O race born unto
trouble!
Oxford Book of Latin Verse
There soon may come a time
You'll count right reason treason and the prime
Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft
In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.
Think how at Aulis to the Trivian Maid
The hero-kings of Greece their homage paid,
The flower of men, whose impious piety
Iphianassa on the altar laid.
Behold the bride! upon her head the crown
Of ritual, that from either cheek let down
An equal streamer. But cold rapture hers
As on her father's face she marked the frown:
A frown of anguish: at his side the men
Of doom, and in their hands, screened from her ken,
Death; and her countrymen shed tears to see
The lamb, poor victim, in the lions' den.
Then dumb with fear, not tongue-tied with delight,
She drooped to earth. What profited it her plight
She was her father's first-born? Not the less
They took her. Death, not Love, ordained the rite.
His were the bridesmen, and the altar his
To which with quaking limbs in fearfulness
Uplifted then, sans song, sans ritual due,
She was brought home--but not to wedded bliss,
A maid, but marred not married, in the spring
Of life and love's sweet prime, to yield the king
A victim, and the fleet fair voyaging:
Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring.
D. A. SLATER.
_67_
SWEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths
by the storm-winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment:
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves
are exempt from.
Sweet too 'tis to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war hosts
Arm them for some great battle, one's self
unscathed by the danger:--
Yet still happier this: to possess, impregnably guarded,
Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom:
Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way
Wander amidst Life's path, poor stragglers seeking a highway:
Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon:
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun
and the starlight,
Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.
O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eye-sight!
'Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers
Move ye thro' this thing Life, this fragment! Fools that ye hear not
Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only: that, all pain
Parted and passed from the body, the mind too bask in a blissful
Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over!
Now as regards man's body, a few things only are needful,
(Few, tho' we sum up all), to remove all misery from him,
Aye, and to strew in his path such a lib'ral carpet of pleasures
That scarce Nature herself would at times ask happiness greater.
Statues of youth and of beauty may not gleam golden around him,
(Each in his right hand bearing a great lamp lustrously burning,
Whence to the midnight revel a light may be furnishëd always),
Silver may not shine softly, nor gold blaze bright, in his mansion,
Nor to the noise of the tabret his halls gold-cornicëd echo:--
Yet still he, with his fellow, reposed on the velvety greensward,
Near to a rippling stream, by a tall tree canopied over,
Shall, though they lack great riches, enjoy all bodily pleasure:
Chiefliest then when above them a fair sky smiles,
and the young year
Flings with a bounteous hand over each green meadow
the wild-flowers:--
Not more quickly depart from his bosom fiery fevers,
Who beneath crimson hangings and pictures cunningly broidered
Tosses about, than from him who must lie in beggarly raiment.
Therefore, since to the body avail not riches, avails not
Heraldry's utmost boast, nor the pomp and pride of an empire;
Next shall you own that the mind needs likewise
nothing of these things;
Unless--when, peradventure, your armies over the champaign
Spread with a stir and a ferment and bid War's image awaken,
Or when with stir and with ferment a fleet sails forth upon ocean--
Cowed before these brave sights, pale Superstition abandon
Straightway your mind as you gaze, Death seem no longer alarming,
Trouble vacate your bosom and Peace hold holiday in you.
But if (again) all this be a vain impossible fiction,
If of a truth men's fears and the cares which hourly beset them
Heed not the javelin's fury, regard not clashing of broad-swords,
But all boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers of empires
Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling glare
of the red gold,
Not from the pomp of the monarch who walks forth purple-apparelled:
These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of reason:
Think too that all man's life through a great Dark laboureth onward.
For as a young boy trembles and in that mystery, Darkness,
Sees all terrible things: so do we too, ev'n in the daylight,
Ofttimes shudder at that which is not more really alarming
Than boys' fears when they waken and say some danger is o'er them.
So this panic of mind, these clouds which gather around us,
Fly not the bright sunbeam, nor the ivory shafts of the daylight:
Nature, rightly revealed, and the Reason only, dispel them.
C. S. CALVERLEY
_69_
OUT of the night, out of the blinding night
Thy beacon flashes;--hail, beloved light
Of Greece and Grecian; hail, for in the mirk
Thou dost reveal each valley and each height.
Thou art my leader and the footprints thine,
Wherein I plant my own. Thro' storm and shine
Thy love upholds me. Ne'er was rivalry
'Twixt owl and thrush, 'twixt steeds and shambling kine.
You'll count right reason treason and the prime
Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft
In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.
Think how at Aulis to the Trivian Maid
The hero-kings of Greece their homage paid,
The flower of men, whose impious piety
Iphianassa on the altar laid.
Behold the bride! upon her head the crown
Of ritual, that from either cheek let down
An equal streamer. But cold rapture hers
As on her father's face she marked the frown:
A frown of anguish: at his side the men
Of doom, and in their hands, screened from her ken,
Death; and her countrymen shed tears to see
The lamb, poor victim, in the lions' den.
Then dumb with fear, not tongue-tied with delight,
She drooped to earth. What profited it her plight
She was her father's first-born? Not the less
They took her. Death, not Love, ordained the rite.
His were the bridesmen, and the altar his
To which with quaking limbs in fearfulness
Uplifted then, sans song, sans ritual due,
She was brought home--but not to wedded bliss,
A maid, but marred not married, in the spring
Of life and love's sweet prime, to yield the king
A victim, and the fleet fair voyaging:
Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring.
D. A. SLATER.
_67_
SWEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths
by the storm-winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment:
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves
are exempt from.
Sweet too 'tis to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war hosts
Arm them for some great battle, one's self
unscathed by the danger:--
Yet still happier this: to possess, impregnably guarded,
Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom:
Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way
Wander amidst Life's path, poor stragglers seeking a highway:
Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon:
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun
and the starlight,
Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.
O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eye-sight!
'Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers
Move ye thro' this thing Life, this fragment! Fools that ye hear not
Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only: that, all pain
Parted and passed from the body, the mind too bask in a blissful
Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over!
Now as regards man's body, a few things only are needful,
(Few, tho' we sum up all), to remove all misery from him,
Aye, and to strew in his path such a lib'ral carpet of pleasures
That scarce Nature herself would at times ask happiness greater.
Statues of youth and of beauty may not gleam golden around him,
(Each in his right hand bearing a great lamp lustrously burning,
Whence to the midnight revel a light may be furnishëd always),
Silver may not shine softly, nor gold blaze bright, in his mansion,
Nor to the noise of the tabret his halls gold-cornicëd echo:--
Yet still he, with his fellow, reposed on the velvety greensward,
Near to a rippling stream, by a tall tree canopied over,
Shall, though they lack great riches, enjoy all bodily pleasure:
Chiefliest then when above them a fair sky smiles,
and the young year
Flings with a bounteous hand over each green meadow
the wild-flowers:--
Not more quickly depart from his bosom fiery fevers,
Who beneath crimson hangings and pictures cunningly broidered
Tosses about, than from him who must lie in beggarly raiment.
Therefore, since to the body avail not riches, avails not
Heraldry's utmost boast, nor the pomp and pride of an empire;
Next shall you own that the mind needs likewise
nothing of these things;
Unless--when, peradventure, your armies over the champaign
Spread with a stir and a ferment and bid War's image awaken,
Or when with stir and with ferment a fleet sails forth upon ocean--
Cowed before these brave sights, pale Superstition abandon
Straightway your mind as you gaze, Death seem no longer alarming,
Trouble vacate your bosom and Peace hold holiday in you.
But if (again) all this be a vain impossible fiction,
If of a truth men's fears and the cares which hourly beset them
Heed not the javelin's fury, regard not clashing of broad-swords,
But all boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers of empires
Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling glare
of the red gold,
Not from the pomp of the monarch who walks forth purple-apparelled:
These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of reason:
Think too that all man's life through a great Dark laboureth onward.
For as a young boy trembles and in that mystery, Darkness,
Sees all terrible things: so do we too, ev'n in the daylight,
Ofttimes shudder at that which is not more really alarming
Than boys' fears when they waken and say some danger is o'er them.
So this panic of mind, these clouds which gather around us,
Fly not the bright sunbeam, nor the ivory shafts of the daylight:
Nature, rightly revealed, and the Reason only, dispel them.
C. S. CALVERLEY
_69_
OUT of the night, out of the blinding night
Thy beacon flashes;--hail, beloved light
Of Greece and Grecian; hail, for in the mirk
Thou dost reveal each valley and each height.
Thou art my leader and the footprints thine,
Wherein I plant my own. Thro' storm and shine
Thy love upholds me. Ne'er was rivalry
'Twixt owl and thrush, 'twixt steeds and shambling kine.
