Hail shade of Thomson! But hear how the exile sings it:
'La mer! partout la mer! des flots, des flots encor!
L'oiseau fatigue en vain son inégal essor.
Ici les flots, là-bas les ondes.
Toujours des flots sans fin par des flots repoussés;
L'œil ne voit que des flots dans l'abime entassés
Rouler sous les vaques profondes.'[2]
This we, for our part, would pronounce one of the very best open-sea sketches we have ever met with; and if the reader will take even our unequal rendering, he may think so too.
'The sea! all round, the sea! flood, flood o'er billow surges!
In vain the bird fatigued its faltering wing here urges.
Billows beneath, waves, waves around;
Ever the floods (no end!) by urging floods repulsed;
The eye sees but the waves, in an abyss engulphed,
Roll 'neath their lairs profound.'
'Aurora' comes to us as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the 'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and 'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is levant, raising himself up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from orior; while 'occident' is, of course, the opposite in signification, namely, the declining, the 'setting' place.
'Lethe' is another classic myth. It is ὁ τἡς λἡθης ροταμὁς—the river of forgetfulness, 'the oblivious pool.' Perhaps is it that all of us, as well as the son of Thetis, had a dip therein.
There exists not a more poetic expression than 'Hyperborean,' i. e. υπερβὁρεος—beyond Boreas; or, as a modern poet finely and faithfully expands it:
'Beyond those regions cold
Where dwells the Spirit of the North-Wind,
Boreas old.'
Homer never manifested himself to be more of a poet than in the creation of this word. By the way, the Hyperboreans were regarded by the ancients as an extremely happy and pious people.
How few of those who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' (ἁμβροτος, immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance Milton's 'ambrosial flowers.' It was, like the 'nectar' (νἑκταρ, an elixir vitæ), considered a veritable elixir of immortality, and consequently denied to men.