J. H. Merivale.
Weep, reckless god; for now your hands are tied:
Weep, wear your soul out with the flood of tears,
Heart-robber, thief of reason, foe to pride,
Winged fire, thou wound unseen the soul that sears!
Freedom from grief to us these bonds of thine,
Wherein thou wailest to the deaf winds, bring:
Behold! the torch wherewith thou mad'st us pine,
Beneath thy frequent tears is languishing!
CHAPTER XXII.
HERO AND LEANDER.
Virgil's Mention of this Tale.—Ovid and Statius.—Autumnal Poetry.—Confusion between the Mythical Musæus and the Grammarian.—The Introduction of the Poem.—Analysis of the Story.—Hallam's Judgment on Marlowe's Hero and Leander.—Comparison of Marlowe and Musæus.—Classic and Romantic Art.
Quid juvenis, magnum cui versat in ossibus ignem
Durus amor? Nempe abruptis turbata procellis
Nocte natat cæca serus freta; quem super ingens
Porta tonat cæli, et scopulis inlisa reclamant
Æquora; nec miseri possunt revocare parentes,
Nec moritura super crudeli funere virgo.[253]
This is the first allusion to a story, rather Roman than Greek, which was destined to play an important part in literature. The introduction of the fable without names into a poem like the third Georgic shows, however, that the pathetic tale of Hero and Leander's love had already found familiar representation in song or sculpture or wall-painting before Virgil touched it with the genius that turned all it touched to gold. Ovid went further, and placed the maiden of Sestos among the heroines for whom he wrote rhetorical epistles in elegiac verse. In Statius, again, we get a glimpse of the story translated from the sphere of romance into the region of antique mythology. To the hero Admetus, Adrastus gives a mantle dyed with Tyrian purple, and embroidered with Leander's death. There flows the Hellespont; the youth is vainly struggling with the swollen waves; and there stands Hero on her tower; and the lamp already flickers in the blast that will destroy both light and lives at once. It still remained for a grammarian of the fifth century, Musæus, of whom nothing but the name is known, to give the final form to this poem of love and death. The spring-tide of the epic and the idyl was over. When Musæus entered the Heliconian meadows to pluck this last pure rose of Greek summer, autumn had already set its silent finger on "bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." His little poem of three hundred and forty hexameters is both an epic and an idyl. While maintaining the old heroic style of narrative by means of repeated lines, it recalls the sweetness of Theocritus in studied descriptions, dactylic cadences, and brief reflective sayings that reveal the poet's mind. Like some engraved gems, the latest products of the glyphic art, this poem adjusts the breadth of the grand manner to the small scale required by jewelry, treating a full subject in a narrow space, and in return endowing slight motives with dignity by nobleness of handling.
Calm mornings of sunshine visit us at times in early November, appearing like glimpses of departed spring amid the wilderness of wet and windy days that lead to winter. It is pleasant, when these interludes of silvery light occur to ride into the woods and see how wonderful are all the colors of decay. Overhead, the elms and chestnuts hang their wealth of golden leaves, while the beeches darken into russet tones, and the wild-cherry glows like blood-red wine. In the hedges crimson haws and scarlet hips are wreathed with hoary clematis or necklaces of coral briony berries; the brambles burn with many-colored flames; the dog-wood is bronzed to purple; and here and there the spindle-wood puts forth its fruit, like knots of rosy buds, on delicate frail twigs. Underneath lie fallen leaves, and the brown brake rises to our knees as we thread the forest paths. Everything is beautiful with beauty born of over-ripeness and decline. Green summer comes no more this year, at any rate. In front are death and bareness and the winter's frost.
Such a day of sunlight in the November of Greek poetry is granted to us by Hero and Leander. The grace of the poem is soul-compelling—indescribable for sweetness. Yet every epithet, each exquisite conceit, and all the studied phrases that yield charm, remind us that the end has come. There is peculiar pathos in this autumnal loveliness of literature upon the wane. In order to appreciate it fully we must compare the mellow tints of Musæus with the morning glory of Homer or of Pindar. We then find that, in spite of so much loss, in spite of warmth and full light taken from us, and promise of the future exchanged for musings on the past, a type of beauty unattainable by happier poets of the spring has been revealed. Not to accept this grace with thanksgiving, because, forsooth, December, that takes all away, is close at hand, would be ungrateful.[254]