No More Learning

Stern stalked Bellona, smear'd with reeking gore,
Through charging ranks; beside her Rout was seen,
And Terror, Discord to the fatal strife
Inciting men, and Furies breathing flames:
Nor absent were the Fates, and the tall shape
Of ghastly Death, round whom did Battles throng,
Their limbs distilling plenteous blood and sweat;
And Gorgons, whose long locks were twisting snakes.
That shot their forky tongues incessant forth.
Such were the horrors of dire war. "

--Dyce's Calaber.

256 --_A field deep furrowed. _

"Here was a corn field; reapers in a row,
Each with a sharp-tooth'd sickle in his hand,
Work'd busily, and, as the harvest fell,
Others were ready still to bind the sheaves:
Yoked to a wain that bore the corn away
The steers were moving; sturdy bullocks here
The plough were drawing, and the furrow'd glebe
Was black behind them, while with goading wand
The active youths impell'd them. Here a feast
Was graved: to the shrill pipe and ringing lyre
A band of blooming virgins led the dance.
As if endued with life. "

--Dyce's Calaber.

257 Coleridge (Greek Classic Poets, p. 182, seq. ) has diligently
compared this with the description of the shield of Hercules by
Hesiod. He remarks that, "with two or three exceptions, the imagery
differs in little more than the names and arrangements; and the
difference of arrangement in the Shield of Hercules is altogether
for the worse. The natural consecution of the Homeric images needs
no exposition: it constitutes in itself one of the beauties of the
work. The Hesiodic images are huddled together without connection or
congruity: Mars and Pallas are awkwardly introduced among the
Centaurs and Lapithae;-- but the gap is wide indeed between them and
Apollo with the Muses, waking the echoes of Olympus to celestial
harmonies; whence however, we are hurried back to Perseus, the
Gorgons, and other images of war, over an arm of the sea, in which
the sporting dolphins, the fugitive fishes, and the fisherman on the
shore with his casting net, are minutely represented.
As to the
Hesiodic images themselves, the leading remark is, that they catch
at beauty by ornament, and at sublimity by exaggeration; and upon
the untenable supposition of the genuineness of this poem, there is
this curious peculiarity, that, in the description of scenes of
rustic peace, the superiority of Homer is decisive--while in those of
war and tumult it may be thought, perhaps, that the Hesiodic poet
has more than once the advantage. "

258 "This legend is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the
Grecian Mythology; it explains, according to the religious ideas
familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes
and the endless toil and endurances of Heracles, the most renowned
subjugator of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the
Hellenes,--a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by
Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the
commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is
reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are
brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives
in marriage Hebe. "--Grote, vol. i. p. 128.

259 --_Ambrosia. _

"The blue-eyed maid,
In ev'ry breast new vigour to infuse.
Brings nectar temper'd with ambrosial dews. "

Merrick's Tryphiodorus, vi. 249.

260 "Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. He
stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth
upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the
cloud is not rent under them. " Job xxvi.