Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The words of Virgil have a fire and fervor such as he seems to have had in no other composition, as he sings:—

"The last age of the Cumæan song is come.
The great cycle of ages hastens to a new beginning.
Now, too, returns the reign of Justice.
The golden age of Saturn now returns.
While thou, Pollio, art consul,
This glory of our age shall make his appearance.
The great months begin to roll.
He shall partake of the life of the gods,
And rule the peaceful world with his father's virtues."

Then follow a profusion of images of peace and plenty that should come to the world in the reign of this hero. All poisonous and hurtful things shall die; all rare and beautiful ones shall grow and abound; there shall be no more toil, no more trouble. Then, with a fine burst of imagery, the poet represents the Fates themselves as singing, to the whirring music of their spindles, a song of welcome:—

"Ye ages, hasten!
Dear offspring of the gods, set forward on thy way to highest honors;
The time is at hand.
See, the world with its round weight bows to thee.
To thee bow the earth, the regions of the sea and heaven sublime.
See how all things rejoice at the approach of this age!
O that my life might last to see and sing thy deeds!"

The close of this eclogue has a mysterious tenderness. The poet predicts that this sublime personage, for whom the world is waiting, should be born amidst the afflictions of his parents and under a cloud of poverty and neglect:—

"Come, little boy, and know thy mother with a smile.
Come, little boy, on whom thy parents smile not,
Whom no god honors with a table,
No goddess with a cradle."

It would seem as if the sensitive soul of Virgil, in the ecstasy of poetic inspiration, acquired a vague clairvoyance of that scene at Bethlehem when there was no room for Joseph and Mary at the inn, and the Heir of all things lay in a manger, outcast and neglected.

Not in Virgil alone, but scattered also here and there through all antiquity, do we find vague, half-prophetic aspirations after the divine Teacher who should interpret God to man, console under the sorrows of life, and charm away the fears of death. In the Phædo, when Socrates is comforting his sorrowful disciples in view of his approaching death, and setting before them the probabilities of a continued life beyond the grave, one of them tells him that they believe while they hear him, but when he is gone their doubts will all return, and says, "Where shall we find a charmer then to disperse our fears?" Socrates answers that such a Charmer will yet arise, and bids his disciples seek him in all lands of the earth. Greece, he says, is wide, and there are many foreign lands and even barbarous countries in which they should travel searching for Him, for there is nothing for which they could more reasonably spend time and money.

And in the discourse of Socrates with Alcibiades, as given by Plato, the great philosopher is represented as saying, "We must wait till One shall teach us our duty towards gods and men."