No More Learning

HERRICK.

THE man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control:
No threatening tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent;
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main
Would awe his fixed determined mind in vain.

Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurled,
He would unmoved, unawed behold.
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crushing chaos rolled,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,
Might light his glorious funeral pile,
Still dauntless 'mid the wreck of earth he'd smile.

BYRON.


_145_

BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Thine is the flower-crowned bowl, for thee shall die
When dawns yon sun, the kid
Whose horns, half-seen, half-hid,

Challenge to dalliance or to strife--in vain.
Soon must the firstling of the wild herd be slain,
And these cold springs of thine
With blood incarnadine.

Fierce glows the Dog-star, but his fiery beam
Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream
To labour-wearied ox,
Or wanderer from the flocks:

And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain:
My harp shall tell how from thy cavernous mountain,
Where the brown oak grows tallest,
All babblingly thou fallest.

C. S. CALVERLEY.


_148_

The rendering that follows is printed in the author's _Ionica_ not as a
translation, but as a poem, under the title _Hypermnestra_. It
represents our poem of Horace from the 25th line onwards.

LET me tell of Lydè of wedding-law slighted,
Penance of maidens and bootless task,
Wasting of water down leaky cask,
Crime in the prison-pit slowly requited.
Miscreant brides! for their grooms they slew.
One out of many is not attainted,
One alone blest and for ever sainted,
False to her father, to wedlock true.

Praise her! she gave her young husband the warning.
Praise her for ever! She cried, 'Arise!
Flee from the slumber that deadens the eyes;
Flee from the night that hath never a morning.

Baffle your host who contrived our espousing,
Baffle my sisters, the forty and nine,
Raging like lions that mangle the kine,
Each on the blood of a quarry carousing.

I am more gentle, I strike not thee,
I will not hold thee in dungeon tower.
Though the king chain me, I will not cower,
Though my sire banish me over the sea.

Freely run, freely sail, good luck attend thee;
Go with the favour of Venus and Night.
On thy tomb somewhere and some day bid write
Record of her who hath dared to befriend thee. '

W. JOHNSON CORY.


_149_

UNSHAMED, unchecked, for one so dear
We sorrow.