64 WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY APTAIN, or Colonel, or Knight in arms, CAPTA Whose chance on these defenseless doors may seize, If deed of honor did thee ever please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee; for he knows the charms The great Emathian conqueror Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.2 John Milton 65 TO A FRIEND WHO prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind? He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men, Saw The Wide Prospect,3 and the Asian Fen, 1 "When Thebes was destroyed (335 B. C.) and the citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar [the greatest of Greek lyric poets] to be spared." (From a note by F. T. Palgrave.) 2 "Amongst Plutarch's vague stories, he says that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B. C. took Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the Electra of Euripides sung at a feast." (From a note by F. T. Palgrave.) 3 The name Europe (Еupón, the wide prospect) probably describes the appearance of the European coast to the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor opposite. The name Asia, again, comes, it has been thought, from the muddy fens of the rivers of Asia Minor, such as the Cayster of Mæander, which struck the imagination of the Greeks living near them. [Author's note.] And Tmolus' hill, and Smyrna's bay, though blind. Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son Cleared Rome of what most shamed him. But be his Matthew Arnold 66 FOR A COPY OF THEOCRITUS 2 O SINGER of the field and fold, For thee the scent of new-turned mold, Thou sang'st the simple feasts of old,— Thou bad'st the rustic loves be told,- O Singer of the field and fold! 1 The three writers alluded to are Homer, Epictetus, and Sophocles. 2 Reprinted through special arrangement with Mr. Alban Dobson and with the Oxford University Press. 67 And round thee, ever-laughing, rolled Alas for us! Our songs are cold; Thine was the happier Age of Gold! TO VIRGIL1 Austin Dobson WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH OMAN VIRGIL, thou that singest ROMAN Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the Works and Days, All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, 1 Reprinted with the permission of The Macmillan Company. Summers of the snakeless meadow, Nature moved by Universal Mind; at the doubtful doom of human kind; star that gildest yet this phantom shore; kings and realms that pass to rise no more; Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound for ever of Imperial Rome— Now the Rome of slaves hath perished, and the Rome of freemen holds her place, I, from out the Northern Island sundered once from all the human race, I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, ever molded by the lips of man. Alfred Tennyson 68 "FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE”1 OW us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! Row So they rowed, and there we landed-“O venusta 1 Reprinted with the permission of The Macmillan Company.-The words of the title meaning "O my brother, hail and farewell!"-conclude a poem by Catullus mourning the death of a brother, of which the following is a prose rendering by Charles Stuttaford: "Borne over many lands and many seas, I come, O my brother, There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow, Alfred Tennyson 1 69 DANTE AND THE DIVINE COMEDY 1 USCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom; As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks, The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease; to the sad spot where you repose; that I may render to you the last sad rites of the dead, and call, although in vain, to your dumb ashes. Since fate has snatched your dear presence from my eyes, alas, O my brother, so cruelly taken from me, yet receive these last sad rites, that are according to the pious usages of our forefathers and are washed with a brother's many tears, and now forever, O my brother, hail and farewell!" (Reprinted with the permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.) In another poem-which may be seen below, p. 612-the Roman poet celebrates a return to his home on the peninsula, or "all-but-island,” of Sirmio: in this occurs the "O venusta Sirmio!" ("O fair Sirmio"). 1 Editors' title. The editors are further responsible, in part, for the grouping of the sonnets. |