same spirit and fire that are seen in his Ilomer; Cooke's is more correct, but spiritless. By far the best now in use is that of Charles A. Elton, London, 1804-1809, with a preliminary dissertation and notes. A translation in English prose, by Rev. J. Banks, was published, in 1856, in "Bohn's Classical Library."
On earth of yore the sons of men abode
From evil free and labor's galling load;
Free from diseases that, with racking rage,
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now, swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery's pressure turns the temples gray.
The woman's hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid-she scatters ills in air.
Hope sole remained within, nor took her flight,
Beneath the vessel's verge conceal'd from light:
Or, ere she fled, the maid, advised by Jove,
Seal'd fast th' unbroken cell, and dropp'd the lid above.
Issued the rest in quick dispersion hurl'd,
And woes innumerous roam'd the breathing world:
With ills the land is full, with ills the sea;
Diseases haunt our frail humanity:
Self-wandering through the noon, the night, they glide,
Voiceless-a voice the power all-wise denied:
Know then this awful truth-it is not given
T'elude the wisdom of omniscient heaven.
RETRIBUTIONS OF PROVIDENCE.
O'er all the wicked race, to whom belong
The thought of evil and the deed of wrong,
Saturnian Jove, of wide-beholding eyes,
Bids the dark signs of retribution rise:
And oft the crimes of one destructive fall,
The crimes of one are visited on all.
The God sends down his angry plagues from high,
Famine and pestilence; in heaps they die :
He smites with barrenness the marriage bed,
And generations moulder with the dead:
Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
1 Read an article on the Life and Writings of Hesiod, in the 47th volume of the " Quarterly Review," and another in the 15th volume of the "Edinburgh Review."
Scatters their ships of war; and where the sea
Heaves high its mountain billows, there is he.
Ponder, oh judges! in your inmost thought
The retribution by his vengeance wrought.
Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,
Pass through the midst, and bend th' all-seeing eye:
The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right,
Aweless of Heaven's revenge, are naked to their sight.
For thrice ten thousand holy demons rove
This breathing world, the delegates of Jove.
Guardians of man, their glance alike surveys
The upright judgments and th' unrighteous ways.
A virgin pure is Justice, and her birth
August from him who rules the heavens and earth:
A creature glorious to the gods on high,
Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.
Driven by despiteful wrong, she takes her seat,
In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet.
There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend;
So rue the nations when their kings offend :
When, uttering wiles, and brooding thoughts of ill,
They bend the laws and wrest them to their will.
O, gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear!
Make straight your paths; your crooked judgments fear;
That the foul record may no more be seen,
Erased, forgotten, as it ne'er had been!
Beware the January month, beware
Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air
Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast
O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast.
From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth
O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north,
And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods
Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.
Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells,
And strews with thick-branch'd pines the mountain dells:
He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around;
The depth of forest rolls the roar of sound.
The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,
And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold;
Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail;
The long-hair'd goat, defenceless, feels the gale:
Yet vain the north-wind's rushing strength to wound
The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.
He hows the old man crook'd beneath the storm;
But spares the soft-skinn'd virgin's tender form.
Screened by her mother's roof on wintry nights,
And strange to golden Venus' mystic rites,
The suppling waters of the bath she swims,
With shiny ointment sleeks her dainty limbs;
Within her chamber laid on downy bed,
While winter howls in tempest o'er her head.
Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet,
Starved midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat;
For now no more the sun with gleaming ray
Through seas transparent lights him to his prey.
And now the horned and unhorned kind,
Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famished, grind
Their sounding jaws, and, chilled and quaking, fly
Where oaks the mountain dells imbranch on high:
They seek to couch in thickets of the glen,
Or lurk, deep sheltered, in some rocky den.
Like aged men, who, propp'd on crutches, tread
Tottering, with broken strength and stooping head,
So move the beasts of earth, and, creeping low,
Shun the white flakes and dread the drifting snow.
Implacable, holds watch before the gates;
Of guile malicious. Them who enter there,
With tail and bended ears he fawning soothes:
But suffers not that they with backward step
Repass; whoe'er would issue from the gates
Of Pluto, strong and stern Persiphone,
For them, with marking eye, he lurks; on them
Springs from his couch, and pitiless devours.
Fools! not to know how better, for the soul,
An honest half than an ill-gotten whole;
How richer he who dines on herbs, with health
Of heart, than knaves with all their wines and wealth.
All on that day stirr'd up th' enormous strife,
Female and male; Titanic gods, and sons
And daughters of old Saturn; and that band
Of giant brethren, whom from forth th' abyss
Of darkness under earth, deliverer Jove
Sent up to light: grim forms, and strong with force
Gigantic; arms of hundred-handed gripe
Burst from their shoulders; fifty heads up-sprang
Cresting their muscular limbs. They thus opposed
In dismal conflict 'gainst the Titans stood,
In all their sinewy hands wielding aloft
Precipitous rocks. On th' other side alert
The Titan phalanx closed; then hands of strength
Join'd prowess, and show'd forth the works of war.
Th' immeasurable sea tremendous dash'd
With roaring, earth resounded, the broad heaven
Groan'd shattering; huge Olympus reel'd throughout,
Down to its rooted base, beneath the rush
Of those immortals. The dark chasm of hell
Was shaken with the trembling, with the tramp
Of hollow footsteps and strong battle-strokes,
And measureless uproar of wild pursuit.
So they against each other through the air
Hurl'd intermix'd their weapons, scattering groans
Where'er they fell. The voice of armies rose
With rallying shout through the starr'd firmament,
And, with a mighty war-cry, both the hosts
Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove
Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul
There grew dilated strength, and it was fill'd
With his omnipotence; his whole of might
Broke from him, and the godhead rush'd abroad.
The vaulted sky, the mount Olympus, flash'd
With his continual presence, for he pass'd
Incessant forth, and lighten'd where he trod.
Thrown from his nervous grasp the lightnings flew
Reiterated swift; the whirling flash
Cast sacred splendor, and the thunderbolt
Then on every side the foodful earth
Roar'd in the burning flame, and far and near
The trackless depth of forests crash'd with fire.
Yea, the broad earth burn'd red, the floods of Nile
Glow'd, and the desert waters of the sea.
Round and around the Titans' earthy forms
Roll'd the hot vapor, and on fiery surge
Stream'd upward, swathing in one boundless blaze
The purer air of heaven. Keen rush'd the light
In quivering splendor from the writhen flash;
Strong though they were, intolerable smote
Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare
Scorch'd up their blasted vision. Through the gulf
Of yawning Chaos the supernal flame
Spread, mingling fire with darkness. But to see
With human eye, and hear with ear of man,
Had been as on a time the heaven and earth
Met hurtling in mid-air, as nether earth
Crash'd from the centre, and the wreck of heaven
Fell ruining from high. Not less, when gods
Grappled with gods, the shout and clang of arms
Commingled, and the tumult roar'd from heaven.
The whirlwinds were abroad, and hollow arous'd
A shaking and a gathering dark of dust,
Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air,
Hot thunderbolts and flames, the fiery darts
Of Jove; and in the midst of either host
They bore upon their blast the cry confused
Of battle, and the shouting. For the din
Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife
Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof
Wreak'd there its deeds, till weary sank the war.
FLOURISHED ABOUT 700 B. C.
ARCHILOCHUS, of the island of Paros, was one of the earliest lyric poets, and the first who composed iambic verses according to fixed rules. Though excelling in lyric poetry generally, it was on his satiric iambic poetry that his fame was founded; and so great were his merits in this department, that the ancient writers did not hesitate to compare him with Sophocles, Pindar, and even Homer. But nothing now remains of his writings but a few fragments of a grave and philosophic cast.
PATIENCE UNDER SUFFERING.
O, Pericles in vain the feast is spread:
To mirth and joy the afflicted soul is dead.
The billows of the deep-resounding sea
Burst o'er our heads, and drown our revelry;
Grief swells our veins with pangs unfelt before;
But Jove's high clemency reserves in store
All-suffering patience for his people's cure:
The best of healing balms is-TO ENDURE.
Spirit! thou spirit, like a troubled sea,
Ruffled with deep and hard calamity,
Sustain the shock: a daring heart oppose;
Stand firm, amidst the charging spears of foes:
|