No More Learning

They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.

POPE.


_124_

ANGEL of Love, high-thronëd in Cnidos,
Regent of Paphos, no more repine:
Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us
Visit our soberly censëd shrine.

Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,
Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste
The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,
And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.

H. W. G.


_125_

WHAT slender youth bedewed with liquid odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha, for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain: and seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they
To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed
Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dripping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.

MILTON.

Milton's version has been a good deal criticized.
Yet, though it lacks
the lightness of its original, it remains a nobler version than any
other. Of other versions the most interesting is, perhaps, that of
Chatterton (made from a literal English translation), and the most
graceful that of William Hamilton of Bangour. Of the latter I quote a
few lines:

WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours
Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?
For whom retired to secret shade,
Soft on thy panting bosom laid,
Set'st thou thy looks with nicest care,
O neatly plain? How oft shall he
Bewail thy false inconstancy!
Condemned perpetual frowns to prove,
How often weep thy altered love,
Who thee, too credulous, hopes to find,
As now, still golden and still kind!

W. HAMILTON.


_126_

Of this often-translated poem I give first the version of Herrick and
then that of Gladstone. There is an amusing adaptation in the Poems of
Soame Jenyns, _Dialogue between the Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham and Modern
Popularity_.

_Hor. _ WHILE, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee,
Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me
To hug thy whitest neck: than I,
The Persian King liv'd not more happily.

_Lyd. _ While thou no other didst affect,
Nor Cloe was of more respect;
Then Lydia, far-fam'd Lydia,
I flourish't more than Roman Ilia.