(275 B.C.)
f Bion, the second of the Sicilian idyllists, of whom Theocritus was the first and Moschus the third and last, but little knowledge and few remains exist. He was born near Smyrna, says Suidas; and from the elegy on his death, attributed to his pupil Moschus, we infer that he lived in Sicily and died there of poison. "Say that Bion the herdsman is dead," says the threnody, appealing to the Sicilian muses, "and that song has died with Bion, and the Dorian minstrelsy hath perished.... Poison came, Bion, to thy mouth. What mortal so cruel as to mix poison for thee!" As Theocritus is also mentioned in the idyl, Bion is supposed to have been his contemporary, and to have flourished about 275 B. C.
Compared with Theocritus, his poetry is inferior in simplicity and naïveté, and declines from the type which Theocritus had established for the out-door, open-field idyl. With Bion, bucolics first took on the air of the study. Although at first this art and affectation were rarely discernible, they finally led to the mold of brass in which for centuries Italian and English pastorals were cast, and later to the complete devitalizing which marks English pastoral poetry in the eighteenth century, with the one exception of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd". Theocritus had sung with genuine feeling of trees and wandering winds, of flowers and the swift mountain stream. His poetry has atmosphere; it is vital with sunlight, color, and the beauty which is cool and calm and true. Although Bion's poems possess elegance and sweetness, and abound in pleasing imagery, they lack the naturalness of the idyls of Theocritus. Reflection has crept into them; they are in fact love-songs, with here and there a tinge of philosophy,
The most famous as well as the most powerful and original of Bion's poems remaining to us is the threnody upon Adonis. It was doubtless composed in honor of the rites with which Greek women celebrated certain Eastern festivals; for the worship of Adonis still lingered among them, mixed with certain Syrian customs.
"Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded."
Thammuz is identified with Adonis. "We came to a fair large river," writes an old English traveler, "doubtless the ancient river Adonis, which at certain seasons of the year, especially about the feast of Adonis, is of a bloody color, which the heathens looked upon as proceeding from a kind of sympathy in the river for the death of Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar in the mountains out of which the stream issues. Something like this we saw actually come to pass; for the water was stained to a surprising redness, and, as we observed in traveling, had discolored the sea a great way into a reddish hue, occasioned doubtless by a sort of minium, or red earth, washed into the river by the violence of the rain."
The poem is colored by the Eastern nature of its subject, and its rapidity, vehemence, warmth, and unrestraint are greater than the strict canon of Greek art allows. It is noteworthy, aside from its varied beauties, because of its fine abandonment to grief and its appeal for recognition of the merits of the dead youth it celebrates. Bion's threnody has undoubtedly become a criterion and given the form to some of the more famous "songs of tears". The laudatory clegy of Moschus for his master--we say of Moschus, although Ahrens, in his recension, includes the lament under 'Incertorum Idyllia' at the end of 'Moschi Reliquiæ'--follows it faithfully. Milton in his great ode of 'Lycidas' does not depart from the Greek lines; and Shelley, lamenting Keats in his 'Adonaïs,' reverts still more closely to the first master, adding perhaps an element of artificiality one does not find in other threnodies. The broken and extended form of Tennyson's celebration of Arthur Hallam takes it out of a comparison with the Greek; but the monody of 'Thyrsis', Matthew Arnold's commemoration of Clough, approaches nearer the Greek. Yet no other lament has the energy and rapidity of Bion's; the refrain, the insistent repetition of the words "I wail for Adonis",--"Alas for Cypris!" full of pathos and unspoken irrepressible woe, is used only by his pupil Moschus, though hinted at by Milton.
The peculiar rhythm, the passion and delicate finish of the song, have attracted a number of translators, among whose versions Mrs. Browning's 'The Lament for Adonis' is considered the best. The subjoined version in the Spenserian stanza, by Anna C. Brackett, follows its model closely in its directness and fervor of expression, and has moreover in itself genuine poetic merit. The translation of a fragment of 'Hesperos' is that of J.A. Symonds. Bion's fluent and elegant versification invites study, and his few idyls and fragments have at various times been turned into English by Fawkes (to be found in Chalmers's 'Works of English Poets'), Polwhele, Banks, Chapman, and others.
THRENODY
I weep for Adonaïs--he is dead!
Dead Adonaïs lies, and mourning all,
The Loves wail round his fair, low-lying head.
O Cypris, sleep no more! Let from thee fall
Thy purple vestments--hear'st thou not the call?
Let fall thy purple vestments! Lay them by!
Ah, smite thy bosom, and in sable pall
Send shivering through the air thy bitter cry
For Adonaïs dead, while all the Loves reply.
I weep for Adonaïs--weep the Loves.
Low on the mountains beauteous lies he there,
And languid through his lips the faint breath moves,
And black the blood creeps o'er his smooth thigh, where
The boar's white tooth the whiter flesh must tear.
Glazed grow his eyes beneath the eyelids wide;
Fades from his lips the rose, and dies--Despair!
The clinging kiss of Cypris at his side--
Alas, he knew not that she kissed him as he died!
I wail--responsive wail the Loves with me.
Ah, cruel, cruel is that wound of thine,
But Cypris' heart-wound aches more bitterly.
The Oreads weep; thy faithful hounds low whine;
But Cytherea's unbound tresses fine
Float on the wind; where thorns her white feet wound,
Along the oaken glades drops blood divine.
She calls her lover; he, all crimsoned round
His fair white breast with blood, hears not the piteous sound.
Alas! for Cytherea wail the Loves,
With the beloved dies her beauty too.
O fair was she, the goddess borne of doves,
While Adonaïs lived; but now, so true
Her love, no time her beauty can renew.
Deep-voiced the mountains mourn; the oaks reply;
And springs and rivers murmur sorrow through
The passes where she goes, the cities high;
And blossoms flush with grief as she goes desolate by.
Alas for Cytherea! he hath died--
The beauteous Adonaïs, he is dead!
And Echo sadly back "is dead" replied.
Alas for Cypris! Stooping low her head,
And opening wide her arms, she piteous said,
"O stay a little, Adonaïs mine!
Of all the kisses ours since we were wed,
But one last kiss, oh, give me now, and twine
Thine arms close, till I drink the latest breath of thine!
"So will I keep the kiss thou givest me
E'en as it were thyself, thou only best!
Since thou, O Adonaïs, far dost flee--
Oh, stay a little--leave a little rest!--
And thou wilt leave me, and wilt be the guest
Of proud Persephone, more strong than I?
All beautiful obeys her dread behest--
And I a goddess am, and cannot die!
O thrice-beloved, listen!--mak'st thou no reply?
"Then dies to idle air my longing wild,
As dies a dream along the paths of night;
And Cytherea widowed is, exiled
From love itself; and now--an idle sight--
The Loves sit in my halls, and all delight
My charmèd girdle moves, is all undone!
Why wouldst thou, rash one, seek the maddening fight?
Why, beauteous, wouldst thou not the combat shun?"--
Thus Cytherea--and the Loves weep, all as one.
Alas for Cytherea!--he is dead.
Her hopeless sorrow breaks in tears, that rain
Down over all the fair, beloved head,--
Like summer showers, o'er wind-down-beaten grain;
They flow as fast as flows the crimson stain
From out the wound, deep in the stiffening thigh;
And lo! in roses red the blood blooms fair,
And where the tears divine have fallen close by,
Spring up anemones, and stir all tremblingly.
I weep for Adonaïs--he is dead!
No more, O Cypris, weep thy wooer here!
Behold a bed of leaves! Lay down his head
As if he slept--as still, as fair, as dear,--
In softest garments let his limbs appear,
As when on golden couch his sweetest sleep
He slept the livelong night, thy heart anear;
Oh, beautiful in death though sad he keep,
No more to wake when Morning o'er the hills doth creep.
And over him the freshest flowers fling--
Ah me! all flowers are withered quite away
And drop their petals wan! yet, perfumes bring
And sprinkle round, and sweetest balsams lay;--
Nay, perish perfumes since thine shall not stay!
In purple mantle lies he, and around,
The weeping Loves his weapons disarray,
His sandals loose, with water bathe his wound,
And fan him with soft wings that move without a sound.
The Loves for Cytherea raise the wail.
Hymen from quenched torch no light can shake.
His shredded wreath lies withered all and pale;
His joyous song, alas, harsh discords break!
And saddest wail of all, the Graces wake;
"The beauteous Adonaïs! He is dead!"
And sigh the Muses, "Stay but for our sake!"
Yet would he come, Persephone is dead;--
Cease, Cypris! Sad the days repeat their faithful tread!
Paraphrase of Anna C. Brackett, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
HESPER
Hesper, thou golden light of happy love,
Hesper, thou holy pride of purple eve,
Moon among stars, but star beside the moon,
Hail, friend! and since the young moon sets to-night
Too soon below the mountains, lend thy lamp
And guide me to the shepherd whom I love.
No theft I purpose; no wayfaring man
Belated would I watch and make my prey:
Love is my goal; and Love how fair it is,
When friend meets friend sole in the silent night,
Thou knowest, Hesper!