The Oxford Book of Latin Verse Part 77

_287_

AH! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite, Friend and a.s.sociate of this clay!

To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?

No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.

BYRON.

Byron's version is a weak piece of youthful work. I add here Pope's _Dying Christian to his Soul_, a n.o.ble poem suggested by that of Hadrian, and emphasizing powerfully the contrast between pagan and Christian sentiment:--

VITAL spark of heavenly flame!

Quit, oh quit this mortal frame!

Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!

Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life!

Hark, they whisper; angels say, 'Sister spirit, come away!'

What is this absorbs me quite?

Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirit, draws my breath?

Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!

Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O Grave, where is thy victory?

O Death, where is thy sting?

POPE.

_368_

HAPPY the man who his whole time doth bound Within the enclosure of his little ground.

Happy the man whom the same humble place, The hereditary cottage of his race, From his first rising infancy has known, And by degrees sees gently bending down With natural propension to that earth Which both preserved his life and gave him birth.

Him no false distant lights by Fortune set Could ever into foolish wanderings get.

He never dangers either saw or feared; The dreadful storms at sea he never heard, He never heard the shrill allarms of war, Or the worse noises of the lawyers' Bar.

No change of consuls marks to him the year; The change of seasons is his calender.

The cold and heat Winter and Summer shows, Autumn by fruits, and Spring by flowers he knows.

He measures time by landmarks, and has found For the whole day the Dial of his ground.

A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees, And loves his old contemporary trees.

He's only heard of near Verona's name, And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame: Does with a like concernment notice take Of the Red Sea and of Benacus Lake.

Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys, And sees a long posterity of boys.

About the s.p.a.cious world let others roam, The Voyage Life is longest made at home.

COWLEY.

I append the version of a poet who was accounted in his time 'the best translator since Pope'.

BLEST who, content with what the country yields, Lives in his own hereditary fields; Who can with pleasure his past life behold, Whose roof paternal saw him young and old; And, as he tells his long adventures o'er, A stick supports him where he crawled before; Who ne'er was tempted from his farm to fly, And drink new streams beneath a foreign sky: No merchant, he, solicitous of gain, Dreads not the storms that lash the sounding main: Nor soldier, fears the summons to the war, Nor the hoa.r.s.e clamours of the noisy bar.

Unskilled in business, to the world unknown, He ne'er beheld the next contiguous town.

Yet n.o.bler objects to his view are given, Fair flowery fields and star-embellished heaven.

He marks no change of consuls, but computes Alternate consuls by alternate fruits; Maturing autumns store of apples bring, And flowerets are the luxury of spring.

His farm that catches first the sun's bright ray Sees the last l.u.s.tre of his beams decay: The pa.s.sing hours erected columns show, And are his landmarks and his dials too.

Yon spreading oak a little twig he knew, And the whole grove in his remembrance grew.

Verona's walls remote as India seem, Benacus is th' Arabian Gulph to him.

Yet health three ages lengthens out his span, And grandsons hail the vigorous old man.

Let others vainly sail from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e-- Their joys are fewer and their labours more.

F. FAWKES.