Yet from the bloods even of your self-like sires
Are you descended, that could make ye heirs
To no huge hoards of coin, nor leave ye able
To feed flocks of innumerable rabble.
THE END OF ALL THE ENDLESS WORKS OF HOMER.
The Translator’s Epilogue
The work that I was born to do is done!
Glory to Him that the conclusion
Makes the beginning of my life; and never
Let me be said to live, till I live ever.
Where’s the outliving of my fortunes then,
Ye errant vapours of Fame’s Lernean fen,
That, like possess’d storms, blast all not in herd
With your abhorr’d heads; who, because cashier’d
By men for monsters, think men monsters all,
That are not of your pied Hood and your Hall,
When you are nothing but the scum of things,
And must be cast off; drones, that have no stings;
Nor any more soul than a stone hath wings?
Avaunt, ye hags! Your hates and scandals are
The crowns and comforts of a good man’s care;
By whose impartial perpendicular,
All is extuberance, and excretion all,
That you your ornaments and glories call.
Your wry mouths censure right! Your blister’d tongues,
That lick but itches! And whose ulcerous lungs
Come up at all things permanent and sound!
O you, like flies in dregs, in humours drown’d!
Your loves, like atoms, lost in gloomy air,
I would not retrieve with a wither’d hair.
Hate, and cast still your stings then, for your kisses
Betray but truth, and your applauds are hisses.
To see our supercilious wizards frown,
Their faces fall’n like fogs, and coming down,
Stinking the sun out, makes me shine the more;
And like a check’d flood bear above the shore,
That their profane opinions fain would set
To what they see not, know not, nor can let.
Yet then our learn’d men with their torrents come,
Roaring from their forc’d hills, all crown’d with foam,
That one not taught like them, should learn to know
Their Greek roots, and from thence the groves that grow,
Casting such rich shades from great Homer’s wings,
That first and last command the Muses’ springs.
Though he’s best scholar, that, through pains and vows
Made his own master only, all things knows.
Nor pleads my poor skill form, or learned place,
But dauntless labour, constant prayer, and grace.
And what’s all their skill, but vast varied reading?
As if broad-beaten highways had the leading
To Truth’s abstract, and narrow path, and pit;
Found in no walk of airy worldly wit.
And without Truth, all’s only sleight of hand,
Or our law-learning in a foreign land,
Embroidery spent on cobwebs, braggart show
Of men that all things learn, and nothing know.
For ostentation humble Truth still flies,
And all confederate fashionists defies.
And as some sharp-brow’d doctor, English born,
In much learn’d Latin idioms can adorn
A verse with rare attractions, yet become
His English Muse like an Arachnean loom,
Wrought spite of Pallas, and therein bewrays
More tongue than truth, begs, and adopts his bays;
So Ostentation, be he never so
Larded with labour to suborn his show,
Shall sooth within him but a bastard soul,
No more heaven heiring than, Earth’s son, the mole,
But as in dead calms emptiest smokes arise,
Uncheck’d and free, up straight into the skies;
So drowsy Peace, that in her humour steeps
All she affects, lets such rise while she sleeps.
Many, and most men, have of wealth least store,
But none the gracious shame that fits the poor.
So most learn’d men enough are ignorant,
But few the grace have to confess their want,
Till lives and learnings come concomitant.
Far from men’s knowledges their lives’-acts flow;
Vainglorious acts then vain prove all they know.
As night the life-inclining stars best shows,
So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.
For me, let just men judge by what I show
In acts expos’d how much I err or know;
And let not envy make all worse than nought,
With her mere headstrong and quite brainless thought,
Others, for doing nothing, giving all,
And bounding all worth in her bursten gall.
God and my dear Redeemer rescue me
From men’s immane and mad impiety,
And by my life and soul (sole known to Them)
Make me of palm, or yew, an anadem.
And so my sole God, the Thrice-Sacred-Trine,
Bear all th’ ascription of all me and mine.
Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater, et Dux rationis nostræ, ut nostræ nobilitatis recordemur quâ Tu nos ornasti; et ut Tu nobis præstó sis, ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et à corporis contagio, brutorumque affectuum, repurgemur, eosque superemus, atque regamus, et, sicut decet, pro instrumentis iis utamur. Deinde, ut nobis adjumento sis, ad accuratam rationis nostræ correctionem, et conjunctionem cum iis qui verè sunt per lucem veritatis. Et tertiùm, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum, caliginem prorsus abstergas, ut norimus bene qui Deus, aut mortalis, habendus. Amen.
Sine honore vivam, nulloque numera ero.