Æneas in Hades
P. Virgilii Maronis, Æneidos, Bk. V. vv. 721-754 and 835-871; Bk. VI. vv. 1-19 and 41-636
LIMBO AND TARTARUS
Sad with thoughts of Carthage, its Lady fair,
Weary and worn with wanderings and care,
Mourning his father still, Æneas lay
Sleepless, when lo! visible as in day,
Though up the heavens drove her car black Night,
Anchises, lit with an unearthly light:
“My Son,” he said, “here am I by Jove’s grace;
He pities, late, the sorrows of our race,
And has sent me to comfort and advise.
Let a new Troy in Sicily arise,
Peopled by many who would stay behind.
With the young and bravest, sail thou, and find
A realm in Latium; make its rude tribes feel
The temper of their Trojan Master’s steel.
But, first, thou to the Nether World descend,
And traverse from the threshold to the end
In search of me; not that I dwell in Dis,
With the curst, but the pleasant fields of bliss.
Thither, with, for thy guide, the Sibyl, come
To learn thy sons’ deeds in their destined home.
But past midnight; the horses of the Sun
Pant to speed on their course;—I must be gone!”
Full well were Jove’s commands he brought obeyed,
And the foundations of the city laid—
“Acesta”—as its lord, Acestes hailed;
And, wept now by those it left, the fleet sailed.—
For Italy sailed; there arrived; and moored
Off Cumæ;—
but with Pilot none on board.
Whether marine God, jealous of a skill
In seamanship like his, or, spite of will,
Worn out with toil, he failed at last to keep
His eyelids from the poppy dew of sleep;
Who knows? but he woke, rudder in his hand,
Drifting, shouts unheard, to an unknown strand.
Vain to trace Palinurus and his fate!
But all knew where the Sibyl kept her state.
In a shrine that Latona’s Children hold,
Their joint domain, and Dædalus of old
Adorned with various art, a huge cliff-wall
Recedes into a cavern; and thence call,
Rushing tumultuous through a hundred doors,
As many voices. One roar, the whole, pours.
Æneas touched the threshold, when a cry
Came from within:
“Ask, and I will reply!
Hear! the God!”—
And the Sibyl herself there;
She, yet not herself; breathing not our air;
No mortal accents from a mortal tongue;
Visage, complexion changed, fillet unstrung;
Breast stormily heaving; heart all but broke
In yet untamed resistance to the yoke
The God would fix, to break mind—human birth—
To bind his messenger from Heav’n to Earth;
While She, though pure, adoring, how not repine,
Identity lost, e’en to be Divine!
’Twas instinct in her that rebelled; not she,
The Prophetess, the Sibyl; for now see
Her wrathful for her master’s honour:—
“Thou,
Trojan at His altar, and not a vow!
Deemest mighty mouth of His awful shrine
Will open but to answer prayer from thine?”
Æneas had kept silence, not from fear,
Or shame, but reverence; now he drew near,
Entreating from the bottom of his heart:
“Phœbus, Troy’s champion, when few took our part;
Through whom Achilles died—whose kindly hands
Led us o’er false seas, past perilous lands—
O turn the shores where we have anchor cast,
From the mirage they were to homes at last.
And adverse Gods and Goddesses, to all,
I pray, if e’er Troy’s glory stirred your gall,
Does not down-fallen Pergamus atone—
Is Envy not content with heaps of stone—
With Priam’s House uprooted? What are we,
Mere remnant tossed till now on every sea?
Thee also, holy Prophetess, I ask;
Free thy God’s cloudy riddles from their mask;
In pity for me, who already know
I am to rule Ausonia, unveil how,
Where, and when, to found my City, replace
Troy’s exiled Gods, Genii of our race;
Nor trust thy renderings of what Fate weaves
To the chance flutterings of autumn leaves;
Chant; and be all transcribed; then, when, in pure
Marble fanes, thy God is worshipped, be sure
Kings after me shall treasure what is writ,
And train up scholars to interpret it.”
God and Prophetess listened no more;—
will
Was wrestling to be its own mistress still.
A woman with a God! In vain she raves;
Subduing lips that foam, breast swollen, waves
Of inspiration stamp, rolling along,
Apollo’s dictates on the Sibyl’s tongue,
Till—again the hundred doors open wide—
Phœbus to Æneas by her replied:
“Think not thy work is done because at length
Ocean’s dangers are escaped. All thy strength
Will be tasked on land; though Latium’s lord
Prepares to hail the offer of thy sword,
Thou’llt wish thyself soon afar! Look! a flood—
Tiber foaming to the sea—of men’s blood.
Horrors Simois, Xanthus showed might seem
Repeated by thy loath fancy in a dream.
Nor even wanting to this war—fell war—
An Achilles, Goddess born; Troy’s ill star,
Queen Juno; and, of worse augury yet
For Trojans, or, of snares that Fate has set
For thy feet a surer than all beside—
A foreign hostess, and a foreign bride.
Face trials; turn thy back upon no foe;
By paths, however strait, Chance-opened, go.
Where wilt thou not in Italy beg aid?
If to no purpose, be not thou dismayed.
Fortune loves strange means; how but for me have known
Thy dawn would break first from forth a Greek town?”
Æneas spoke not; for again the jar,
Bellowing, shrieking, roaring—civil war
Between Spirit, Divine, and human—This,
In last contest to stand by what it is;
Planning passages that lead nowhere, in or out,
Darkening truths, perversities of doubt;
Phœbus, if thundering, resolved and cold,
Certain of victory, ne’er quitting hold;
The other, a wild mare on a wild plain.
You heard the cold calm trainer shake the rein,
Tear mutinous mouth with the cruel bit,
Mock at the passion that resented it.
Then quiet; Æneas once more began:
“Speak not of risks endurable by man;
None daunt me; long since I foresaw the whole,
Rehearsed what worst could happen in my soul.
I fear no ordeal; if Hell’s gate be here,
As they say, and it front the darksome mere—
Acheron’s wash—I crave it of thy grace,
Holy One, to meet my sire face to face.
Never had I been parted from his side
Till in an evil hour for me he died.
Not in the agony of that dread night,
Troy’s ruin, did I lose him from my sight;
On these shoulders bore I him ’mid the wreck,
Though all Hell’s hounds were barking at my back.
On my voyagings best of comrades he,
In mortal terrors, on every sea;
Minding nothing how elements might rage—
A heart that defied weaknesses of age!
Tell me the foemen that I would not dare
To see him once more, pain I would not bear.
In the dead watches of the night he came,
And bade me supplicate Thee in his name
To unbar Hell’s gates, and to be my Guide.
Oh think that he is kneeling by my side!
Thy will is law; whate’er Thou wilt is done;
Mercy we pray; rejoin us, Father, Son.
Others have been to whom was given the right,
Living, to travel through the world of night.
Its doors, as Orpheus sounded lute and song,
Opened to let the minstrel pass along;
Fraternal tenderness has paved a way
To and from twilight to radiant day;
Alcides—did not friendship bring him down?
Theseus also—if but that!—
Me, love’s crown,
The noblest, filial piety, draws,
Though into Tartarus’s very jaws!
By no bare title holdest thou in fee
Avernus by gift from great Hecate;
Thine leave to grant, with me the right of love
To visit Hell—and I too count from Jove!”
“Easy,” replied the Sibyl, “the descent
To Avernus; welcome all thither bent;
Dis shuts none out; the task is, when the taste
For sunshine revives, measure back the waste
Wooded wilderness that Cocytus holds
In its innumerable black-slime folds.
What hope for mortals flesh-clogged to retrace
Their way! A few by Jupiter’s good grace,
Or saints on earth, with blood Divine to aid,
Of brief sojourn there stepping-stones have made
To the skies.—
But enough! Well that the sight
Of thy Sire is a passionate delight;
That thy fond heart’s self-satisfying sense
Of duty done is a full recompense
For risking the mad liberty to float
Twice across noisome Styx in Charon’s boat;
And twice view Tartarus,—
Yet first receive
The terms on which alone Thou hast thy leave;
In a nest of dells retired is a grove,
Darkened by shadows of the hills above;
And a tree, sun-proof, whose dense branches hold
Ever among them one of purest gold;
Gold leafage, gold saplings supple, yet tough;
Vain for any, though brave, and fond enough,
To plunge in the Underworld; unless he
Have tracked and plucked the Gold Bough off the Tree.
The Queen of Hades, Proserpine the Fair,
Chooses offerings thence for her to wear,
Never loses the tree glory; instead
Of branch plucked a second straightway is bred,
Thou, high and low, explore; and, if Thou find,
Lay hold on it; should Fate have Thee designed,
It will yield with ease, even joy; if not,
Nor strength, nor steel could tear it from the spot.
And ’tis not all; another duty still
Rests on thee, and a sadder, to fulfil.
While thou would’st learn the future in my cave,
A friend has been lying dead, with no grave—
To the entire Fleet a reproach, a shame.
First give his relics tomb, and rites, they claim.
So, may’st thou with clean hands thy way pursue;
And realms forbid shall open to thy view.”
A tangled maze! With a past bleak and bare,
A future of dim hopes, and certain care;—
A corse blurring the foreground! And of whom?
Then, as Æneas paced the shore in gloom,
Achates with him, see! a Body there!
Misenus, trumpeter, charioteer!
He drowned, and how? that horseman tried and good,
Hard and intrepid spearman, who had stood
The brunt of battle, as of rough sea-wave,
Of Hector and Æneas comrade brave—
There, like worthless seaweed, see! Misenus dead!
In eyes stark staring might almost be read
An appeal as if to Heaven, and Fate,
Against false friends who left him desolate!
And, true, ’twas pity touching on remorse,
Which swept through the armament, when the corse
Was drawn to the encampment on the shore.
The first thought, the Prince led, was to deplore
A comrade; the next, the pyre, to proceed
To raise, as to One who could intercede
In Heaven, what an altar might have been.
A primeval forest that had never seen
Woodman, or, profaning its silence, heard
The horn of huntsman chasing beast or bird,
Suddenly awoke to the frequent crash
Of pitch-pine, ilex, and the mountain-ash,
While heart of oak had to admit a wedge,
And giants rolled down many a hill ledge.
In all the toil none bore sturdier part
Than Æneas; for he, and with full heart,
Grieved for a loyal ally; but his brain,
With that central thought, took a wider train:
“Forests as this,” he mused, “the whole land through!
How to track to one tree a single bough!
Yet”—as of Misenus—“could the Maid tell
Ill news so truly, why not good as well?”
And ah! that instant, in his joyful sight,
Alighting from blue sky, in soft, smooth flight,
On the green turf a pair of milk-white doves
Such as flit where his Mother, Venus, moves.
“After them! Oh! to guess whither they make,
And match their speed whatever course they take!”
Fain would he think the rate was, as they flew,
Ruled for pursuit to keep them just in view,
To the dark arbour where a yellow glow
Should flicker on the verdant turf below.
Hope not in vain; the pair, after brief pause
For circling Avernus, and its death-jaws,
Tower swiftly aloft; next, in straight line
Glide to a tree, settle as by design.
The Hero arrives, and with heart aflame
Marks, checkering green shadows, a gold gleam.
Upon a foreign stem the mistletoe
Will in the woods a cluster of sprays grow,
With berries saffron-hued in winter’s cold.
Thus, on the holm-oak swayed the Branch of Gold,
Rustling its slight leafage in the soft wind;
Coy—rather than resisting, disinclined—
As Æneas plucked, in hot haste to bear
His prize, and trust it to the Sibyl’s care.
Meanwhile, the Trojans thronged, the Dead to mourn
With rites for which no thanks could it return.
First, they build, a marvel for bulk, the pyre—
Pitch-pine for flame, split oak to feed the fire,
Cypress, Death’s tribute, armour to remind
Of the warrior, twigs the logs to bind.
Vast the heap; but, with oil and incense, soon
Fire had done its work; and when it died down,
All being gone that of the mass could burn,
They closed the ashes, wine-washed, in the urn.
Then Chorinœus sprinkled thrice the ring
Of mourners with pure water from the spring,
And bade the Shade, leaving the world above,
Last farewell words of sorrowing and love.
Yet was the debt the Prince was proud to owe
But half-paid to a friend in weal and woe,
Till rose a sepulchre, stately and high,
For th’ honoured dust enshrined therein to lie.
Topped by oar and horn, sword, and spear, and shield,
To proclaim the champion of sea and field,
It crowns the airy Cape that boasts the name,
And through the ages seals a Trojan’s fame.
So, drowned Misenus need not wander more
Between two worlds on Styx’s groaning shore,
Dragging soulless flesh—choke in a foul fen,
Companionless for Shadows, and for Men.
No more an unburied suppliant this,
But Hero, Pilot trumpeting in bliss!
And, their consciences purged, with duties done,
All turned to fresh cares, leaving Misenus alone.
The Prince and men, the Sibyl guiding, went
By a rough track until a yawning rent
In a grim cliff disclosed a cavern; day
Was blocked by a dense grove; and in front lay
A dim dark pool; from its black lips a breath
Steamed into the arched sky, carrying death.
On its banks sounded never a bird’s song;
Whence “Avernus,” “birdless” in the Greek tongue.
Hard-by the Sibyl hallowed victims, four
Steers dusk-coloured; proceeding first to pour
Wine on their heads, and on the altar burn
Bristles from between the horns she had shorn;
Next, by blood calling Hecate, Divine
In Heaven as Hell, to further their design.
The Prince then to the Furies’ kith and kin—
Vain to try their Three vengeful selves to win—
Slaughtered a black-fleeced lamb; to Hades’ Queen
A cow untaught what mother’s joys had been;
And, lastly, after sunset, to the King
Of Tartarus, a vast, rich offering—
Whole bulls’ entrails upon the altars thrown,
With oil to sting the flames to hiss and groan.
But the sun rose, and earth began to growl
Underfoot, dogs in the grey dawn to howl,
And on wooded heights leaves waved in still air,
As Nature felt the Goddess coming there.
“Away, unsanctified; far from the grove,”
Threatens the Sibyl; “as your lives ye love!
Alone, Æneas, sword unsheathed, come Thou;
Need for stout heart, for all thy courage now!”
Prophetess possessed, she dared the dark cave;
Step by step followed he, with soul as brave.
Gods, whose the Spirit-empire, and, ye, hosts—
Chaos, Phlegethon, Powers too—of ghosts,
Dumb in a dumb world, grant I may unfold
Things, of which my spirit by yours is told.
Cloudy must my story needs be to him
Who reads. All to the pilgrims’ selves was dim!
Phantom-like, and alone with night, they passed
Through Dis’s kingdom, lifeless, joyless, waste,
As, pale and ghostly will a forest seem,
Between pale clouds and the moon’s grudging beam.
The first stage Orcus, where before the gate,
In forecourt, watchful, if with closed eyes, wait—
Padlocks on Hell’s jaws—Mourning, vengeful Care,
In many aspects; pale Disease and Fear,
Age looking back, Hunger counselling ill,
With Neediness that numbs the nerve of will:—
Forms of terror they all; and, no less dread,
Death, and Sleep, his cousin, sharing one bed;
Labour with a lash, and ill joys that taste
Like honey in the mouth, and lay Mind waste;
While in guard-houses opposite lodge War,
And Carnage driving a funeral car;
The Furies too—each in iron-barred cell—
Police-runners on Earth, hangmen in Hell;
And mad Discord, wreathing her locks of gore
With vipers borrowed from her neighbours’ store.
For centre an old elm, immense in girth,
Keeps sunless, barren, a wide space of earth.
Rumour gives it to idle Dreams, which browze
Upon the leaves, and hang from all the boughs.
Nor far away in the same region dwells
Many a strange freak of whom legend tells;
Centaurs in the doorway, Scylla, fish, maid,
Briareus hundred-headed, arrayed
In flames, Chimæra, and, bellowing beast,
The Hydra, Harpies that pollute a feast,
Gorgons looking cold death, and the Earth-King,
Who grew a fresh third body at each fling.
No stain on Æneas if monsters made
Him grip and wave at the dour crew his blade,
Until warned by the Sibyl that they were
Bodiless Shades, invulnerable as air.
Passing unharmed, they now approached the shore
Where Acheron, Styx, Cocytus meet, and pour,
In one vast whirlpool, mingled filth and sand,
And saw upon the bank old Charon stand.
Squalid ferryman, he keeps watch and ward
Over all these waters and streams; a beard
Shaggy, dirty-white, from his chin flows down;
Frowzy his cloak tied by a knot; a frown
Sits on his brow, o’er eyes twin pools of fire.
The barge, poled, sails to help, is, like the sire,
In iron-rusty age, but crude-green, good
To ship Shades numberless across the flood.
In truth masses rush pell-mell to the bank,
Dead of all sorts, without order, or rank;
Heroes that in their country’s cause had bled,
Aged wives and husbands, boys, girls unwed,
Youths leaving parents to inscribe the stone,
And linger through unwelcome years alone:—
As many as the leaves Autumn’s first frost
Brings down; as winged swarms that have ocean crossed
To escape in warm lands harsh winter’s blasts.
Pitiful the entreaties to be passed
Over. Some Charon takes, rejects the rest—
Perhaps with “sad” heart hid inside that rugged breast!
Well might Æneas wonder at the haste
To reach o’er those waters yon gloomy waste.
“Cocytus this,” the Maid, “that Styx, in whose
Name Gods dare not swear, and then break their vows;
They mark the boundaries of life and death,
Between the world above, the world beneath;
Spirit cannot claim to pass either flood
While it must drag behind it flesh and blood.
A way has been appointed and decreed,
By funeral rites, for it to be freed
From that now mere burden; who lack them pray
The Ferryman in vain; driven away,
They tread a hundred years the same dull track,
Till, less in hope than apathy straying back,
They are—disbodied—afloat! It may be,
If rarely, that friendship, or charity,
Late informed, or remorse for crime, has laid
White bones in earth, and thus a debt repaid.
Æneas heard, believed; for by him stood,
Witnesses to fortune of storm and flood,
And Hell’s hard rules, two whom he recognised
As of Troy’s remnant, but at sea surprised;
By a wild south wind robbed of life and tomb.
Leucaspis, Orontes, they; and in doom
Alike, though companionless, save for woe,
Palinurus!”
Exclaimed Æneas: “So
Diedst?” but Phœbus promised: “None lost at sea,
And all to disembark in Italy?”
“The Oracle spoke truth;” the Pilot said:
“Clinging to the helm, the fourth morn I made
Italy; the while, by the Seas I swear,
I feared not for myself; my only care
Was for thy ship, its steersman lost, and helm,
A prey for waves and gales to overwhelm.
But I landed, began to climb the cliff,
When brute shore-men taking me, soaked and stiff,
And unarmed, for sea-prize, attacked and slew.
Then, stripping my body naked, they threw
Into the sea, by turns there to abide,
And on the beach, at pleasure of the tide.
Oh, by the heaven’s cheerful light and airs,
By thy Sire’s memory, thy hopes and cares
For thy son! to Velia, returning, steer—
My body floats hard-by—give it a bier!
Or why, my Prince, not take a shorter mode
Of lifting my intolerable load?
Whate’er thou wilt, thou canst, with, by thy side,
A Divine Mother for thy shield and guide.
How else could living mortal hope to pass
Such rivers, and the Stygian morass?
Let me cross with thee; all my griefs will cease;
I shall have died at last, and be at peace;”—
“Unburied,” cried the Maid: “without command
From the Furies, presume to tread their strand!
Stop importuning for what Fate denies;
Heaven has not forgotten thy death-cries;
Thy murderers shall avow their foul crime,
And thou be honoured to the end of time;
For I can teach thee more, to ease the ache
Of waiting:—the Cape o’er thy tomb shall take
Thy name; seamen, as, doubling it, they sail,
Shall muse upon thy death, and tell the tale.”
They parted, he to tramp those marshes drear,
Where years are moments, a moment a year.
And living spirits to dead bodies bound
Pace in a tedious circle round and round;
Still, with his pain a joy—“My Cape, my name!”
For Death is ne’er so dead as to be dead to Fame!
Farewell to him. Æneas, with his Guide,
Approached, not unobserved, the black stream’s side
Charon was on the watch as they pursued
Their way along the sad and silent wood.
Scarcely had they emerged when he began
To scold, and Æneas first: “Halt, armed man,
Whoever thou art! No step further! Why
Wouldest thou cross? For ghosts alone I ply
Bound for the realms of slumb’rous Night and Sleep.
Not for live bodies do I ferry keep!
Do I not well remember how I crossed
With Hercules on board, much to my cost?—
Think! Zeus’s son, incomparably strong,
Fastened Cerberus with a leathern thong,
And drew trembling from under Pluto’s throne!
Who paid for the sacrilege? I alone.
When Theseus and Pirithous dared try
To carry off our Queen, who culprit? I!”
“Waste wrath!” quoth the Sibyl: “Thy hound may save
His bark to fright the pale Shades from his cave.
Pluto’s honour is safe; feel no alarms;
’Tis Æneas famed for piety and arms!
Hither has he descended from above
To pay his Sire the homage of his love.
Though not moved thou by tenderness like his,
See the Branch! Render fealty to This!”
At the sight rarely seen the anger sank,
Awe followed; straight backed Charon for the bank,
Clearing bench and deck of many a Shade
To make room for Æneas and the Maid.
Starting with its unwonted weight once more,
The coracle groaned, leaked at every pore;
But lasted out, and at the water’s edge,
Landed in clammy mud and grey-green sedge.
From where against the landing-place he lay,
Cerberus opened his three jaws to bay
Strangers, when the Sibyl, seeing the snakes
Round the neck arching, threw drugged honey-cakes.
The ravening throats licked the whole up; then—
While the monstrous limbs grovelled o’er the den—
Bidding the rivers none re-cross farewell,
The Pair are through the gate, and inside Hell.
The Underworld, an Empire manifold,
Is famed within it two main States to hold;—
For the Damned, and Fiends to torment them, Dis,
The Elysian fields for Saints in bliss.—
But Spirits of the Dead, ere they can come
Before their Judge to be assigned a home
Among the Blest or Sinners, undergo
Two stages of probation; first, we know,
For it to be on due inspection clear
They are qualified as Ghosts; and, next, where
To prepare for trial.—
From graves men rise
Shadows, bodiless, but as Death’s surprise
Caught them; and therefore shadows of the whole,
Of Body with its accidents, and Soul.
Such—Ghosts—they wake on Acheron’s dark shore:
Such by grim Charon are they ferried o’er;
As such they show when rapping at Hell’s gate;
And are sorted in vestibules to wait.
A few mortals, and living, there have been
Who, by the Gods’ leave, in a day have seen
The whole Nether World; but e’en its wide marge,
Reserved for Untried, would take men at large
Their lives to traverse. Reckon! the huge space
Needed to lodge the dead of human race!
Expectants of a summons to be tried
For the lives they led, and the deaths they died!
On probation for abjuring Earth and Sun
When their work above was not fully done!
For being here before it had begun!
Causes peopling this land of Little Ease
Myriad!
body’s accidents, disease,
A wild beast’s claws, a sudden east-wind’s blight;
Riches, poverty; daring and affright;
Jealousies of nations, brothers; the smart
Of love rejected, and a broken heart:
Hope become despair, as past, present schemes
Melt all into the fairy-land of dreams.
The victims—“Legion”—seeming still alive—
Wait here, distributed in Circles five;
Creatures of strange aspect, Earth’s rust inlaid
On spirit bearing it without flesh to aid.
Wanted a world to lodge the whole; and still
Continual accretions, plain, vale, hill,
Forest, are reclaimed from Immensity,
To hold this wreckage of humanity.
The first Circle to which were drawing near
Æneas and his Guide, might force a tear
From hearts of iron; for the entire air
Was but a storm of infantile despair;
One scream—plaints of robbery of the share
In sweet life to which each is born an heir.
Only, clasped to their mother’s breasts, of all
Promised at birth, they have—a funeral!
In the next Circle, less by one degree
Adverse their lot who died through perjury;
For they can claim revision of their cause
By eternal justice, if not man’s laws.
Minos holds his high Court; sifts hearts and lives;
A mute jury through Urns its verdict gives.
Acquittal will not breath of life restore;
But the appellant shuns his fellow Shades no more.
In the third Circle a sad folk abide,
Who go always wondering why they died.
Their hands are wet and red with blood they spilt;
And yet no neighbour charges them with guilt.
Accusers, sternest, themselves keep, within;
“Guilty,” they plead; unpardonable sin.
If a joy, ’tis but to avow their shame;
The story’s essence always is the same:
“Fool I! So wholly hateful did it seem—
Torture to my eyes—slant of a sun beam;
Needs shut it out forthwith—so simply how,
As by sending soul, body straight below?”—
Next moment!
if penury, mean toil were
The price for breathing once more Earth’s free air,
Gladly would all accept Man’s vilest lot,
But Hell’s and Heaven’s laws permit it not.
Slow Acheron is their eternal bound,
With unamiable Styx coiled ninefold around!
A fourth Circle holds within confines wide
“I Campi Dolorosi”; therein hide
In secluded alleys, and myrtle grove,
Those eaten through with leprosy of love.
Death kills it not; for a multitude haunt
The bowers, melancholy music chant.
With Procris, Laodamia, the rest,
The wound, unhealed, still bleeding in her breast,
Tyrian Dido roamed in a great wood.
Æneas in the leafy twilight stood,
Uncertain; as, at the month’s dawn, we doubt
If it be moon, or cloud flitting about.
Soon recognition, love; and, with them both,
Tears, shame, remembrance of his plighted troth:
“Then, ’twas truth,” he cried, “floated o’er the sea—
Dead—and by thy own hand—and, Queen, for Me!
But by the Stars, by all the Gods I know,
By what Pow’rs punish perjuries below—
Against, I swear, my heart’s will, by commands
Divine, I left thy shore for other lands.
To please, not myself, but because I must,
I pace Shadow-land, mouldy with the rust,
Miseries, aches of folly and of crime,—
Accumulated hoardings of old Time.
An instrument I of the Gods’ fixed plan;
Yet even thus would have rebelled as man,
Faced the penalties, had I been so vain
As to imagine the excess of pain
My parting would cause thee!
In pity, stay!
Whom flyest thou? I have so much to say!
And only one poor moment Fate allows!
Rob not of this, the last it grants our vows!”
As fruitless task to seek by words to slake
Fury of a furnace, as to re-make
A broken heart, or back to life surprise
Killed fondness.—On earth she fixed sullen eyes;
Moved by his prayers no more than by a smile
Of Venus would be cliff on Paros’ isle.
At last, though long his sad remorse pursued,
Gathering her strength, she regained the wood.
Their route resumed, they reached a land where air
Had a stir as of life; hither repair
War lords; here the heroes of old fights meet—
Adrastus, Parthenopæus; here greet
Æneas friends from Ilium, whose doom
Himself had witnessed, wept for, at the tomb;
And now re-wept, beholding each a Shade,
Though, like Idæus, in bright armour clad,
And charioteering.
On left and right,
Not with one look content, they throng; delight
To find pretexts to keep him, walk beside;
Question why he came, and how long might bide.
Not so with the Greeks Agamemnon led;
Seeing Æneas’s drawn sword, some fled
As once to their Fleet; all quaked; some would shout,
Mouths gaped, and the cry, a ghost, quavered out.
Shamed at the sight, Æneas, gazing there
As they shrank before him, became aware
Of a Ghost intent upon their dismay—
A Shade continuing the disarray
In which life had fled; hands, nostrils and ears
Lopped off by vengeful, jealous swords and spears;
Lace-work of gashes; the Shade shivered o’er
Dishonouring wounds, and bent, striving sore
To hide them, and himself.—
Hardly, at last
Æneas knew; and, with tears flowing fast,
Forced him to turn:
“Knight, Prince, Deiphobus,
Whose the force, will, to have outraged thee thus?
I had heard, on the death-night of our Town,
On a pile slain thou laid’st thee dying down.
Thy body I found not, but I addressed
Thrice farewell, consigning thy soul to rest.”
“No pious kindness,” answered Priam’s son,
“Friendship could require, hast thou left undone.
To Fate, and the Greek Murderess I owe
Horrors I bore on earth, my shame below;
She made my flesh my tomb, epitaph writ
Thereon, and on my ghost has graven it!
Thou knowest—how forget?—the lying joy
Of the last, the funeral night of Troy.
The Traitress through the festal city led
A chorus of Bacchantes, at its head
Waving a flaming torch; and, with the cry
Of ‘Evan,’ from the Citadel on high,
Summoned her ambushed Argives.—
I meanwhile,
Worn with the day’s cares, unsuspecting guile—
Least of all in my new-made Wife—in sleep,
Unbroken as quiet death’s self, sweet, deep,
Lay in my baleful chamber, whence my Bride
Had stolen all arms, even from my side
My trusty sword.—
Then she invites within
Menelaus—purgation for old sin!
Lo! he, and Ulysses, arch fiend, and She,
With Me unarmed—Why more?—Dost thou not see?
Gods, whom I worshipped, have not I a right
To claim like for like? Will Ye not requite?
But Thou; say, what mischance on sea or land,
Caprice of Fortune, or the Gods’ command,
Has sentenced thee in life to wander here,
Away from sunlight, and glad household cheer?”
A story long to tell; and longer still
Had been, were time Below, for good or ill,
Not measured for guests from the Upper Air
By speed of rosy Dawn’s four horses there.
But for Æneas, with half Day’s course run,
Not yet had the decisive stage begun.
Perforce the Sibyl warned against delay;
Nor thought Deiphobus his friend to stay.
Though bowed by unimaginable ill,
He faded into the Dark, to fulfil
His fate, with Adieu; “a high lot enjoy!
Be glory thine, and found a greater Troy!”
The fifth Circle left, they desired by haste
To pay time lost in grieving for the past.
Where the road forked, they took the right, that led
To Elysium; but, turning his head,
Æneas stood—bewildered, and in awe;
For, backed by a huge range of cliffs, he saw,
Extending far, behind a triple wall,
A city that one might a kingdom call,
Girt by waters—Phlegethon their dread name—
That whirl echoing rocks, and floods of flame.
Then, if that torrent of fire could be crossed,
What of the adamantine gates? Where host
Of men, nay, Gods of high Heaven, with pow’r
To tear those from their storm-defying tow’r?
And, as if this were not enough to keep
Dis safe, Tisiphone, who needs no sleep,
Sits guard in blood-red robe beside the door,
Reckoning each pulsation of the roar,
Every whizz of the lash, moan of pain,
Grating of iron, rattling of the chain.
Æneas heard too; his feet in fear clove
To the ground as frozen; he could not move
From the spot he trod. “What sins punished there,
And how? Whose those hoarse wailings of despair?”
Repelled—attracted: his unuttered thought
She answered:
“Ask not of me to be brought
Within; none guiltless enter but, like me,
They set in charge under Queen Hecate.
Herself, installing me, vouchsafed to tell
The system on which Heaven peoples Hell.
Committals hither are on sentence giv’n
By Rhadamanthus, righteous as Heav’n.
A sinner joys in craft that has concealed
His crime in life; but here it stands revealed
Blazing as the Sun; how vain cunning when
Tisiphone hauls the convict, grieved then
For old triumphs; in her right hand the scourge,
In her left snakes. She screams the while to urge
Her savage pair of sisters to make haste
From banks of dim Cocytus for a feast!
The Trials living men may not attend,
Or the dire chastisements in which they end,
But—for so much is lawful—thou shalt see
The Prison’s threshold.
At a sign from me,
Look! Gates of Adamant have opened wide,
Shrieking in loud protest; on either side,
The Fury, and a Hydra, grisly sight,
That hisses from fifty black jaws its spite;
While Tartarus beyond them plunges down
Full twice the space from red-hot Phlegethon
To the blue vault of Ether.—
Mark the twain,
And thank thy fate for being spared my pain
Of visiting the dungeons they control.
Noting unending torturings of soul!”
“Far from me, were I able, to express
Agonies of the Lost, their hopelessness!
Enough their names who sinned;—
here, hurled to Dis
By lightning at bottom of the abyss
Roll Earth’s sons the Titans; and I saw there
The Aloeid Twins, who scaled upper air,
Piling mount on mount; by brute strength alone
Tried to storm Olympus, and Jove dethrone
Salmoneus too, and the price his pride
Cost him, for choosing impious to ride
Mimicking lightnings’ flash, the thunder’s roar
Fool! to ape Jove with his steeds as they bore
His car through Elis, torches as they cast
Their smoky gleams, trumpets’ quavering blast.
Brief the trickeries of that crazed career,
Joy for man on Earth’s stage to act God’s peer;
And swift climax when, amid storms, there fell
Bolts that drove the pretender down to Hell!
Near him Earth’s nursling, Tityus, I saw,
Stretched o’er nine acres, with, to fill its maw,
A hook-beaked vulture clawing at his breast
For the liver e’er eaten, ne’er at rest;
Since growing ever, putting on new flesh;
So, the Thing gropes for dainties ever fresh.
Myriad Crime’s forms—Dis for all has room.
Kinship that should nurse kindness, rings its doom;
Virtues that have turned strangers into friends,
Oft change brothers and sisters into fiends.
Children, instead of vying to maintain
Parents, have beaten them, and even slain.
A traitor to human nature and hearth
Seduces her who owes to him her birth.
Lawyers, snapping ties sacred as of blood,
Have spun about their clients webs of fraud.
Misers have gone on hatching gold from gold—
A host of them—refusing to withhold
Grains from the hoard, although it were to save
Nearest that should be dearest from the grave.
Guests—till schooled here—have thought theft of a wife
Well worth the risk of forfeiture of life.
Liegemen, loved, aggrandized, have drawn the sword,
Himself had girded on, to stab their Lord.
Statesmen have abused a fond people’s trust,
To sell and tread its freedom in the dust.
Others, having dammed law-making at the source,
Opened, closed locks as gapes or shuts a purse.
The course of life cannot be ruled so straight,
Homes so pure, opportunities so great,
Reasons so full and plain for doing well,
But that they may be used as roads to Hell.
”Penalties”?—
As manifold, various.
The Lapithæ know it, Pirithous,
Tantalus, Ixion. I have held my breath
At black rock threatening, not, welcome Death,
But—for Shadows may feel—mangled, crushed bones,
Dragging eternally over jagged stones.—
That, in act to fall, ever seemed in air.—
And I have seen Hell’s cooks a feast prepare;
Spread couches with purple, and on gold-rests.
Then—dainties in view—as the famished guests
Seated themselves in hungry haste to sup,
The eldest Fury, screaming, started up
From where she lay, and, waving torch alight
Swept banquet, banqueters, into cold night.
On some the doom to push a mass up hill,
And, when it slips, as slip it ever will,
Still push; for some, e’en worse, the Wheel; and then—
Limbs healed—to be broken again, again.
There hapless Theseus sits, and will aye sit;
Phlegyas there, whose cry—might I deaden it!—
Is in mine ears: ‘Men, be warned! Scorn not Heav’n;
Never is sin against the Gods forgiv’n!’”
“More”? Yea; had I a hundred mouths; in each
A tongue of iron to give forth my speech;
And thou weeks to listen, I could not tell
Of all the guilt, its chastisements in Hell.
Enough for thee to know all there have dared
To break God’s laws, and in like kind have fared.
The deeds have been done; and now, fast shut in,
The doers take the wages of their sin.
But time presses; hasten, wouldst thou fulfil
Duties charged by Heaven’s grace, thy own good-will.
Courage; for we have left behind the Pit
Of sin and torture, and are soon to quit
Even the melancholy Precincts, where
The dead still mourn the Past, the Future fear.
Already I see the walls Cyclopian, built
To shut off lands of misery and guilt
From the happier one to which we wend.
Lo the Arch! there must thou thy Branch suspend!”
Crossing the intervening twilight space,
They stood ’neath the vault of the gate in face.
Then, sprinkled with fresh water from a spring,
Æneas hung up his gold offering.
Elysium’s doors opened; he was free,
Having paid her due to its Deity.
ELYSIUM
A land for joyance made; blest for the blest;
Happy in being chosen for their rest;
For nowhere greener lawns, more bow’ry glades
Inviting into more reposeful shades
Of arched romantic groves, with, ev’rywhere,
Steeped in a purple glow, a larger air
Than Earth’s; for the lower world owes no debt
To sun or stars with which our skies are set;
It has them of its own, as real as ours.
Real too its grass, the fragrance of its flow’rs;
Real they to Spirit as to them It seems,
Though for mortals unsubstantial as are dreams.
On turf or yellow sand some test the skill,
That earned them fame in life; and is theirs still.
The woods are full of revellers, who beat
Time to gay dancers and their flying feet;
Or banqueting sit, garlanded with bays,
Singing in chorus legends of old days;
While others proud of battle-fields afar
Conduct a mimic spectacle of war;
Spears waiting to be snatched, and the broad shield
To be slung, chargers harnessed for the field;—
Shadows to terrestrial men, who call
Earthly things real, when shadows most of all;—
Shadows these of the busy lives they led
On earth, which pursue them now they are dead;
Nought palpable, unless that through a grove
Eridanus rolls to the world above.
Here ignorantly happy dwell in joy
Princes like Dardanus who founded Troy;
With Teucer father of a royal race,
Gallant as noble, and most fair of face;
Ilus, Assaracus, of blood divine,
Through whom Æneas proudly traced his line.
Here stood showing glorious wounds a band
Of heroes fall’n to save its native land;
Though other arts could equal entrance gain,—
To give life charm, or steal a pang from pain.
Priests too, who as they at the altar stood
Offered pure lives as well as victims’ blood:
And seers, who ne’er falsified Heav’n’s truth,
But spoke as they heard from Apollo’s mouth:—
A various tribe, yet all alike in this,
That, having served, they have deserved their bliss.
The Maid led where the white-filleted throng
Was thickest; for Musæus’s the song,
Responsive to the lyre’s seven sweet chords,
That vied with all the magic of the words.
High he by head and shoulders o’er the ring
Around. The Sibyl, when he ceased to sing,
Besought him of his courtesy to tell
Where might Anchises in that blest land dwell;
Their search for him had many labours cost;
Dread sights been seen, perilous rivers crossed;
Their grace was brief, they must not longer bide;
How, clogged with flesh, find him without a guide?
Quick answer made the sage: “We count no home
As you on earth; wheresoever we roam
At home are we; for our repose at noon,
Or eve, no couch can equal with its down
A meadow bank, that rills unfailing heap
With flow’rs wooing irresistible sleep.
But flesh and blood aye move the heart and will,
And ye are here their purpose to fulfil;
So, follow me beyond this hanging peak,
And I will point your path to him you seek.”
Under his lead they climbed the height, and thence
Down into a wide, smiling champaign, whence
Opened a wooded valley: in a glade
Anchises stood, and deep in thought surveyed
A host of hurrying Shades. As he gazed,
He heard steps, his Son’s!
Eagerly he raised,
Both hands, while eyes and heart joined in the burst
Of love and joy; each struggling to be first
Its welcome to express: “Dearest! at last
I see Thee; at what cost of perils passed!
Yet never feared I that the utmost pow’rs
Of Earth and Hell could bar a love like ours
From meeting, as in old times, face to face,
In full converse, however brief the space.
With trust undoubting traced I to its goal
Thy devious course; for well I knew thy soul;
Each stage I numbered; tempests on what seas;
Unfriendly lands; kindnesses worse than these!”
“And could’st Thou,” cried Æneas “more repine,
Missing my presence than I longed for thine?
Thy image warned me on the island shore,
To ask thy counsels, as, on earth, of yore,
So, I am here! Once more to feel thy heart
Beating to my own!—
Nay; my Father, why,
When I would clasp hands, kiss thy face, deny
The embrace I dared Hell’s alarms to gain?”
Of no avail his prayers, tears; all vain;
Thrice in his arms the image melted away—
As flutter of breeze; dream at break of day.
Near where Anchises and Æneas stood
Shades swarmed, dense, ever denser, in a wood
Which rustled all its bushes with the press—
As of a migrant nation numberless—
Of Spirits emulous to be the first
To reach grey Lethe’s edge, and quench their thirst—
—Thus, in languorous stillness of noontide,
Sudden the slumb’rous calm is swept aside
By an inrush of bees; in wild descent,
Like pirates from the main, on nothing bent
But spoil they seem; yet each has its own flow’r,
To which sure instinct guides it hour by hour,—
Æneas saw the haste, knew not th’ excuse;
For him it seemed to be Hell broken loose.
Even when he heard the marvellous tale
That the myriads gathered in that vale
Were no unwilling, mourning outcasts there,
Condemned to breathe once more the upper air,
But after their secular repose full fain
Flesh to resume, links in an endless chain,
The world-worn hero shuddered none the less
It might be his to count it happiness
To exchange the peace of the myrtle grove
For stark sunshine and gross body above;
To be of those whom Lethe should wash clear
Of all they once had been, and all they were:—
That Elysium’s a waiting-room for life;
Life a dust-heap for trials, failures, strife
That men are Shadows all, expecting doom,
Whether flesh, or to shift it in a tomb.
“Forbear,” replied Anchises, old and wise,
“To measure laws of Fate by earthly eyes.
From the beginning of the sky and land,
The stars where once the Titans held command,
The sun and moon that share the day and night,
Air’s liquid fields;—all owe their charm and light
To eternal Spirit. That feeds the whole,
Breathes into bodies, lifeless else, a soul.
Mankind and beasts, winged Things, and monster strange,
That ’neath the level plains of Ocean range,
Draw hence their fire, the instinct of a birth
Elsewhere;—alas! for the burdensome bulk
Of limbs diseased, and joints that creak and sulk
For the foul lusts they stir, the scares, affrights,
The cowardly griefs, and as vain delights,
The Dark through which flesh stumbles, halt and blind
The dungeon where it keeps shut close the Mind,
Lest at one breath of air it should in scorn
Of earth fly back to Heaven where ’twas born.
Meanwhile an evil partnership for both!—
Spirit incorporate, however loth
To be associate with sores and blains,
Vice’s parasites, must bear fleshly pains
To be cleansed; for death is itself no cure;
Body, Soul with it, share in the Impure.
Some, carcasses, swing, split open, for breeze
To scour and wring, to bleach, and scorch, or freeze
For some a mill-stream whirls a crime about,
Or a furnace roars a rich baseness out.
Just the Judgment, every judgment true;
Each of us bears no more than is his due;
High as the merits of our kith and kin,
None but himself can carry his own sin.
Blest the sharp ordeal for the few who thence
Pass, not in sheer spiritual innocence,
But in no worse than such affections dressed
As leave the pure celestial spark at rest,
And free in these fair fields to dream away
Any chance taint surviving from earth’s clay
To dull the sereneness of the fire giv’n
To infants, that they may remember Heav’n.”
“And now behold the final stage:—
this rout,
Its cycle—a thousand years—being out—
Called by God’s Messenger of Life and Death,
Descends where Lethe, in the cleft beneath,
Will make it, drinking of the troubled flood,
Conscious it once was clothed with flesh and blood.
And yearn to take them back, and to return
Rude air to breathe, and feel a rude sun burn.
Nearer now draw with me, that from this bank
Thou mayest watch the comers rank by rank;
Read, as I point, the future in each face;
See, as I see, the glory of our race—
Great as it was, and greater still to be,
Graft on Troy’s stock, the bud of Italy.
Mark him who leans upon a bloodless spear;
’Tis thy own son; but look upon him here;
On earth Thou wilt not; for, when thy long life
Is all but spent, Lavinia thy Wife
Shall conceive a child, and in full time bear
Silvius in the woods to be thy heir;
King of Alba, like many of his line,
As Procas and Æneas, namesake thine.
And still kings come—I cannot number them,
Each adding to old a fresh diadem!
But stay! who advances crested like to Mars—
For whom Jove keeps a place among the stars?
Romulus—City maker? Tenfold more!
From him Earth’s arbiter, matchless in war,
With no limits to empire but the Pole,
And none below Olympus to the soul!—
—As Joys Cybele to have peopled Heav’n,
Rome boasts a breed to which Earth is giv’n!
Turn thy eyes; regard this Company; know
What a full tide of grandeur is to flow
Hence of thy name; how from Thyself, and from
Iulus, in time shall Julius come,
And one as great, long destined to be born
By Fate’s decree—else were Fate’s self forsworn—
That, where King Saturn reigned in days of yore,
Augustus shall the Golden Age restore.
Marches still; already his edicts sway
Where our day is night, and our night is day;
Among the Gætuli; beyond them; far
Outside the orbit, light, of any star;
Outside track of Sun and dancing Hours, where
Atlas swings the world’s axis, with its gear.
Rumours of his approaching overwhelm
Quaking Mæotis and the Caspian realm;
While sevenfold Nile offers fealty,
Trembling for what the Master shall decree.
Have we not heard in legends or romance
How God or Hero has made his advance,
Victor throughout Earth?—
Of him who laid low
Lerna’s fire-breathing Dragon with his bow,
Shot the brazen-footed Hind, and stilled the roar
In Arcady of Erymanthian boar!—
Of Bacchus in tipsy triumph, a yoke
Of spotted tigers in his chariot, broke
To obey, for reins, tendrils of a vine—
His Mænads leaping down the long incline
Of Nysa, wildly singing, their locks curled
With vine leaves, following to win a world?
Yet what in tales of Gods and men can match
For scorn of space, and ardour of despatch,
Delight in braving peril, grasp of mind,
Our Cæsar’s progress to the verge of Ind!
Wilt, Son, in view of all thy future Rome,
With her chiefs destined from thyself to come,
And while ancestral fire of Troy burns high
In thy own veins, put off the hour to try
Valour in act, and hesitate to prove
Thy right to lordship given Thee by Jove?”
“Observe, as they pass by us, one by one,
Those who will glorify thy Rome, my Son.
Illegible to them, for us the whole
Of their careers is writ as on a scroll,
See, the grey-bearded King, the Priest, the Sage,
Of many years, though not bowed down with age,
Whose laws devised to rule a petty town
Will fit it when into an empire grown;
Next, Tullus, warrior-prince, and Ancus, near,
Boasting his wit to catch the popular ear:
Then the proud Tarquins; and, of soul as proud,
Brutus, grudging not Freedom his sons’ blood—
Careless if fainter hearts, a feebler time
Brand a patriot’s sacrifice as crime!
Ah! changes—leaps and bounds—so fast surprise
Brains, toned here to calm, that my aged eyes
Are dazzled as forms pass, and then repass,
And straight are lost—reflections in a glass.
No smoother course for this, thy Rome to be,
Than now, my Son, for Thee in Italy.
A whirl of arms ere the fair land will deign
To grant thy offspring’s right divine to reign;
An age-long wrestle; yet a rope of sand
Makes a poor rival of an iron band.—
Hide from my sight those lictors, and a Son!
But they tell how Latium shall be won.—
A will inflexible, a discipline
Making a religion of a straight line,
A consuming, passionate, red-hot force
Never prisoned in its volcanic source—
Pride in the City of the Seven Hills—
Will merge all other passions, heal all ills.
These the fire inspired, that in fateful war
Gave Cossus and Jove arms of Tuscan Lar.
Maligned and banned Camillus their first call
Brought as through air to save Rome from the Gaul
Fabricius taught the Epirot King
Thus, that Rome wounded rises on the wing.
From them Serranus learned the art to guide
The State, and victor o’er the billows ride
As straight as he his furrow erewhile ploughed.
Regard these visages serene and proud
To do whate’er is Rome’s behest, content
To go whithersoever they are sent.
See, war’s twin thunderbolts, the Scipios,
Their oracle Rome, their one mark her foes.
See them to whom Achaia bows the head,
With Macedon’s monarch in triumph led;—
Avenging on Mycenæ, and the race
Of Atreus, on Achilles, the disgrace
They heaped upon Troy, and the outraged shrine
Of Pallas, their own patroness Divine.
Nor fail note that old man, heeding no jeer,
No hint of blood slow and sluggish, e’en fear:
Resolved throughout of one thing—ne’er, from haste
In clutching popular applause, to waste
A chance on Fortune’s wheel for his Rome’s Shield
To foil War’s cross-eyed Master in the field;
And, near to him, in Britomart’s royal spoils,—
Like a brave boar, trapped in a huntsman’s toils,
Unconquerable else—the battle’s lord—
Confess it, Gaul, Carthage, and Syracuse—Rome’s Sword!
But who is this, Thou askest, in the pride
Of arms and youth, advancing by his side?
Thou mark’st the likeness; well might he be son:
From the same stock he springs, a noble one.
Strange, in the changeless calm of these blest groves
The shadow of a brooding sorrow moves....
Well might I weep, if Spirit could, the fate
Of good as fair, and not more good than great.
Earth will have but seen to lose him!
Heaven,
Wert thou jealous, lest, thinking him given
To this our mighty Rome, not just on loan,
But to live her life, be her very own,
She would wax overweening? Yet the woe
Must surely wake thy pity, when, below,
Thou hear’st the wails numberless for such charms
Borne to their pyre upon the Field of Arms;
And Thou, old Tiber, as thou flowest by
The tomb in which the loved One’s ashes lie,
Wilt not forget how thou hast seen him play
Oft on thy banks young, beautiful, and gay.
Never will hope be raised so high by boy
Blending the blood of Latium and Troy;
And, when shall our earth ever find again
Such loyalty and faith in living men—
A right hand so approved in every art,
On horse, or foot, to do a soldier’s part?
I pity, praise, love!
Arrest but the chain
Of Fate; and lo! Marcellus come again!
—Armfuls of lilies bring; for Soul as sweet!
Spread crimson flow’rs, fit carpet for his feet!
—Grief for a Shadow, from a Shadow grief;
Yet Shadows find a Shadow of relief
For boundless loss in Shadows e’en of grief!”
“But now for the near future—I will show
How to surmount, and how to bear with, woe;
Faint not, endure, and earn renown! On Earth,
What, without store of fame, is living worth!
Weigh not the toils and snares, that, I foresee,
Impend, ere Thou shalt reign in Italy.
Remember thy reward, the noble end
Tow’rds which thy trials and thy hardships tend.
Teach a world-empire how its Founder bears
The load of war, and, worse, intestine cares;
For these must be, though I spare Thee the sight
Of brothers against brothers armed for fight—
Decii, Drusi, Gracchi—each House moved
By jealous passion for the Rome all loved.
And when the All-Conquering shall have hurled
Her legions to the confines of the world,
Lo! Chiefs—allied by blood, and leagued to share
Two continents between them—arm to tear
Their country’s entrails piecemeal! Baleful strife!
Will not one victim serve—Great Cato’s life?
Joy! God grants my prayer! There is brave steel
Of double virtue, both to wound and heal;
And of that heav’nly temper, Youth, is thine,
Second founder of the Julian line!
Hail to Olympian Cæsar! Who would
Not guard dear life at cost of Roman blood;
And ere—too soon—he parts, will choose an heir
Of skill divine the ship of State to steer
Clear of the breakers; Kind and keen to know
His fellow Romans, with the rush and flow,
The genius for sovereignty; their fate
To be Earth’s lords, and Earth’s to stand and wait!
Let others wile the furnace with its heat
To warm the heart within the bronze to beat,
Cunningly lift th’ imprisoning stone away,
And lead nymphs forth to blush in rosy day;
Dissemble truth with nimble tongues; and call
Stars by their names; tell when they rise and fall.
Others Rome’s Arts;—
To speak her mistress will:
Fight if it please her; bid the world keep still!
See that her vassals nowhere suffer wrong;
—Make Pride her Right; be Valiant, and be Strong!”
Death, and her brother, Sleep, rule side by side
Realms that shadowy boundaries divide,
Yet none can cross but through gates twain; and these
Are in the charge of Death, who keeps the keys.
Now and again a Spirit will repair
For love or hate back to the upper air,
To commune with Spirit, so far as whole
Can become two parts, Soul be just a Soul.
Of dull, dun horn the gate such use; hard by
Gleams the other, perfect of ivory.
Thence from the Under-world Imps float above
Freaks that in spite or idlesse they have wove,
To raid and wilder slumber, let it close
Men’s eyes, and cheat their senses of repose.
Anchises, for whom Space and Time were nought,
Had through the gate of horn Æneas sought
By night on the Etruscan sea; he now
With last words, and many a longing vow
Of love, confessed his child was due to part—
Though truer no Son, kinder no Sire’s heart—
By the ivory door; the horn gate stood
Fast locked and sealed against all flesh and blood.
Though soul there—a thistle-down Man, wind-tost
With life; a night-mare; less real than a ghost!