Until with swelling bands they come
      To the bright Phalerian shore.


                                  II.

    Lift up thine eyes, and know them,
      In festal broad display,
    The Attic tribes all camped around
      The bright Phalerian bay.
    I see the well-bronzed mountaineers,
      The stout Acharnian blades,
    Who hew the tree, and char the wood
      In Parnes’ piny glades;
    The men who watch on Phyle,
      Proud neighbours of the sky,
    And look o’er all the Attic plain
      From rocky fortress high;


    Who dwell on Corydallus,
      To Theseus’ memory true,
    For there the grim Procrustes
      That godlike hero slew;
    The sailors of Piraeus,
      Where rests on rocky pillow
    Lord of the seas, Themistocles,
      Beside the briny billow;
    From verdant Cerameicus,
      Where sacred olives grow,
    And sculptured stones and cypress-trees
      The sleeping heroes show;
    The youths of the Lyceum,
      With light-heeled step elastic,
    To every manly posture trained
      By noble art gymnastic;
    The men of white Colonus,
      Where the awful Furies reign,
    And Poseidon horse careering shows
      The mace that rules the main.
    The people of Eleusis,
      Where the mystic goddess dwells;
    The Rharian plain and Rheti,
      Where the briny fountain wells.
    The men of Marathon I see,
      Brave men with welcome harsh,
    Who met the Mede, and him with speed
      Drave through the blood-stained marsh
    Back to the fretful sea. With them
      The men of Rhamnus stand,
    Who, from the rock of Nemesis look
      On the peaked Eubœan land;
    Then Brauron’s priestly choir, whose hands
      Have holy service done
    To Dian’s idol bravely filched
      By Agamemnon’s son
    From Tauris’ scowling shores; then they
      From Laurium’s rocky store
    Who win from the harsh-grained mountain’s bowels
      The pliant silver ore.
    And on the extreme beach I see
      The men of the Sunian strand,
    From the high-perched shrine of the maid divine,
      With the strong spear-shaking hand
    Who welcomes the storm-vext sailor back
      To his dear-loved Attic land.
    Oh, fair to see on the storied ground
      Is the festive pomp to-day
    Of the Attic tribes all camped around
      The bright Phalerian bay!


                                  III.

    Ἰοῦ, ἰοῦ along the shore,
      Ἰοῦ among the hills,
    Ἰοῦ, ἰοῦ the billowy blue
      Of the bright Phalerum fills!
    Ἰοῦ, Ἰοῦ the gay trireme
      Of the gallant Cimon nears;
    The pennons glitter in the sun,
      The lusty seaman cheers.
    And now they hale the ships ashore;
      Now on the mole they stand,
    The captains, and the admiral
      Who holds the high command.
    “Jove bless thee, gallant Cimon!”
      For thus they sing and say;
    “Thou bring’st the bones of Theseus
      To Theseus’ home to-day.
    Thou tall and handsome Cimon,
      Brave, generous, and gay;
    The gods do for thee even more
      Than thou for us this day!”
    A fair and noble convoy
      Now on the shore behold
    Around the bier of Theseus,
      That kingly hero old:
    The high priest of Eleusis,
      With purple tunic dight,
    And round his brow a fillet bound
      Of pure and spotless white;
    The archon king, with myrtle bound,
      The archon of the year,
    The polemarch and thesmothetes,
      Around great Theseus’ bier;
    The pilots of the public weal,
      Free counsellors of the Free,
    That watch the spark o’ the sleepless fire,
      And frame the wise decree;
    The judges of the hill of Mars
      With reverend pomp are there,
    That by the awful Furies’ shrine
      The doom of blood declare.
    Then all the mingled people,
      The freeman and the slave,
    Around the bier of Theseus
      Their viny branches wave,
    Old men, and maids, and matrons,
      From household labour free,
    And working men, red-bonneted,
      And boys with noisy glee.
    And then in banded ranks they form,
      And in festive lines they go,
    To the city of Athena,
      Where the sacred olives grow;
    And ever as they wind along,
      With measured pomp decorous,
    From rank to rank well varied swells
      The mellow-throated chorus.


                          CHORUS OF YOUNG MEN.


                                   1.

    The son of old Ægeus was valiant and brave!
      From the near Trœzenian strand
    He scorned to return o’er the smooth-flowing wave,
      To his home in the dear Attic land;
    But over the mountains craggy and high,
    Where the wild winds rave, and the dark clouds fly.
    Where the fierce-hearted chief of the plundering clan
    Lies in wait for the life of the wayfaring man:
        There, there, and only there,
        Would godlike Theseus go.


                                   2.

    Where leech Æsculapius brooks his skill
      In the famed Epidaurian land,
    Stood huge Periphetes, grim lord of the hill,
      With a brazen club in his hand.
    Him where the pass with his bulk he bestrode,
    Strong Theseus laid stark all his length on the road;
    And his big brazen club for a trophy he bore,
    As the hide of the lion strong Hercules wore:
        There, there, breathless there,
        He laid the monster low.


                                   3.

    Hear Corinth, that looks east and west to the sea,
      Lived Sinis, the godless offender,
    Who tore the stout limbs that were tied to the tree
      By the strength of the savage pine-bender.
    Him Theseus grasps, and his huge limbs he joins
    With cords to a brace of well-bended pines;
    Then, freed with a jerk, the trees fly to heaven,
    And limb from limb is asunder riven:
        There, there, the birds in the air
        His quivering body tore.


                                   4.

    In Megaris Sciron kept his lair,
      On the rocks beside the sea;
    No harmless wayfarer did Sciron spare
      On the rocks beside the sea.
    “Come wash my feet, good stranger mine!”
    And he kicked him into the billowy brine.
    Mercy shall none to the merciless be.
    Over the cliff and into the sea,
        Theseus flung his huge hulk there,
        To bleach on the stony shore!


                                   5.

    Beneath Corydallus Procrustes dwelt,
      The life of the lawless he led;
    His torturing force the traveller felt,
      Being racked on an iron bed.
    Beneath Corydallus, in the hollow,
    Theseus prayed to the archer Apollo;
    Then gashed his brow with a blow unsightly,
    And lopped his legs, and stretched him tightly:
        “There, there, sleep on the lair
        Which thine own blood made gory!”


                                   6.

    The son of old Ægeus was valiant and brave;
      The sons of Pallas were banded,
    Fifty foes with glittering glaive,
      But he smote them single-handed.
    Over the brow of the flowery Hymettus,
    Through the midland, by blooming Gargettus,
    Circling they came with a bristling array,
    As hunters the stag when he stands at bay;
        But there, there, he smote them there,
        And his name shall be famous in story.


                        CHORUS OF YOUNG MAIDENS.


                                   1.

    Didst thou hear the voice of woe,
      Cries of woe and wailing,
    Lifted hands and tearful flow
      O’er the land prevailing?
    ’Tis come! ’tis come! the year that shames
      The humbled Attic nation;
    ’Tis come! the black, black hour that claims
      The monstrous immolation.
    Seven sires must send their sons,
      And seven dames their daughters,
    The ripest and the loveliest ones,
      Across the Cretan waters.
    Minos there, who lords the deep,
      With fate shall overpower them,
    And in his darksome-winding keep
      The Minotaur devour them.
    Woe! woe! the year of blood!
      The day of desolation!
    When sorrow streameth like a flood
      O’er all the Attic nation!


                                   2.

    The lot, the lot, the bloody lot!
      But why this dinsome cheering?
    ’Tis he! ’tis he! Greek mothers, see
      The kingly youth appearing!
    The noble Theseus! he hath heard
      What blameful words do gather
    Among the people blindly stirred
      Against his grey-haired father;
    And he hath thought a kingly thing:
      To stay the rude commotion
    Himself before the Fate will fling
      Himself with high devotion.
    His blood the king’s own son shall pour,
      And share his people’s slaughter,
    Or he will slay the Minotaur
      Across the Cretan water.
    Bless thee! bless thee! noble youth!
      The gods shall help thy daring;
    Return again, in thy white train
      The bright redemption bearing!


                                   3.

    The summer’s sultry heat is gone,
      The fresh sea-breeze is blowing;
    ’Tis the feast of Pyanepsion,
      And the sweet new wine is glowing.
    A cheer—a cheer across the main!
      A shout comes from the billow!
    Theseus, Theseus comes again;
      Shake sorrow from your pillow!
    No more, ye fathers, mourn your sons!
      Mothers, weep not your daughters!
    He brings you back your dear-loved ones
      Across the Cretan waters.
    From the trunk with trenchant glaive
      The monster’s head he severed,
    The mazes of the darksome cave
      With prudent clue recovered.
    Welcome to thy country’s shore,
      Thou king’s son girt with glory;
    And live in song for evermore
      The pride of Attic story!


                           CHORUS OF OLD MEN.


                                   1.

        Wise was the man, most wise,
    Who first with cunning-thoughted phrase declared
        That earth and glowing skies
    Were by the might of primal Jove prepared.
        Jove, first of gods, arose
    From the chaotic sluggish Night inform;
        And lo! the dense dark glows
    Forthwith, as the strong sunshine breaks the storm.
        By Jove the starry spheres
    Were fired; by Jove the bright-eyed flowers peeped forth,
        And all the pomp appears
    Of various-pulsing life that treads the jocund earth.


                                   2.

        This Theseus knew; and when
    His ordering eye scanned the tumultuous life
        Of the old Attic men,
    By love’s strong bond he quelled the unholy strife.
        The ploughman of the plain,
    The mountain shepherd, and rough seaman flock
        To own the social rein
    Swayed by his hand from the Cecropian rock.
        No more doth glen with glen
    Hold feud; the soil reeks not with kindred slaughter;
        And all the Attic men
    Love the Athenian maid, great Jove’s strong-hearted daughter.


                         CHORUS OF POOR PEOPLE.


                                   1.

    Oh, hard is the poor man’s lot on earth!
      The rich man like a god
    Rides through the sky, careering high;
      The poor man cleaves the clod.
    Bent o’er the clay from day to day,
      He is grey before his prime;
    And with aching bones beneath the stones
      He is laid before his time.


                                   2.

    The rich man is lord of the heathy hills;
      He is king of the grassy plains,
    Without a thought his chest he fills,
      And counts his careless gains.
    The poor for him sore burdens bear,
      And in dark mines they burrow;
    But he hath more care for a stag or a hare,
      Than for all the poor man’s sorrow.


                                   3.

    But Theseus was the poor man’s friend,
      He felt their sore disaster,
    He taught the proud man’s will to bend;
      The strong man found a master.
    And equal law from him they sought,
      The great and eke the small;
    The noble for his faction fought,
      The monarch stood for all.


                                   4.

    Oh, hard is the poor man’s lot on earth!
      But when the just man reigns,
    A cheerful blaze shines from his hearth
      That lightens all his pains.
    O saviour Jove! to earth still send
      —This hope from thee we borrow—
    Some champion bold, like Theseus old,
      To heal the poor man’s sorrow.


                                  IV.

    And thus they sang, and thus they marched,
      Till they reached Ilissus’ water,
    And to the god-loved city came
      Of Jove’s spear-shaking daughter.
    Beneath the awful hill of Mars,
      Where blood for blood atones,
    A gently swelling knoll receives
      The godlike hero’s bones.
    And round the bier the people throng
      With reverent circling ring,
    And in the middle with myrtle bound,
      High stood the archon king;
    And beside him stood a milk-white bull,
      That never had known the yoke,
    And waited now with patient neck,
      The sacrificing stroke.
    Then, with a heaven-directed gaze,
      And hands uplifted high,
    The high priest of Eleusis prayed
      To Jove that rules the sky:
    “O mighty Jove! who sway’st above,
      As kings are strong below,
    To him that ruled our Attic land
      From thee shall honour flow.
    The bull we slay, the stone we lay
      To Ægeus’ son divine,
    But vain the toil unless thy smile
      May bless the rising shrine!”
    He spoke, and straight with patient neck
      The bull received the stroke;
    With gilded horn it smote the ground,
      And thus the high priest spoke:
    “As humbled low beneath the blow
      The huge bull quivering falls,
    So smite thou him, great Jove, whose hand
      Shall harm these rising walls!”
    Then came the master-builder wise
      The corner-stone to lay,
    And thus before the listening crowd
      With solemn voice doth say:
    “This stable-pillared shrine secure
      While Athens stands shall stand,
    And the frequent oar shall beat the shore
      Of the godlike Attic land!”
    And while the corner-stone he lays
      With weighty pomp decorous,
    Upswells the crowning hymn of praise
      From the mellow-throated chorus.


                       CHORUS OF ALL THE PEOPLE.


                                   1.

    Famous is Thebes, by thy birth made immortal,
      Son of Alcmena, whose bravery won
    A place with the gods when Olympus’ wide portal
      Flew open to welcome Jove’s club-bearing son.
    He griped the fierce lion with arm strong and pliant;
    The oxen he stole from the three-bodied giant,
      Where the sun has his westering bed;
    The snake hundred-headed to death he devoted,
    From Hades he dragged the grim hound triple-throated,
      Whose bark splits the realm of the dead.
        Through labours enorm
        His conquering form
    Pressed on with unsleeping endeavour,
        Till wrapt in pure flame
        He rose without blame
    To the throne of his father for ever.


                                   2.

    Son of Alcmena, thy brother in danger
      Was Theseus, the pride of the old Attic land:
    Nor he to thine honour might long be a stranger;
      Jove claimed him to swell the Olympian band.
    The mountain centaurs, the shaggy assaulters
    Of women he tamed: and from Attica’s altars
      He drave the fierce Amazons far.
    His arm still was raised for the poor and unfriended,
    The reign of rude force by his strong will was ended,
      And law was the watchword of war.
        And now at the board
        Where Jove is the lord
    He sits with the son of Alcmena;
        And looks from the sky
        With a joy-beaming eye
    On the temple and town of Athena.




                     THE FEAST OF PALLAS ATHENA.[9]


    Παλλάδος ἐν πόλει
    τᾶς καλλιδίϕρου τ’ Ἀθαναίας
        ἐν κροκέῳ πέπλῳ
    ζεύξομαι ἅρματι πώλους,
        ἐν δαιδαλέαισι
    ποικίλλουσ’ ἀνθοκρόκοισι πήναις,
        ἢ Τιτάνων γενεὰν,
        τὰν Ζεὺς ἀμϕιπύρῳ
    κοιμίζει ϕλογμῷ Kρονίδας;—EURIPIDES.

    “Praise to Pallas, virgin Pallas, Jove-born Pallas, praise to thee!
    Thou dost crown with grace the worthy, thou dost gird with strength
      the free!
    Mighty Jove unmothered bore thee; when the Highest throbbed with pain
    Thou didst leap, an armèd maiden, perfect from his procreant brain.
    From the strongest strong thou camest, from the wisest god most wise,
    Piercing through each cloudiest error with thy clear cerulean eyes.
    Thou dost wield the Thunderer’s thunder with thy strong-compelling
      spear;
    Where thou lookest stands the opposer powerless with the palsied fear;
    Where thy father’s shield thou shakest, fringed with snakes, what man
      may bear
    All their bristling terror, who the trunkless Gorgon’s stony glare?
    Where with firm-set foot thou marchest, lawless-swelling murmurs
      cease;
    Rebel thousands fall before thee, where by war thou pavest peace;
    Jove alone in high Olympus, maid divine, is like to thee;
    Thou dost crown with grace the worthy, thou dost gird with strength
      the free.”
    Thus the city rings with praises, rock to plain gives back the glee,
    For the great feast of Athena Athens rings with revelry.
    Nobly have the games been ordered, nobly were the vases won;
    With a wreath of sacred olive Athens twines each conquering son;
    Nobly have the swift torch-bearers in long lines a nimble band,
    Like swift light upon the waters, winged the torch from hand to hand;
    Nobly with their fervid wheels the rattling chariots turned the goal,
    While in billows multitudinous far the rival plaudits roll;
    Nobly have the stout athletes displayed the breadth of manly form,
    In the strife of graceful mastery brandished well the brawny arm;
    Nobly the clear-throated singer taught the stable-banded chorus
    How to swell the notes of triumph, how to lift the wail sonorous:
    And thy song, Aristogeiton, and Harmodius’ patriot lay,
    While their swords they wreathe with myrtle, thrills each freeman’s
      heart to-day.
    How the last, the greatest honour of this pomp of many days,
    Fills each eye with bright amazement, fills each heart with forward
      praise.
    Lo! it comes the fair procession: see, where flaunting in the gale,
    From the sacred ship of Pallas floats the golden-broidered sail!
    ’Tis the stole of chaste Athena sporting in the breezy air;
    Modest maids with pious labour wove the gown that she shall wear;
    Who is near may see the cunning of those fingers fine that wove,
    On that sacred stole, the combat of the godless crew who strove
    ’Gainst the immortals. Warlike Pallas stood at the right hand of Jove,
    Firm with reasoned calm resistance ’gainst the Titans blindly
      blustering.
    On they come portentous-roaring, all their gusty legions mustering,
    Breathing fire, and belching smoke, and shaking Earth with fits of
      fear,
    Where their serpent-feet huge-twining, where their hundred hands
      appear.
    Thrice from their rocky sockets firm the stiff and far-fanged roots
      they tore
    Of the trees that huge Olympus on his shaggy bosom bore;
    Thrice was Ossa piled on Pelion; and the monstered height uphove,
    On its top, the rebel brood who dared defy the might of Jove.
    With her father’s thunder, Pallas, and with lightning’s scorching
      flare,
    Hurled them thrice in fall precipitous through the dark-convolvèd air;
    And in senseless rout confounded through the yawning gates of hell,
    Stiff with stony stupefaction from the blue-eyed maid they fell.
    ’Neath the ocean’s root she bound them, by fair Sicily’s smoking
      shore,
    There to sleep an aching sleep, with feverish dreams for evermore,—
    Dreams that tell by pillared flame, reeking earth, and seething water,
    Vain, how vain is witless force against great Jove’s high-counselled
      daughter.
    Such the story of the stole the gentle-handed maidens wove,
    To adorn thine ancient image mighty seed of mighty Jove;
    And in triumph now they bear it, and to pave the festal way
    Wisely marshalled bands attendant march in beautiful array.
    From the highlands, from the lowlands, from steep Sunium’s sounding
      waves,
    Came to join the pious convoy all the lovely, all the brave:
    Ancient elders hoary-bearded in the solemn van we see,
    Bearing high the wavy branches of the sacred olive-tree;
    Aged women with them banded; well beseems the old to bear
    Peaceful signs, with peaceful words to tame hot hands that rashly
      dare.
    Them the graceful riders follow, firm-set men that scour the field,
    With the spear the brazen-pointed, with the hollow-rounded shield.
    Then the matrons, decent-vested, faithful to their husbands’ bed,
    And the stranger women bearing water-pitchers on their head.
    Next the young men crowned with millet, march with light and gladsome
      foot,
    Singing praises to the goddess with the players of the flute,
    And the noble-blooded maidens of Cecropia’s purest race,
    Bearing baskets nicely stored with tools for use of holy place.
    Marshalled thus, and trimly banded with sedately measured speed,
    From the Ceramicus wending they the long procession lead,
    By the shrine of boon Demeter, by the old Pelasgic wall,
    By the place where Pythian Phœbus rears his lofty pillared hall,
    By the Pnyx, the people’s platform, whence the word electric speeds,
    Word that fires the patriot’s heart, and nerves his arm to manly
      deeds.
    Thence with gradual sweep ascending to Erectheus’ rocky home,
    To the shrine of high-perched Pallas, with their jubilant troops they
      come;
    Then before the sacred doorstead, when the last had reached the goal,
    They unfurl the floating glory of the rich and saffron stole.
    To the inmost cell they bring it, where the sacred image lies,
    On a couch with flowers bestrewn, of Pallas, with cerulean eyes;
    And selectest hands invest her with the robe which virgins wove
    For the maid that keeps the city, daughter of immortal Jove—
    While within the pictured porch, and round the far-drawn colonnade,
    Thus the sacred hymn was sounded to Cecropia’s blue-eyed maid:

    “Praise to Pallas, virgin Pallas, Jove-born Pallas, praise to thee!
    Thou hast crowned with gold the worthy, thou has girt with strength
      the free;
    Not like Mars in blood delighting, blind, impetuous, warreth she,
    Lashing wild the waves of battle like the tempest-fretted sea;
    But with clear and calm decision, and with holy-glowing heart,
    She to shield the peaceful labourer, whirls the spear and wings the
      dart;
    From the rock with old Erectheus where sublime the virgin dwells,
    Bight and law and stable order she with gracious force compels.
    When the gods in consultation sate to fix the doubtful claim
    If Athena or Poseidon should be sponsor to its fame,
    With his three-pronged mace the sea-god proudly struck the pregnant
      ground,
    And with sounding hoof four-footed forth the generous steed did bound.
    Like Poseidon’s waves mane-tossing it did spurn the Attic clay,
    High its strength-clad neck uprearing, proudly snorting for the fray.
    Laughed the gods with loud approval; but with look serene and clear
    Smote the rock Jove’s blue-eyed daughter with her fine celestial
      spear;
    And in green and graceful beauty rose the gentle olive-tree.
    Jeered the gods; but Jove the wisest gave the peaceful palm to thee.
    Wield who will the imperious sceptre, hold the tribes of earth in awe,
    By the sword that knows no mercy, by the conqueror’s ruthless law,
    Athens, thine a nobler triumph; to be wise and to be free,
    And to star thy track with science, this thy Pallas gave to thee.
    Every art that peace can cherish she hath marked out in her plan,
    By thy ministry to smooth each rough and savage-minded man.
    With the axe and with the chisel, with the needle pointed fine,
    She hath made each firmest fabric, every nicest texture thine.
    She to rib the stoutly-timbered, stable-masted ship hath taught thee,
    And with wings of flaxen tissue spread to willing winds hath brought
      thee
    Gainful to the wealth-producing harbours of the foodful earth.
    In the earthly breast she planted lofty thoughts of heavenly birth;
    She for use of holy worship shapely stones on stones hath laid,
    Piled the pillared porch, and gently curved the sweeping colonnade.
    She hath taught the curious limner how to trace with breathing lines
    Every limber form that moveth, every shifting hue that shines;
    Taught the cunning-handed sculptor how the cold stone to inspire
    With pure thought’s calm brooding sweetness, with the glow of deep
      desire.
    Wisdom she gave to the poet; though the brightest fancies flit,
    Pointless falls the numerous strophe, where wise Pallas lends not wit.
    Praise to Pallas, virgin Pallas, mighty Jove’s thrice-mighty daughter!
    She hath writ her nation’s record not in lines of crimson slaughter.
    She will make her people teachers of the wise in many lands,
    And their tongue shall ring sonorous where the thinker’s watch-tower
      stands;
    And from age to age unending, and from rolling sea to sea,
    Whoso names wise Athen’s sages, wise Athena, nameth thee!”




                             ÆSCHYLUS.[10]


ἔϕη δὲ Αἰσχύλος µειράκιον ὢν καθεύδειν ἐν ἀγρῷ ϕυλάσσων σταϕυλὰς, καὶ οἱ
Διόνυσον ἐπιστάντα κελεῦσαι τραγωδίαν ποιεῖν ὡς δὲ ἦν ἡμέρα (πείθεσθαι
γὰρ ἐθέλειν) ῥᾷστα ἤδη πειρώμενος ποιεῖν.—PAUSANIAS.

    Near Elensis’ holy city,
    By the sacred-winding way,
    Where the pomp was yearly marshalled
    On Demeter’s festal day,
    Sate a youth, the vineyard watching,
    ’Neath the moony welkin fair,
    ’Mid the rich and leafy greenness,
    Gazing mutely through the air;
    Sate and mused, high-vaulting fancies
    Taming with devoutest fear;
    Mingling thoughts of far adventure
    With the peaceful goddess near.
    While pure Phœbe high was wheeling,
    Thus his lonely watch he kept,
    O’er each dim conception brooding,
    Till the musing watchman slept.
    Through his soft sleep’s dreamy rapture,
    Festive notes in tinkling war
    Thrilled his ear; his eye bright Bromius
    High-borne in a tiger-car,
    Smote with wonder. Soft-limbed beauty
    Shone in him divinely fair,
    Swam his eye in wavy gambol,
    Floated free his sun-bright hair;
    Crimson-mantled health, not faintly,
    O’er his rounded cheeks was spread,
    Coolest ivy bound his temples,
    Horns of strength rayed from his head.
    Thus the blooming vine-god beauteous
    Lighted on the grassy sod,
    And, with keen-felt presence glowingly,
    To the mortal spake the god:
    “Son of Euphorion, from Olympus
    Sent, I come with haste to thee
    Not unworthy; thou my singer
    And Apollo’s bard shalt be.
    I thy thoughts have known the deepest,
    The strong love that stirs thy soul;
    Thou shalt run, divinely strengthened,
    To the glory-glittering goal.
    Where the stable-banded chorus
    Voices Dionysus’ praise,
    Thou shalt lead their songs in triumph,
    Through the curious-measured maze.
    From the cloudy dim tradition
    Thou shalt call the heroes old;
    To thy great conception imaged,
    Kings and gods thine art shall mould.
    From old Homer’s banquet nicely
    Thou shalt cull the various feast;
    And the king of men from Hades’
    All-embracing hold released,
    At thy call shall march to Argos,
    At thy word retrace his path
    Back to where false Clytemnestra
    Stabs him in the treacherous hath.
    Thou the son shalt arm with vengeance,
    Till the blood-stained mother die;
    At thy call the hell-hounds furious,
    With a sense-confounding cry,
    Shall pursue the mother-murderer,
    O’er the land and o’er the sea,
    Wan and weary, worn and wasted,
    Till a god shall speak him free.
    To the old Cadmean fortress,
    Breathing breath of haughty war,
    Thou shalt guide the host white-shielded,
    In the dust-enveloped car.
    Thou the haughty-hearted Titan,
    That with bitter words did rail
    ’Gainst the thunderer, to the storm-swept,
    Ice-ribbed, snow-capt crag shalt nail.”
    Thus with words of lofty promise,
    To the mortal spake the god;
    Thrilled him with his keen-felt presence,
    Touched him with his pine-tipt rod,
    And waked the dreamer. He, upstarting
    From his sweet entrancement, saw
    In thin air the god evanishing,
    And he worshipped him with awe.
    And he vowed to be his singer,
    And he sang full many a lay,
    With religious power deep-throated,
    From that consecrating day.
    And he kept the trust committed
    To his ward with reverent care,
    Voicing fearless inspiration,
    That men felt a god was there;
    Till, with ivy crowned victorious,
    He was hailed by Attic throngs:
    Time their high approval glorious
    Through far-sounding halls prolongs.




                               MARATHON.


   Λειμῶνα τόν ἐρόεντα Μαραθῶνος.—ARISTOPHANES.


                                   I.

    From Pentelicus’ pine-clad height[11]
      A voice of warning came,
    That shook the silent autumn night
      With fear to Media’s name.
    Pan from his Marathonian cave[12]
      Sent screams of midnight terror,
    And darkling horror curled the wave
      On the broad sea’s moonlit mirror.
          Woe, Persia, woe! thou liest low, low!
            Let the golden palaces groan!
          Ye mothers weep for sons that shall sleep
            In gore on Marathon!


                                  II.

    Where Indus and Hydaspes roll,
      Where treeless deserts glow,
    Where Scythians roam beneath the pole,
      O’er fields of hardened snow,
    The great Darius rules; and now,
      Thou little Greece, to thee
    He comes; thou thin-soiled Athens, how
      Shalt thou dare to be free?
          There is a God that wields the rod
            Above: by Him alone
          The Greek shall be free, when the Mede shall flee
            In shame from Marathon.


                                  III.

    He comes; and o’er the bright Ægean,
      Where his masted army came,
    The subject-isles uplift the pæan
      Of glory to his name.
    Strong Naxos, strong Eretria yield;
      His captains near the shore
    Of Marathon’s fair and fateful field,
      Where a tyrant marched before.[13]
          And a traitor guide, the sea beside,
            Now marks the land for his own,
          Where the marshes red shall soon be the bed
            Of the Mede in Marathon.


                                  IV.

    Who shall number the host of the Mede?
      Their high-tiered galleys ride,
    Like locust-bands with darkening speed,
      Across the groaning tide.
    Who shall tell the many-hoofed tramp
      That shakes the dusty plain?
    Where the pride of his horse is the strength of his camp,
      Shall the Mede forget to gain?
    Oh fair is the pride of those turms as they ride,
      To the eye of the morning shown!
    But a god in the sky hath doomed them to lie
      In dust, on Marathon.


                                   V.

    Dauntless beside the sounding sea
      The Athenian men reveal
    Their steady strength. That they are free
      They know; and inly feel
    Their high election, on that day,
      In foremost fight to stand,
    And dash the enslaving yoke away,
      From all the Grecian land.
          Their praise shall sound the world around,
            Who shook the Persian throne,
          When the shout of the free travelled over the sea,
            From famous Marathon.


                                  VI.

    From dark Cithæron’s sacred slope,
      The small Platæan band
    Bring hearts, that swell with patriot hope,
      To wield a common brand
    With Theseus’ sons, at danger’s gates;
      While spell-bound Sparta stands,
    And for the pale moon’s changes waits
      With stiff unkindly hands;
          And hath no share in the glory rare,
            That Athens shall make her own,
          When the long-haired Mede with fearful speed
            Falls back from Marathon.


                                  VII.

    “On, sons of the Greeks!” the war-cry rolls;
      “The land that gave you birth,
    Your wives, and all the dearest souls
      That circle round each hearth;
    The shrines upon a thousand hills,
      The memory of your sires,
    Nerve now with brass your resolute wills,
      And fan your valorous fires!”
          And on like a wave came the rush of the brave—
            “Ye sons of the Greeks, on, on!”
          And the Mode stept back from the eager attack
            Of the Greek, in Marathon.


                                 VIII.

    Hear’st thou the rattling of spears on the right?
      Seest thou the gleam in the sky?
    The gods come to aid the Greeks in the fight,
      And the favouring heroes are nigh.
    The lion’s hide I see in the sky,
      And the knotted club so fell,
    And kingly Theseus’ conquering eye,
      And Macaria, nymph of the well.[14]
    Purely, purely the fount did flow,
      When the morn’s first radiance shone;
    But eve shall know the crimson flow
      Of its wave, by Marathon.


                                  IX.

    On, son of Cimon, bravely on!
      And Aristides just!
    Your names have made the field your own,
      Your foes are in the dust!
    The Lydian satrap spurs his steed,
      The Persian’s bow is broken;
    His purple pales; the vanquished Mode
      Beholds the angry token
          Of thundering Jove who rules above;
            And the bubbling marshes moan[15]
          With the trampled dead that have found their bed
            In gore, at Marathon.


                                   X.

    The ships have sailed from Marathon,
      On swift disaster’s wings;
    And an evil dream hath fetched a groan
      From the heart of the king of kings.
    An eagle he saw, in the shades of night,
      With a dove that bloodily strove;
    And the weak hath vanquished the strong in fight,
      The eagle hath fled from the dove.[16]
          Great Jove, that reigns in the starry plains,
            To the heart of the king hath shown,
          That the boastful parade of his pride was laid
            In dust, at Marathon.


                                  XI.

    But through Pentelicus’ winding vales
      The hymn triumphal runs,
    And high-shrined Athens proudly hails
      Her free-returning sons.
    And Pallas, from her ancient rock,
      With her shield’s refulgent round,
    Blazes; her frequent worshippers flock,
      And high the pæans sound,
          How in deathless glory the famous story
            Shall on the winds he blown,
          That the long-haired Mede was driven with speed
            By the Greeks, from Marathon.


                                  XII.

    And Greece shall be a hallowed name,
      While the sun shall climb the pole,
    And Marathon fan strong freedom’s flame
      In many a pilgrim soul.
    And o’er that mound where heroes sleep,[17]
      By the waste and reedy shore,
    Full many a patriot eye shall weep,
      Till Time shall be no more.
    And the bard shall brim with a holier hymn,
      When he stands by that mound alone,
    And feel no shrine on earth more divine
      Than the dust of Marathon.




                              SALAMIS.[18]


    Ὦ κλεινὰ Σαλαμὶς σὺ µέν που ναίεις ἁλίπλαγκτος, εὐδαίμων πᾶσιν
    περίϕαντος ἀεί.—SOPHOCLES.

    Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne,
    With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone,
    Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side,
    Scans with masted armies studded far the fair Saronic tide?
    Looks he not with high hope beaming? looks he not with pride elate?
    Seems he not a god, the Thunderer? and his words are winged with fate.
    He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris’ rushing tide,
    To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan’s pride:
    He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar,
    From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of motley war;
    From the land, and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan,
    That the air is choked with banners, which great Xerxes calls his own.
    Soothly he hath nobly ridden, o’er the fair fields, o’er the waste,
    As the Earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste;
    He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling main,
    He hath lashed the flood of Helle, bound the billow with a chain;
    And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry,
    From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry;
    And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail;
    And the mountain-girt Æmonia spreads the many-watered vale;
    And her troops of famous horse, before the puissant Persian’s nod,
    Flee; the death-defying Spartans prostrate lie beneath his rod,
    Where with fleshy breast they walled thy famous pass, Thermopylæ.
    And the god that shakes Cithæron feared to block his forceful way;
    And the blue-eyed maid of Athens shook not then her heavenly spear,
    Rock-perched Pallas, when the tread of the high-clambering foe was
      near;
    And the sacred snake, huge-twining guardian of the virgin shrine,
    Where the honeyed cake was waiting, tasted not the food divine;
    Stood nor man nor god before him; he hath scoured the Attic land,
    Chased the valiant sons of Athens to a barren island’s strand;
    He hath hedged them round with triremes, lines on lines of bristling
      war;
    He hath doomed the prey for capture; he hath spread his meshes far;
    And he sits sublimely seated on a throne with pride elate,
    To behold the victim fall beneath the sudden-swooping Fate.

    Who may stand against his might?—with thy thin slip of rocky coast,
    Athens, wilt thou tell thy fifties ’gainst the thousands of his host?
    All the might of all the Orient, from the Ganges-watered Ind
    To the isles that fringe the Ægean, ’gainst thy little state combined;
    Turbaned Persians, with gay panoply from the gold of distant mines,
    Host immortal with their wives, and troops of spangled concubines;
    Mitred Cissians, high-capped Sacae, and the Assyrian brazen-crested;
    The high-booted Paphlagonian; the swart Indian cotton-vested;
    Shaggy warriors, goatskin-mantled, from the dreary Caspian strand,
    And the camel-mounted riders from the incense-bearing land,
    Thracians fierce, with shouts Bacchantic, and more savage war-halloo;
    Sacred Tmolus’ sons, and Lydia’s soft and silken-vested crew;
    And the sons of hoariest Thebes, and sacerdotal Memphis, where
    Gods, in brutish incarnation, bellow through the sacred air;
    And the sun-scorched, painted Ethiop, with his huge-spanned bow of
      war,
    And the woolly-headed Libyan, driving swift the scythèd car;
    And the boatmen of the lowland, that, with frequent-heating oar,
    Plough the pools where floats the lotus, by the fat Nile’s peopled
      shore:
    Such a crew he drives against thee. ’Neath the dusky-vested blight,
    He hath ranged them to entrap thee.

                      Now behold the glorious light,
    Beaming broadly from the chariot of the silver-steeded day,
    Shows revealed the triple barrier of his ships in close array,
    Girdling in the coast of Ajax. Yet no wavering fear is there;
    Firmly stands the line of Athens.

                Hark! their loud shouts split the air.
    Not the expected note of terror, not the wild cry of despair;
    Foolish Xerxes! ’tis the exultant power that swells strong manhood’s
      breast;
    ’Tis the broadly-billowed pæan from the freemen of the West.

    “Sons of the Greeks! now save your country! save your wives and
      children dear!
    Save the sepulchres of your fathers! save the shrines of gods that
      hear
    When the patriot prays! This day makes us free or slaves for ever!”
    On they sail, with steady helming, sworn to die or to deliver.
    Now they meet. Now beak on beak is furious dashed; and Sidon old
    Drives her brazen-breasted triremes ’gainst the ships of Athens bold.
    A moment equal; but the Athenian, in the desperate-handed strife,
    Wields, as patriots well may wield, a surer sword and sharper knife.
    On he presses—close and closer; cloven booms and shattered sails,
    And the frequent-crashing oarage, mark the track where he prevails.
    Ocean seethes beneath his fury; and the hostile-fretted flood
    Yawns to drink the reeling Tyrian, and the floundering Cyprian’s
      blood.
    Sobs the wave with drowned and drowning: where the narrow channels
      flow,
    Vain the strife with death two-handed, here the water, there the foe.
    Ship on ship is rudely clashed; for in the narrow strait confined,
    Room is none to use their numbers; and, with strivings vain and blind,
    Where they move they clog the movements of the friend they hoped to
      aid,
    Where they fight they help the battle of the foe they should have
      stayed.
    Vainly, with her Carian triremes, o’er the terror-tangled scene
    Artemisia rides the battle like an Amazonian queen;
    All is reasonless confusion. O’er the purple-streaming tide,
    Helmless ships and shipless pilots struggle with the billows’ pride
    Vainly—for the west wind rising with harsh wing and savage roar
    Drives the foundered and the drowning countless on the Colian shore.
    And to crown such wreck and carnage, when the hottest fight was o’er,
    Rode the Athenian galleys proudly to a rocky islet’s shore,
    Near to Salamis—there the king, to top the sure-deemed victory,
    Susa’s chiefest bloom had stationed; and in waiting there they lie
    To help their conquering friends, and swell the hoped-for triumph.
      Them the foe
    Circle round with bristling beaks, and, where the billowy waters flow,
    Blast them with the arrowy tempest, crush them with the huge-heaved
      rock,
    Mow them down in rows defenceless, like the butchered bleating flock.
    From his throne the monarch sees it, heap on heap of helpless
      slaughter,
    With the life of Persia crimsoned far the fair Saronic water.
    Bend thy robes, thou foolish Xerxes, rend the air with piteous cries!
    On the rocky coast of Hellas gashed the pride of Persia lies!

    Wake thee! wake thee! blinded Xerxes! God hath found thee out at last;
    Snaps thy pride beneath His judgment, as the tree beneath the blast.
    Haste thee! haste thee! speed thy couriers—Persian couriers travel
      lightly—
    To declare thy stranded navy, and by cruel death unsightly
    Dimmed thy glory. Hie thee! hie thee! hence e’en by what way thou
      earnest,
    Dwarfed to whoso saw thee mightiest, and where thou wert fiercest,
      tamest!
    Hide thee, where blank Fear shall hunt thee, and, more surely to undo
      thee,
    Thirst and hunger where thou goest, brothered demons, shall pursue
      thee.
    Where Cithceron dear to Bromius nods his horror-crested wood,
    To the Phocian, to the Dorian, where Spercheius rolls his flood,
    Through Æmonia steed-delighting, by Magnesia’s wave-lashed strand,
    Through the hardy Macedonian’s, through the fierce-souled Thracian’s
      land,
    By the reedy Bolbe’s waters, by the steep Pangæan height,
    By the stream of holy Strymon thou shalt spur thy sleepless flight.
    Frost and Fire shall league together, wrathful Heaven to Earth
      respond,
    Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious vaunted bond;
    Where he passed, with mouths uncounted eating up the famished land,
    Now a slender skiff shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand.
    Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace-gates for thee,
    By the golden gates of Susa eager mourners wait for thee;
    Haste thee, where the guardian elders wait, a hoary-bearded train;
    They shall see their king, but never see the sons they loved again.
    Where thy weeping mother waits thee, queen Atossa waits to see
    Dire fulfilment of her troublous vision-haunted sleep in thee.
    She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an Eagle cowed with awe
    Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny Falcon’s claw.
    Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through the gloom
    Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from the
      tomb.
    There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are shed,
    To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of the dead!
    Blame the god that so deceived thee—for the mighty men that died
    Blame all gods that be, but chiefly blame thyself, and thine own
      pride!
    Drown thy sorrow with much wailing! beat thy breast, thy vesture rend,
    Tear thy hair, and pluck thy beard—weep till thou hast no tears to
      spend;
    Call the mourning women to thee! while they lift the Mysian wail,
    Thou to Susa’s sonless mothers pour the sorrow-streaming tale!




                            HERACLITUS.[19]


    Λέγει που Ἡράκλειτος ὅτι πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ ουδὲν μένει, καὶ
    ποταμοῦ ῥοῇ ἀπεικάζων τὰ ὄντα λέγει ὡς δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν
    οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.—PLATO.

    At Ephesus, by Cäyster’s flood,
      The son of Blyson sate,
    And mused, in darkly thoughtful mood,
      On God, and man, and fate.
    And as he looked on the sleepless torrent
      Rolling to the sea,
    With a whirling, swirling, eddying current,
      Thus to himself spake he:
          Nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.

    The tender blade, whose eager seed
      Broke through the teeming plain,
    Shall blossom bear, with fated speed
      And end in seed again.
    And when Spring’s plastic sunbeam warm
      Shall thaw the wintry snow,
    Abroad shall leap the prisoned germ,
      And life from death shall grow.
          For nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.

    Life from death, and death from life,
      So round and round it goes,
    A ceaseless self-provoking strife,
      That ever ebbs and flows.
    Within, without, and round about,
      Sans end, and sans beginning;
    My brain reels with the mystic rout
      Of things for ever spinning.
          For nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.

    Like the clouds that scour the sky,
      In the sleepless-shifting weather,
    I know not how, I ask not why,
      Our thoughts chase one another.
    Foolish fancies fret my brain,
      And thoughts which men call clever—
    Waking, sleeping, pleasure, pain,
      The same, but shifting ever.
          For nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.

    The giant-snouted mountains grey,
      That seem to scorn mutation,
    And see, like shadows, fleet away
      Man’s feeble generation;
    Their brows, which tyrannous blasts assail,
      Their peaks, which lightnings shiver,
    With ceaseless ruin fill the vale,
      And feed the flowing river.
          For nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.

    All things that be like water flow,—
      The type of life is water;
    But Heat makes motion swift or slow;
      FIRE is the soul of WATER.
    When Heat invades the stiffened stream,
      The icy bonds are riven;
    When sunbeams pierce the flood, the steam
      Swells in light airs to heaven.
          For nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.

    Motion, motion, holy Force,
      And Fire, pure fount of motion,
    This sleepless-whirling world’s course
      Shall claim my heart’s devotion!
    So float each thing of mortal name,
      On tides of joy and sorrow,
    Ever the same, and never the same,
      The sport of each to-morrow!
          For nothing to hold itself is strong;
            But all things, like a river,
          Roll along, and swirl along,
            And bubble along for ever.




                            ANAXAGORAS.[20]


    Ἀναξαγόρας τοῖς ὅλοις πρῶτος οὐ τύχην, οὐδ’ ἀνάγκην διακοσµήσεως
    ἀρχὴν, αλλὰ νοῦν ἐπέστησε καθαρὸν καὶ ἄκρατον, ἐμμεμιγμένον πᾶσι
    τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἀποκρίνοντα τὰς ὁμοιομερίας.—PLUTARCH.

    Slow rolls the year that makes the sour grape mellow,
    Slow spreads the blade that weaves the matted sod;
    Slow o’er the grey rock creeps the lichen yellow,
    Slow finds man’s wandering wit its way to God.
    WATER, quoth Thales, is the first of things;
    Nay, quoth Anaximander, to my sight
    The primal thing must be the INFINITE;
    Quoth Anaximenes, ’tis AIR that brings
    Life to all living; nay, ’tis FIRE that goes,
    Quoth Blyson’s son, through everything that flows.
    Fools! saith, at length, wise Anaxagoras,
    CAUSE never dwelt in aught of sensuous kind;
    Sole first and last of all that is, and was,
    And yet shall be, in Heaven or Earth, is MIND.




                              POLEMO.[21]


    Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, οὐ δύναται ἰδεῖν
    τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ Θεοῦ.—JOHN iii. 3.

    _Peregrinatus est hic in nequitiâ, non habitavit._

                                                  —VALERIUS MAXIMUS.

    ’Tis morn. On Parnes, nurse of hardy pines,
        Gleams the new-started day,
    And on Ægina’s briny water shines
        The clear far-shimmering ray.

    ’Neath the old Attic rock white vapours creep;
        And on the dusty road,
    O’er the meek army of his bleating sheep
        The shepherd wields his goad.

    The city sleeps; save where the market shows
        The first green-furnished stalls,
    And from his lair of shelterless repose
        The squalid beggar crawls.

    Who bursts into the peaceful street, with sound
        Of brawl, and wrangling fray,
    Rushing with blushless stare and staggering bound,
        To greet the modest day?

    A band of revellers, with torn chaplets crowned;
        And at their head I know
    The rich man’s son, for shameless vice renowned,
        Licentious Polemo.

    Onward they reel, as whim may point the way;
        But he, with firmer pace,
    Who hath a will strong to assert its sway
        Even in the drunkard’s place.

    And whither now? Sometimes God leads a fool
        To knock at wisdom’s door;
    And so the reveller rushes to the school
        Where Plato’s holy lore

    Is taught by sage severe Xenocrates,
        Who, at that early hour,
    Mingled wise disputation with the breeze
        That stirred the learnèd bower.

    Amid the listening scholars Polemo
        Sate down; and, from his place,
    With impudent stare his strong contempt did show
        In the mild lecturer’s face.

    The teacher saw, nor stirred his soul serene,
        That reveller to reprove,
    But changed his theme, and, with unaltered mien,
        More apt discourse he wove

    Of temperance, purity, high self-control,
        Ideal harmonies fine,
    And all that lifts man’s doubtful-swaying soul
        From bestial to divine.

    The scoffer heard; but soon, with softened stare
        And flinching look, confessed
    How deep the preacher probed his heart; for there
        He felt a strange unrest.

    And as the wise man, with the waxing theme,
        More grave and weighty grew,
    With swelling doubts he felt his bosom teem.
        His flushed cheek paled its hue.

    And from his head he plucked the violets blue;
        And, as the speaker woke
    More fretful tempest in his breast, he drew
        His hand beneath his cloak;

    And rose; and stood as one that fronts a foe;
        Then, with a sudden turn,
    Sank; in a gushing flood the salt tears flow;
        And, with wild thoughts that burn,

    He from the audience rushed. But not his soul
        From the new awe that found him
    Might rush; but, with a tyrannous strong control,
        Missioned from God, it bound him,

    And with his mutinous temper wrestled long,
        Till, like a lamb, he lay;
    Then rose, like one with a new nature strong,
        To a new life that day;

    And by the chaste and blue-eyed goddess sware
        That, from that sacred hour,
    He the philosopher’s sober garb should wear,
        And walk in learned bower:

    And, as he sware, so lived, that not a breath
        Might his pure fame besmirch;
    And taught by word, and mightier deed, till death:
        A saint in Plato’s church.




                                 NOTES.


                             Note 1, p. 17.
                    “_The blind Smynéan minstrel._”

Homer.—Of all the cities which contended for the honour of having given
birth to the great epic singer of Greece, Smyrna has the best claims.
See Müller’s ‘History of Greek Literature;’ Lauer’s ‘Homerische Poesie;’
or my ‘Homer,’ vol. i., Dissertation III.

                             Note 2, p. 32.
                             “PROMETHEUS.”

No character of primeval Greek tradition has been a greater favourite
with modern poets than the hero of the well-known play of Æschylus. The
common conception of him, however, made fashionable by Shelley and
Byron, as the representative of freedom in contest with despotism, is
quite modern; and Goethe is nearer the depth of the old myth, when, in
his beautiful lyric, he represents the Titan as the impersonation of
that indefatigable endurance in man which conquers the earth by skilful
labour, in opposition to and in despite of those terrible influences of
the wild elemental powers of Nature, which, to the Greek imagination,
were concentrated in the person of Jove. On the apparent impiety of the
position of Prometheus, as against the Olympian, see my ‘Horæ
Hellenicæ.’

                             Note 3, p. 37.
                        “THE NAMING OF ATHENS.”

The beautiful and significant local myth embodied in this ballad conveys
a grand lesson in political economy to all nations who, in the pursuit
of wealth by manufactures, commerce, or otherwise, may be tempted to
neglect the fundamental interests of landed property, and the rights of
the honest food-producing labourers who till the soil. It were well for
modern Greece, at the present hour, if it could be brought to
understand, and practically to strive after, the realisation of this
great principle. A people consisting of mere merchants, without any root
in the native soil, can never become a nation. The contest between
Pallas and Poseidon was represented on the posterior pediment of the
Parthenon.—Pausanias, i. 24, 5. The same struggle between the same
adverse deities existed in _Troczene_, and was wisely
compromised.—Pausan., ii. 30, 6. Gerhard remarks that in these contests
of local gods with Neptune the sea-god is generally the
loser.—‘Mythol.,’ 633; C. O. Muller, ‘Minerva Pol.,’ p. 7. To the
English people, as the conservators of the Elgin Marbles, the whole
subject possesses a peculiar interest.

                             Note 4, p. 46.
                             “BELLEROPHON.”

This famous Corinthian legend has also become, in a manner, the property
of the British nation, by the labours of Sir Charles Fellowes, and the
existence of a “Xanthian Chamber” in the British Museum. Ephyre is the
old name for Corinth. That Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, should appear
as the special protector of a homicide, will seem strange to no thinker;
for in those wild days of imperfect and partial law, feuds were always
arising, and murders everywhere committed, and Furies invoked and feared
by persons of the most reputable character. The scenery of the pass of
Tretus, as given in p. 48, will be found described in Colonel Mure’s two
admirable volumes, entitled ‘A Tour in Greece;’ also in Curtius’
‘Peloponessus,’ ii. 505. The purification from the guilt of manslaughter
by blood of swine (p. 49) is according to the well-known tradition of
the ancient poets. On Xanthus, its topography and antiquities, besides
the works of Sir Charles Fellowes, the reader may consult the two
volumes of travels in Lycia, by the late Professor Edward Forbes and
Colonel Spratt.

                             Note 5, p. 78.
                              “IPHIGENIA.”

This subject has been as great a favourite with modern poets as the
Prometheus. Goethe’s play of this name is, by many, and for very good
reasons, accounted his masterpiece. The sacrifice of the Argive
princess, besides its general human interest, is a striking testimony to
the fact, that even among the most cultivated peoples of the ancient
world, human sacrifice prevailed at an early period of their history.
There are certain principles in the human heart which, at a certain
stage of civilisation, seem to make such a practice a sort of moral
necessity. That this practice existed even in the most polished age of
Athens in a modified form is certain—_vide_ the dictionaries, _in voce_
φαρμακός. The idea of the substitution of the stag by Diana, in order to
save the virgin’s life, and the conveyance of the destined victim of a
bloody devotion to the barbarous service of a grim idol in the Crimea,
was an afterthought—one of those beautiful lies with which the
legendary lore of old Hellas is replete. Æschylus, as is well-known, in
his sublime description of the sacrifice, in the opening chorus of the
Agamemnon, altogether disregards the posterior fiction. How closely I
have followed this great master in the closing stanzas of the ballad,
will be obvious to the scholar. To have attempted originality after such
a precedent would have been to insure failure.

                             Note 6, p. 88.
                           “WAIL OF AN IDOL.”

In this lyric I have endeavoured to represent the very stupid and
comfortless doctrine of the Greeks with regard to the state of human
souls after death. The Greeks believed in a heaven and a hell, but only
for the few: heaven for the very good, and hell for the very bad; but
the shades of the millions of common mortals were left floating about in
a lethargic, inane sort of Limbo, not at all enviable. On this subject
there is an excellent essay by Archbishop Whately, in his discourses on
some characteristic points of Christianity. The reader may also consult
my essay on the Theology of Homer, Proposition xix. in the ‘Horæ
Hellenicæ.’

                             Note 7, p. 95.
                               “ARIADNE.”

This most beautiful legend of the Dionysiac series embodies a principle
more Christian than Hellenic, but which belongs so essentially to the
moral nature of man, that it is not possible for any religious mythology
altogether to exclude it: the principle that I mean may be called _the
consecration of sorrow_. Christian legends containing this moral, of
which the number is very great, always represent suffering as the road
to glory, and the cave of despair as the propylæa of the temple of
bliss. The Hellenic legend has been a favourite subject with modern
painters and sculptors; and the travelled reader will scarcely require
to be told that the concluding part of this ballad is only a verbal
paraphrase of the well-known statue of Ariadne by Dannecker, exhibited
as one of the lions of Frankfort.

                            Note 8, p. 125.
                               “THESEUS.”

The name of Theseus in early Attic civil history has the same
significance as that of the bishop of Rome in the early history of the
Christian Church. It signifies that unification of social aggregates,
under a central directing power, which constitutes a state or a church;
and such a unity in the common course of things is personal in its rise
and monarchical in its character. It conics into birth by the influence
of a dominant personality, and continues personal in its form till a
more ripe state of society invites the experiment of a form of social
organism more or less democratic. The bringing of the bones of Theseus
from the island of Scyros to his native city, afforded the Athenians an
opportunity of publicly recognising this significant position of their
great local hero in the history of their society; and of this
recognition the temple of Theseus, the best preserved of all Athenian
monuments, presents a visible testimony to the eye of the intelligent
traveller at the present day. The reader who may be anxious to verify
the allusions in the text, may consult Plutarch’s ‘Lives of Theseus and
Cimon,’ and the article “Pyanepsion” in Dr Smith’s ‘Dictionary of
Classical Antiquities.’

                            Note 9, p. 148.
                     “THE FEAST OF PALLAS ATHENA.”

The possessors of the Elgin Marbles scarcely require to be reminded that
the Athenians celebrated the supremacy of their great national goddess
in a great feast recurring at stated intervals, called the “Panathenæa.”
The principal materials from which the present ballad was composed will
be found in Dr Smith’s Dictionary under that word. And the procession
described in the text is the same as that which appears on the
well-known frieze of the Elgin Marbles, which are as familiar to every
person of cultivated taste as the Madonnas of Raphael or the portraits
of Rembrandt.

                            Note 10, p. 161.
                              “ÆSCHYLUS.”

The occupation of watching the vineyards, in which the father of tragedy
is here represented as engaged, when the first inspiration came to his
soul by the Epiphany of the patron god of the “goat song,” is often
alluded to by ancient writers.—See Song of Solomon, i. 6. The works of
the poet alluded to in the ballad are the ‘Agamemnon,’ the ‘Choephoræ,’
the ‘Furies,’ the ‘Seven against Thebes,’ and the ‘Prometheus Bound,’
being five out of the seven extant. The allusion to Homer in p. 163 is
with reference to a well-known saying of the bard, reported by Athenæus
(viii. p. 348), that his numerous tragedies were only “slices from the
great banquet of Homeric dainties.”

                            Note 11, p. 166.
                   “_Pentelicus’ pine-clad height._”

Pentelicus overhangs the south side of the plain of Marathon, separating
it from the great Attic plain. Those who have seen the beautiful Bay of
Brodick, in the island of Arran, have seen Marathon on a small scale,
except that Goat Fell, which represents Pentelicus, is on the north. On
the south, or Athenian side, this famous mountain is sufficiently bare,
but towards Marathon it is richly wooded; and the direct road from the
village of Vrana to the valley of the Cephissus, over the north-west
shoulder of the mountain, is one of the wildest and most picturesque
passes in Greece.

                            Note 12, p. 166.
                      “_Pan’s Marathonian cave._”

Pan played a somewhat prominent part in the great Persian war
(Herodotus, vi. 105). He had a famous cave near Marathon (Pausan., i.
32), which archæologists have idly endeavoured to identify.

                            Note 13, p. 168.
                      “_A tyrant marched before._”

Darius was led by Hippias, who was familiar with this approach to
Attica, having come this way with his father Pisistratus, when that
tyrant established himself in the sovereignty of Attica for the last
time.

                            Note 14, p. 171.
                    “_Macaria, nymph of the well._”

Hercules was the patron saint, to use modern language, of Marathon; and,
where the Athenians conquered, Theseus could not be absent. These two
heroes, therefore, were represented in the picture of the battle of
Marathon in the painted Stoa (Pausan., i. 15; Plutarch—Theseus, 35).
The fountain of Macaria, the daughter of Hercules and Deianeira, is
mentioned by Pausanias (i. c. 32) as being on the field of Marathon; and
sure enough there is a well on the road from Marathon to Rhamnus, near
the north end of the plain, which Mr Finlay is willing to baptise with
the name of the old classical nymph.

                            Note 15, p. 172.
                     “_The bubbling marshes moan._”

There are two extensive marshes, mostly overgrown with great reeds, one
at each end of the field. The Persians, of course, were driven back into
the marsh at the north end. This was represented in the painting on the
Stoa.

                            Note 16, p. 173.
                 “_The eagle hath fled from the dove._”

The idea hero is taken from Atossa’s dream, in ‘The Persians’ of
Æschylus, mentioned in the previous ballad.

                            Note 17, p. 174.
                   “_That mound where heroes sleep._”

The famous mound in the middle of the battle-field, mentioned by
Pausanias, and described by all modern travellers.

                            Note 18, p. 176.
                               “SALAMIS.”

In this ballad an attempt has been made to unite the descriptions of
this great naval combat, given by Herodotus and Æschylus. The tragic
writer was a soldier, and present at the battle, which circumstance
makes his testimony, as given in ‘The Persians,’ peculiarly valuable.
The concluding part of the ballad is a sort of lyrical epitome of that
very singular, and in some respects altogether unique, remnant of the
lost riches of tragic art in Athens.

                            Note 19, p. 189.
                             “HERACLITUS.”

The striking contrast between rest and motion, permanence and
mutability, eternity and time, being and becoming, which the phenomena
of the universe present, could not fail to occupy, at a very early
period, the subtle minds of the Greek speculators. In Heraclitus the
more sensuous of these two aspects, or the external of the two factors,
was raised into a watchword of his philosophy, in the maxim πάντα ῥεῖ; a
view of things which, when stated absolutely and unqualified by the
recognition of the opposite view springing from the principle of λόγος
or νοῡς, leads directly to universal scepticism, and shallow sophistry
of that kind which became afterwards so rank in Athens, and required all
the diligence of such master-workmen as Socrates and Plato to weed it
out. Modern Sensationalism, issuing from the loose inductions of Locke,
has produced similar results, for which a Scotsman does not require to
seek far.

                            Note 20, p. 194.
                             “ANAXAGORAS.”

Though Socrates, in several places of Plato, expresses his
dissatisfaction with the doctrine of νοῦς, as taught by Anaxagoras, the
friend of Pericles, there can be no doubt that, in comparison with those
who preceded him, the philosopher of Clazomenæ is fully entitled to the
proud position given him by Aristotle, and which has been asserted in
the present sonnet.

                            Note 21, p. 195.
                               “POLEMO.”

The very remarkable history of the conversion of this father of the old
Academy, from a licentious to a saintly life, will be found in Valerius
Maximus, lib. vi. c. 9, and in Diogenes Laertius. Those who wish to know
where the Christian Church was before Christ (as we talk of “Reformers
before the Reformation”), must search in the lives of the old Greek
philosophers, who were not mere talkers and speculators, but men of
character and action, and exhibiting in many cases a self-control and a
self-denial, and a plain godly simplicity of life, which might shame not
a few British Christians, who contrive in a very questionable sort of
way to unite the worship of God with that of Mammon. A Socrates and a
Polemo would certainly not have sinned after this fashion.

                 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

                                THE END




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

    Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where
    multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

    Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer
    errors occur.

    Book name and author have been added to the original book cover.
    The resulting cover is placed in the public domain.

[The end of _Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece_ by John Stuart Blackie]