No More Learning

Such was the life the frugal Sabines led:
So Remus and his brother-god were bred,
From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose;
And this rude life our homely fathers chose.
Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth
(The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth),
Which now on sev'n high hills triumphant reigns,
And in that compass all the world contains.
Ere Saturn's rebel son usurp'd the skies,
When beasts were only slain for sacrifice,
While peaceful Crete enjoy'd her ancient lord,
Ere sounding hammers forg'd th' inhuman sword,
Ere hollow drums were beat, before the breath
Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death,
The good old god his hunger did assuage,
With roots and herbs, and gave the golden age.

I append a portion of Cowley's unequal paraphrase (beginning from the
words _Felix qui potuit_):

HAPPY the man, I grant, thrice happy he
Who can through gross effects their causes see:
Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs,
Nor vainly fears inevitable things,
But does his walk of virtue calmly go,
Through all the allarms of death and hell below.
Happy, but next such conquerors, happy they
Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way.
They unconcerned from their safe-distant seat
Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.
The quarrels of the mighty without fear
And the descent of foreign troops they hear.
Nor can ev'n Rome their steddy course misguide
With all the lustre of her perishing pride.
Them never yet did strife or avarice draw
Into the noisy markets of the law,
The camps of gownëd war, nor do they live
By rules or forms that many mad men give.
Duty for Nature's bounty they repay,
And her sole laws religiously obey.

COWLEY.


_118_

(Beginning at _At cantu commotae. . . .
_)

THEN from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
Of dull dead water, and to pen them fast,
Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
Stood lost in wonderment, the Eumenides,
Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined,
E'en Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
And now with homeward footstep he had passed
All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
Eurydice, to realms of upper air
Had well-nigh won behind him following--
So Proserpine had ruled it--when his heart
A sudden mad desire surprised and seized--
Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
For at the very threshold of the day,
Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice--
His own once more. But even with the look,
Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell:
Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
These helpless hands. ' She spoke, and suddenly,
Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him,
Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
Hell's boatman lists he pass the watery bar.

JAMES RHOADES


_119 a_

ONCE a slender silvan reed
Answered all my shepherd's need;
Once to farmer lads I told
All the lore of field and fold:
Well they liked me, for the soil
Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.