The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 43

360 'The resources of art prove baneful: its masters retired baffled, Chiron, son of Philyra, and Melampus, son of Amythaon.'

361 'The healing art muttered in speechless fear.'

362 'Thrice let the auspicious victim pa.s.s around the young crops.'

363 'And invoke thee, Bacchus, in their joyous chants, and in honour of thee hang soft faces waving in the wind from the high pine tree.'

364 'Just as happens to the rower who scarcely keeps his boat against the stream, if he slackens his stroke, and has it swept headlong down the channel of the river.'

365 'The best days of life are those which fly first from unhappy mortals: then disease steals on, and sad old age.'

366 'When they behold the Sun, that we see the stars of night, and that they share alternately with us the divisions of the sky, and pa.s.s their nights parallel to our days.'

367 The pa.s.sage in the Georgics may be compared with those pa.s.sages which Mr. Munro quotes in his note to Lucret. i. 1.

368 W. Savage Landor.

369 'And their brazen vessels constantly split asunder, and the rough icicle froze on their unkempt beards.'

370 'When the snow lies deep, when the rivers force the ma.s.ses of ice slowly down.'

371 'Where dark Galaesus waters the yellowing cornfields.'

372 'In his heart he enjoyed wealth equal to the wealth of kings; and as he returned late at night he loaded his board with a feast unbought.'

373 Cf. Ecl. viii. 6; Aen. i. 244.

374 Cf. supra, p. 239.

375 'Those who ministered to them, came into close contact and bore the labour, which a feeling of honour compelled them to undergo, and the appealing voice of the weary sufferers, mingling with the voice of their complaining. It was in this way accordingly that the best men died.'

376 'Neither the shade of the high groves, nor the soft meadows can rouse any feeling, nor the river which rolling over stones in a stream purer than amber hurries to the plain.'

377 'Nor can the tender willows and the gra.s.s fresh with dew, and the rivers gliding level with their banks, delight her heart, and banish her sorrow.'

378 'The ploughman goes sadly on his way, separating the sorrowing steer from his dead brother.' The truth of this picture is confirmed by a modern writer, who, in her idyllic stories from the rural life of France, seems from time to time, better than any modern poet, to reproduce the Virgilian feeling of Nature. 'Dans le haut du champ un vieillard, dont le dos large et la figure severe rappelaient celui d'Holbein, mais dont les vetements n'annoncaient pas la misere, poussait gravement son _areau_ de forme antique, traine par deux bufs tranquilles, a la robe d'un jaune pale, veritables patriarches de la prairie, hauts de taille, un peu maigres, les cornes longues et rabattues, de ces vieux travailleurs qu'une longue habitude a rendus _freres_, comme on les appelle dans nos campagnes, et qui, prives l'un de l'autre, se refusent au travail avec un nouveau compagnon et se laissent mourir de chagrin. Les gens qui ne connaissent pas la campagne taxent de fable l'amitie du buf pour son camarade d'attelage. Qu'ils viennent voir au fond de l'etable un pauvre animal maigre, extenue, battant de sa queue inquiete ses flancs decharnes, soufflant avec effroi et dedain sur la nourriture qu'on lui presente, les yeux toujours tournes vers la porte, en grattant du pied la place vide a ses cotes, flairant les jougs et les chaines que son compagnon a portes, et l'appelant sans cesse avec de deplorables mugiss.e.m.e.nts. Le bouvier dira: "C'est une paire de bufs perdue: son frere est mort, et celui-la ne travaillera plus. II faudrait pouvoir l'engraisser pour l'abattre; mais il ne veut pas manger, et bientot il sera mort de faim."' La Mare au Diable. G. Sand.

The famous picture in Lucret. ii. 355366,

At mater viridis ... notumque requirit,

shows a similar observation of the strength of bovine affection.

379 'What avail all their toil or their services to man? what that they have upturned the heavy earth with the plough-share? and yet they have received no harm from Ma.s.sic vintages or luxurious banquets; their food is leaves and simple gra.s.s, their drink is the water of fresh springs, and rivers kept bright by their speed; and no care breaks their wholesome sleep.'

380 'The guardian power of the groves, for whom three hundred snow-white steers browse in the rich thickets of Cea.'

381 'On the one side Euphrates, on the other Germany sets war afoot: neighbouring cities, breaking their compacts, are in arms against each other; Mars, in unhallowed rage, is abroad over all the world; even as when the chariots have burst forth from the barriers, they bound into the course, and the charioteer, vainly pulling the reins, is borne along by his steeds, and the chariot no longer obeys his guidance.'

382 'And the cattle spoke, horror unutterable'-'And the images of ivory within the temples weep in sorrow, and the images of bronze sweat.'

383 'A voice too was heard by many through the silent groves, speaking a mighty sound, and ghosts, wondrous pale, were seen in the dusk.'

384 'And dogs of ill omen and dire birds gave signs'-'and mountain-built cities echoed through the night with the howl of wolves.'

385 'Doubtless too the time will come when in those lands the husbandman, as he upheaves the earth with his crooked plough, will find javelins eaten away by rough rust, or with his heavy mattock will strike on empty helmets, and marvel at the huge bones in their tombs, now dug open.'

386 'There is no due honour now to the plough, the fields are desolate, and those who tilled them are gone, and the crooked pruning-hooks are forged into the stiff sword.'

387 'This land has reared a valiant race of men, the Marsi and Sabellian youth, the Ligurian trained to hards.h.i.+p, and the Volscian spearmen.'

388 'This too bore the Decii and the great Camilli, the Scipios, men of iron in war, and thee, great Caesar, who now, ere this victorious in the furthest coasts of Asia, art turning away the unwarlike Indian from the hills of Rome.'

389 'It is in thy honour that I enter on the task of treating an art of ancient renown.'

390 'Besides many famous cities, with their ma.s.sive workmans.h.i.+p, many towns piled by the hand of man on steep crags, and rivers gliding beneath walls that have been from of old.'

391 'Though no lofty mansion with proud portals pours forth from all its chambers its wave of those who pay their court in the morning.'- 'Though there are no golden statues of youths through their chambers, holding blazing torches in their right hands.'

392 'They revel in the bloodshed of their brethren.'

393 'By the bloodshed of their fellow-citizens they ama.s.s an estate, and covetously double their riches, heaping murder upon murder: they take a cruel joy in the sad death of a brother; and hate and fear the board of their kinsmen.' Lucret. iii. 7073.

394 'Meantime his dear children hang with kisses round his lips; a pure household keeps well all the laws of chast.i.ty.'

395 'Soon no longer shall thy home receive thee with glad greeting, nor thy most excellent wife, nor thy dear children run to meet thee to s.n.a.t.c.h the first kiss.'

The most cla.s.sical of our own poets seems to combine both representations with the thought and representation of an earlier pa.s.sage of the Georgics

(Et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignes, etc.)

in the familiar stanza-

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to meet their sire's return, And climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

396 'Hence he supports his country and his humble home, hence his herds of cattle, and his well-deserving steers.'

397 Cp. 'Le mot triste et doux de Virgile: "O heureux l'homme des champs, s'il connaissait son bonheur" est un regret, mais, comme tous les regrets, c'est aussi une prediction. Un jour viendra ou le laboureur pourra etre aussi un artiste, si non pour exprimer (ce qui importera a.s.sez peu alors) du moins pour sentir le beau.' G. Sand.

398 Virgil rightly connects this greatness with the site of Rome in the line,

Septemque una sibi muro circ.u.mdedit arces.

It was from the necessities imposed by that site that Rome at an early period became the largest urban community in Italy, and was forced, in consequence of the contiguous settlements of other races, to begin that incorporating and a.s.similating policy which ultimately enabled her to establish universal empire. Cp. 'Rome herself, like other cities of Italy, Gaul, and elsewhere, grew out of the primitive hill-fortresses; the distinction between Rome and other cities, the distinction which made Rome all that she became, was that Rome did not grow out of a single fortress of the kind, but out of several.' Historical and Architectural Sketches, by E. A.

Freeman, D.C.L., etc.-Walls of Rome, p. 160.

399 Cf. 'Itaque in hoc Latio et Saturnia terra, ubi Dii cultus agrorum progeniem suam docuerunt.' Columella.