The thundering lauwine-might be worshipped more; But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,
The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 't were for fame, For still they soared unutterably high : I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Etna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the loue Soracte's height, displayed Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid.
For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred
Too much to conquer for the poet's sake
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and though time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought, If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.
Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse:
Although no deeper moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
Yet fare thee well,-upon Soracte's ridge we part.
HE spake; the Morning on her golden throne Looked forth; the glorious goddess went her way Into the isle, I to my ship, and bade
The men embark and cast the hawsers loose.
And straight they went on board, and duly manned
The benches, smiting as they sat with oars
The hoary waters. Circè, amber-haired,
The mighty goddess of the musical voice,
Sent a fair wind behind our dark-prowed ship
That gayly bore us company, and filled
The sails. When we had fairly ordered all
On board our galley, we sat down, and left
The favoring wind and helm to bear us on,
And thus in sadness I bespake the crew:-
'My friends! it were not well that one or two
Alone should know the oracles I heard
From Circè, great among the goddesses;
And now will I disclose them, that ye all,
Whether we are to die or to escape
The doom of death, may be forewarned. And first
Against the wicked Sirens and their song
And flowery bank she warns us. I alone
May hear their voice, but ye must bind me first
With bands too strong to break, that I may stand
Upright against the mast; and let the cords
Be fastened round it. If I then entreat
And bid you loose me, make the bands more strong."
Thus to my crew I spake, and told them all
That they should know, while our good ship drew near
The island of the Sirens, prosperous gales
Wafting it gently onward. Then the breeze
Sank to a breathless calm; some deity
Had hushed the winds to slumber. Straightway rose
The men and furled the sails and laid them down
Within the ship, and sat and made the sea
White with the beating of their polished blades,
Made of the fir-tree. Then I took a mass
Of wax and cut it into many parts,
And kneaded each with a strong hand. It grew
Warm with the pressure, and the beams of him
Who journeys round the earth, the monarch Sun.
With this I filled the ears of all my men
From first to last. They bound me, in their turn,
Upright against the mast-tree, hand and foot,
And tied the cords around it. Then again
They sat and threshed with oars the hoary deep.
And when, in running rapidly, we came
So near the Sirens as to hear a voice
From where they sat, our galley flew, not by
Unseen by them, and sweetly thus they sang:-
“O world-renowned Ulysses! thou who art
The glory of the Achaians, turn thy bark
Landward, that thou mayst listen to our lay.
No man has passed us in his galley yet,
Ere he has heard our warbled melodies.
He goes delighted hence a wiser man;
For all that in the spacious realm of Troy
The Greeks and Trojans by the will of Heaven
Endured we know, and all that comes to pass
In all the nations of the fruitful earth."
"T was thus they sang, and sweet the strain. I longed To listen, and with nods I gave the sign
To set me free; they only plied their oars
The faster. Then upsprang Eurylochus
And Perimedes, and with added chords
Bound me, and drew the others still more tight.
And when we now had passed the spot, and heard
No more the melody the Sirens sang,
My comrades hastened from their ears to take
The wax, and loosed the cords and set me free.
Homer. Tr. W. C. Bryant.
OME, worthy Greeke, Ulysses come,
Possesse these shores with me,
The windes and seas are troublesome,
And here we may be free.
Here may we sit and view their toyle,
That travaile in the deepe,
Enjoy the day in mirth the while,
And spend the night in sleepe.
Faire nymph, if fame or honour were
To be attain'd with ease,
Then would I come and rest with thee,
And leave such toiles as these:
But here it dwels, and here must I
With danger seek it forth;
To spend the time luxuriously
Becomes not men of worth.
Ulysses, O be not deceiv'd
With that unreal name:
This honour is a thing conceiv'd,
And rests on others' fame.
Begotten only to molest
Our peace, and to beguile
(The best thing of our life) our rest, And give us up to toyle!
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