Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now with'ring on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away.
Pope's Version, book vi. line 181.
For as the leaves, so springs the race of man.
Chill blasts shake down the leaves, and warm'd anew
By vernal airs the grove puts forth again:
Age after age, so man is born and dies.
Cowper's Version, book vi. line 164.
The interview between Hector and Andromache—
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when Thou, imperial Troy, must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam's hoary hairs defil'd with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore;
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread.
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led!
In Argive looms our battles to design
And woes, of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring
The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring.
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, Behold the mighty Hector's wife!
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes, by naming me.
The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Press'd with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep,
Pope's Version, book vi. line 570.
For my prophetic soul foresees a day
When Ilium, Ilium's people, and, himself,
Her warlike king, shall perish. But no grief
For Ilium, for her people, for the king
My warlike sire; nor even for the queen;
Nor for the num'rous and the valiant band,
My brothers, destin'd all to bite the ground,
So moves me as my grief for thee alone,
Doom'd then to follow some imperious Greek,
A weeping captive, to the distant shores
Of Argos; there to labour at the loom
For a task-mistress, and with many a sigh
But heav'd in vain, to bear the pond'rous urn
From Hypereia's, or Messeïs' fount.
Fast flow thy tears the while, and as he eyes
That silent shower, some passing Greek shall say—
"This was the wife of Hector, who excell'd
All Troy in fight, when Ilium was besieg'd."
While thus he speaks thy tears shall flow afresh;
The guardian of thy freedom while he liv'd
For ever lost; but be my bones inhum'd,
A senseless store, or e'er thy parting cries
Shall pierce mine ear, and thou be dragg'd away.
Cowper's Version, book vi. line 501.
We add one more specimen, where the beauty of the imagery demands the exercise of poetic talent.