Opening Poems by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
"This is My Letter to the World"
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me, --,
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed,
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
Drawn from page 19 of the Dover Edition of Selected Poems of Emily Dickenson
"There is No Frigate Like a Book"
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll:
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Drawn from page 48 of the Dover Edition of Selected Poems of Emily Dickenson
Also on page 758 in Perrine’s Literature
"I'm Nobody"
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
1
The Homeric Hymns translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his author-wife Mary Shelley both made
lively contributions to the world of Fantastic. They were both friends with Lord Byron
whose work is included in our text. Furthermore Mary Shelley
is famous for, among other works, her ground breaking novel
Frankenstein, which can be called the first science fiction novel.
It should be noted that the inspiration of the work actually came
from a “game” played when they
vacationed with Byron on a rainy day.
Wikipedia describes it this way: Sitting
around a log fire at Byron's villa, the
company also amused themselves by
reading German ghost stories, prompting
Byron to suggest they each write their own supernatural tale.
Shortly afterwards, in a waking dream, Mary Godwin Shelley
conceived the idea for Frankenstein: Mary Shelly’s husband,
who did not win the prize that day, is recognized as one of the
great poets of the late Romantic movement. Tragically he
perished in a boating accident in Italy. What is noticeable for us in this class is that he
poetically translated a series of poems attributed to Homer which celebrate different
deities. After his death Mary, as executor, worked through his papers and published
many of these.
Homer's Hymn to Venus
Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862; dated 1818. Verses 1-55, with some
omissions.
Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
Or earth, with her maternal ministry,
Nourish innumerable, thy delight
All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!
Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:—
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
Diana ... golden-shafted queen,
Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
Of the wild woods, the bow, the...
2
And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit
Of beasts among waste mountains,—such delight
Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,
Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;
But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
And by her mighty Father's head she swore
An oath not unperformed, that evermore
A virgin she would live mid deities
Divine: her father, for such gentle ties
Renounced, gave glorious gifts—thus in his hall
She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all
In every fane, her honours first arise
From men—the eldest of Divinities.
These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,
But none beside escape, so well she weaves
Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods
Who live secure in their unseen abodes.
She won the soul of him whose fierce delight
Is thunder—first in glory and in might.
And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,
With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,
Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,
Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.
but in return,
In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,
That by her own enchantments overtaken,
She might, no more from human union free,
Burn for a nursling of mortality.
For once amid the assembled Deities,
The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes
Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,
And boasting said, that she, secure the while,
Could bring at Will to the assembled Gods
The mortal tenants of earth's dark abodes,
And mortal offspring from a deathless stem
She could produce in scorn and spite of them.
Therefore he poured desire into her breast
Of young Anchises,
Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains
Of the wide Ida's many-folded mountains,—
Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung
Like wasting fire her senses wild among.
3
Read more: Homer's Hymn to Venus:
http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/shelley/3/1/7.html#ixzz2pTFlXzlE
Hymn to Mercury
Translated from the Greek of Homer
Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. This alone of the "Translations" is
included in the Harvard manuscript book. 'Fragments of the drafts of this and the other
Hymns of Homer exist among the Boscombe manuscripts' (Forman).
1.
Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,
The Herald-child, king of Arcadia
And all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet love
Having been interwoven, modest May
Bore Heaven's dread Supreme. An antique grove
Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay
In the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men,
And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then.
2.
Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling,
And Heaven's tenth moon chronicled her relief,
She gave to light a babe all babes excelling,
A schemer subtle beyond all belief;
A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing,
A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief,
Who 'mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve,
And other glorious actions to achieve.
3.
The babe was born at the first peep of day;
He began playing on the lyre at noon,
And the same evening did he steal away
Apollo's herds;—the fourth day of the moon
On which him bore the venerable May,
From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,
Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep,
But out to seek Apollo's herds would creep.
4
4.
Out of the lofty cavern wandering
He found a tortoise, and cried out—'A treasure!'
(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing)
The beast before the portal at his leisure
The flowery herbage was depasturing,
Moving his feet in a deliberate measure
Over the turf. Jove's profitable son
Eying him laughed, and laughing thus begun:—
5.
'A useful godsend are you to me now,
King of the dance, companion of the feast,
Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you
Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain-beast,
Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know,
You must come home with me and be my guest;
You will give joy to me, and I will do
All that is in my power to honour you.
6.
'Better to be at home than out of door,
So come with me; and though it has been said
That you alive defend from magic power,
I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead.'
Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,
Lifting it from the grass on which it fed
And grasping it in his delighted hold,
His treasured prize into the cavern old.
7.
Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel,
He bored the life and soul out of the beast.—
Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal
Darts through the tumult of a human breast
Which thronging cares annoy—not swifter wheel
The flashes of its torture and unrest
Out of the dizzy eyes—than Maia's son
All that he did devise hath featly done.
8.
...
And through the tortoise's hard stony skin
At proper distances small holes he made,
And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,
And with a piece of leather overlaid
5
The open space and fixed the cubits in,
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o'er all
Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.
9.
When he had wrought the lovely instrument,
He tried the chords, and made division meet,
Preluding with the plectrum, and there went
Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet
Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent
A strain of unpremeditated wit
Joyous and wild and wanton—such you may
Hear among revellers on a holiday.
10.
He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal
Dallied in love not quite legitimate;
And his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal,
And naming his own name, did celebrate;
His mother's cave and servant maids he planned all
In plastic verse, her household stuff and state,
Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan,—
But singing, he conceived another plan.
11.
...
Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat,
He in his sacred crib deposited
The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet
Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain's head,
Revolving in his mind some subtle feat
Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might
Devise in the lone season of dun night.
12.
Lo! the great Sun under the ocean's bed has
Driven steeds and chariot—the child meanwhile strode
O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows,
Where the immortal oxen of the God
Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows,
And safely stalled in a remote abode.—
The archer Argicide, elate and proud,
Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud.
13.
He drove them wandering o'er the sandy way,
6
But, being ever mindful of his craft,
Backward and forward drove he them astray,
So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft;
His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray,
And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft
Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs,
And bound them in a lump with withy twigs.
14.
And on his feet he tied these sandals light,
The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray
His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight,
Like a man hastening on some distant way,
He from Pieria's mountain bent his flight;
But an old man perceived the infant pass
Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass.
15.
The old man stood dressing his sunny vine:
'Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder!
You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine
Methinks even you must grow a little older:
Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine,
As you would 'scape what might appal a bolder—
Seeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and—
If you have understanding—understand.'
16.
So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast;
O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell,
And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed;
Till the black night divine, which favouring fell
Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast
Wakened the world to work, and from her cell
Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime
Into her watch-tower just began to climb.
17.
Now to Alpheus he had driven all
The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun;
They came unwearied to the lofty stall
And to the water-troughs which ever run
Through the fresh fields—and when with rushgrass tall,
Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one
Had pastured been, the great God made them move
Towards the stall in a collected drove.
7
18.
A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped,
And having soon conceived the mystery
Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped
The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;—on high
Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped
And the divine child saw delightedly.—
Mercury first found out for human weal
Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel.
19.
And fine dry logs and roots innumerous
He gathered in a delve upon the ground—
And kindled them—and instantaneous
The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around:
And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus
Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound,
Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud,
Close to the fire—such might was in the God.
20.
And on the earth upon their backs he threw
The panting beasts, and rolled them o'er and o'er,
And bored their lives out. Without more ado
He cut up fat and flesh, and down before
The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two,
Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore
Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done
He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.
21.
We mortals let an ox grow old, and then
Cut it up after long consideration,—
But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen
Drew the fat spoils to the more open station
Of a flat smooth space, and portioned them; and when
He had by lot assigned to each a ration
Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware
Of all the joys which in religion are.
22.
For the sweet savour of the roasted meat
Tempted him though immortal. Natheless
He checked his haughty will and did not eat,
Though what it cost him words can scarce express,
8
And every wish to put such morsels sweet
Down his most sacred throat, he did repress;
But soon within the lofty portalled stall
He placed the fat and flesh and bones and all.
23.
And every trace of the fresh butchery
And cooking, the God soon made disappear,
As if it all had vanished through the sky;
He burned the hoofs and horns and head and hair,—
The insatiate fire devoured them hungrily;—
And when he saw that everything was clear,
He quenched the coal, and trampled the black dust,
And in the stream his bloody sandals tossed.
24.
All night he worked in the serene moonshine—
But when the light of day was spread abroad
He sought his natal mountain-peaks divine.
On his long wandering, neither Man nor God
Had met him, since he killed Apollo's kine,
Nor house-dog had barked at him on his road;
Now he obliquely through the keyhole passed,
Like a thin mist, or an autumnal blast.
25.
Right through the temple of the spacious cave
He went with soft light feet—as if his tread
Fell not on earth; no sound their falling gave;
Then to his cradle he crept quick, and spread
The swaddling-clothes about him; and the knave
Lay playing with the covering of the bed
With his left hand about his knees—the right
Held his beloved tortoise-lyre tight.
26.
There he lay innocent as a new-born child,
As gossips say; but though he was a God,
The Goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled,
Knew all that he had done being abroad:
'Whence come you, and from what adventure wild,
You cunning rogue, and where have you abode
All the long night, clothed in your impudence?
What have you done since you departed hence?
27.
9
'Apollo soon will pass within this gate
And bind your tender body in a chain
Inextricably tight, and fast as fate,
Unless you can delude the God again,
Even when within his arms—ah, runagate!
A pretty torment both for Gods and Men
Your father made when he made you!'—'Dear mother,'
Replied sly Hermes, 'wherefore scold and bother?
28.
'As if I were like other babes as old,
And understood nothing of what is what;
And cared at all to hear my mother scold.
I in my subtle brain a scheme have got,
Which whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are rolled
Will profit you and me—nor shall our lot
Be as you counsel, without gifts or food,
To spend our lives in this obscure abode.
29
'But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave
And live among the Gods, and pass each day
In high communion, sharing what they have
Of profuse wealth and unexhausted prey;
And from the portion which my father gave
To Phoebus, I will snatch my share away,
Which if my father will not—natheless I,
Who am the king of robbers, can but try.
30.
'And, if Latona's son should find me out,
I'll countermine him by a deeper plan;
I'll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout,
And sack the fane of everything I can—
Caldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt,
Each golden cup and polished brazen pan,
All the wrought tapestries and garments gay.'—
So they together talked;—meanwhile the Day
31.
Aethereal born arose out of the flood
Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to men.
Apollo passed toward the sacred wood,
Which from the inmost depths of its green glen
Echoes the voice of Neptune,—and there stood
On the same spot in green Onchestus then
10
That same old animal, the vine-dresser,
Who was employed hedging his vineyard there.
32.
Latona's glorious Son began:—'I pray
Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green,
Whether a drove of kine has passed this way,
All heifers with crooked horns? for they have been
Stolen from the herd in high Pieria,
Where a black bull was fed apart, between
Two woody mountains in a neighbouring glen,
And four fierce dogs watched there, unanimous as men.
33.
'And what is strange, the author of this theft
Has stolen the fatted heifers every one,
But the four dogs and the black bull are left:—
Stolen they were last night at set of sun,
Of their soft beds and their sweet food bereft.—
Now tell me, man born ere the world begun,
Have you seen any one pass with the cows?'—
To whom the man of overhanging brows:
34.
'My friend, it would require no common skill
Justly to speak of everything I see:
On various purposes of good or ill
Many pass by my vineyard,—and to me
'Tis difficult to know the invisible
Thoughts, which in all those many minds may be:—
Thus much alone I certainly can say,
I tilled these vines till the decline of day,
35.
'And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak
With certainty of such a wondrous thing,
A child, who could not have been born a week,
Those fair-horned cattle closely following,
And in his hand he held a polished stick:
And, as on purpose, he walked wavering
From one side to the other of the road,
And with his face opposed the steps he trod.'
36.
Apollo hearing this, passed quickly on—
No winged omen could have shown more clear
11
That the deceiver was his father's son.
So the God wraps a purple atmosphere
Around his shoulders, and like fire is gone
To famous Pylos, seeking his kine there,
And found their track and his, yet hardly cold,
And cried—'What wonder do mine eyes behold!
37.
'Here are the footsteps of the horned herd
Turned back towards their fields of asphodel;—
But THESE are not the tracks of beast or bird,
Gray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell,
Or maned Centaur—sand was never stirred
By man or woman thus! Inexplicable!
Who with unwearied feet could e'er impress
The sand with such enormous vestiges?
38.
'That was most strange—but this is stranger still!'
Thus having said, Phoebus impetuously
Sought high Cyllene's forest-cinctured hill,
And the deep cavern where dark shadows lie,
And where the ambrosial nymph with happy will
Bore the Saturnian's love-child, Mercury—
And a delightful odour from the dew
Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew.
39.
And Phoebus stooped under the craggy roof
Arched over the dark cavern:—Maia's child
Perceived that he came angry, far aloof,
About the cows of which he had been beguiled;
And over him the fine and fragrant woof
Of his ambrosial swaddling-clothes he piled—
As among fire-brands lies a burning spark
Covered, beneath the ashes cold and dark.
40.
There, like an infant who had sucked his fill
And now was newly washed and put to bed,
Awake, but courting sleep with weary will,
And gathered in a lump, hands, feet, and head,
He lay, and his beloved tortoise still
He grasped and held under his shoulder-blade.
Phoebus the lovely mountain-goddess knew,
Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who
12
41.
Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook
Of the ample cavern, for his kine, Apollo
Looked sharp; and when he saw them not, he took
The glittering key, and opened three great hollow
Recesses in the rock—where many a nook
Was filled with the sweet food immortals swallow,
And mighty heaps of silver and of gold
Were piled within—a wonder to behold!
42.
And white and silver robes, all overwrought
With cunning workmanship of tracery sweet—
Except among the Gods there can be nought
In the wide world to be compared with it.
Latona's offspring, after having sought
His herds in every corner, thus did greet
Great Hermes:—'Little cradled rogue, declare
Of my illustrious heifers, where they are!
43.
'Speak quickly! or a quarrel between us
Must rise, and the event will be, that I
Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus,
In fiery gloom to dwell eternally;
Nor shall your father nor your mother loose
The bars of that black dungeon—utterly
You shall be cast out from the light of day,
To rule the ghosts of men, unblessed as they.
44.
To whom thus Hermes slily answered:—'Son
Of great Latona, what a speech is this!
Why come you here to ask me what is done
With the wild oxen which it seems you miss?
I have not seen them, nor from any one
Have heard a word of the whole business;
If you should promise an immense reward,
I could not tell more than you now have heard.
45.
'An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong,
And I am but a little new-born thing,
Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong:—
My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling
13
The cradle-clothes about me all day long,—
Or half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing,
And to be washed in water clean and warm,
And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.
46.
'O, let not e'er this quarrel be averred!
The astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e'er
You should allege a story so absurd
As that a new-born infant forth could fare
Out of his home after a savage herd.
I was born yesterday—my small feet are
Too tender for the roads so hard and rough:—
And if you think that this is not enough,
47.
I swear a great oath, by my father's head,
That I stole not your cows, and that I know
Of no one else, who might, or could, or did.—
Whatever things cows are, I do not know,
For I have only heard the name.'—This said
He winked as fast as could be, and his brow
Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he,
Like one who hears some strange absurdity.
48.
Apollo gently smiled and said:—'Ay, ay,—
You cunning little rascal, you will bore
Many a rich man's house, and your array
Of thieves will lay their siege before his door,
Silent as night, in night; and many a day
In the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore
That you or yours, having an appetite,
Met with their cattle, comrade of the night!
49.
'And this among the Gods shall be your gift,
To be considered as the lord of those
Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift;—
But now if you would not your last sleep doze;
Crawl out!'—Thus saying, Phoebus did uplift
The subtle infant in his swaddling clothes,
And in his arms, according to his wont,
A scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont.
50.
14
...
...
And sneezed and shuddered—Phoebus on the grass
Him threw, and whilst all that he had designed
He did perform—eager although to pass,
Apollo darted from his mighty mind
Towards the subtle babe the following scoff:—
'Do not imagine this will get you off,
51.
'You little swaddled child of Jove and May!
And seized him:—'By this omen I shall trace
My noble herds, and you shall lead the way.'—
Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy place,
Like one in earnest haste to get away,
Rose, and with hands lifted towards his face
Round both his ears up from his shoulders drew
His swaddling clothes, and—'What mean you to do
52.
'With me, you unkind God?'—said Mercury:
'Is it about these cows you tease me so?
I wish the race of cows were perished!—I
Stole not your cows—I do not even know
What things cows are. Alas! I well may sigh
That since I came into this world of woe,
I should have ever heard the name of one—
But I appeal to the Saturnian's throne.'
53.
Thus Phoebus and the vagrant Mercury
Talked without coming to an explanation,
With adverse purpose. As for Phoebus, he
Sought not revenge, but only information,
And Hermes tried with lies and roguery
To cheat Apollo.—But when no evasion
Served—for the cunning one his match had found—
He paced on first over the sandy ground.
54.
...
He of the Silver Bow the child of Jove
Followed behind, till to their heavenly Sire
Came both his children, beautiful as Love,
And from his equal balance did require
A judgement in the cause wherein they strove.
15
O'er odorous Olympus and its snows
A murmuring tumult as they came arose,—
55.
And from the folded depths of the great Hill,
While Hermes and Apollo reverent stood
Before Jove's throne, the indestructible
Immortals rushed in mighty multitude;
And whilst their seats in order due they fill,
The lofty Thunderer in a careless mood
To Phoebus said:—'Whence drive you this sweet prey,
This herald-baby, born but yesterday?—
56.
'A most important subject, trifler, this
To lay before the Gods!'—'Nay, Father, nay,
When you have understood the business,
Say not that I alone am fond of prey.
I found this little boy in a recess
Under Cyllene's mountains far away—
A manifest and most apparent thief,
A scandalmonger beyond all belief.
57.
'I never saw his like either in Heaven
Or upon earth for knavery or craft:—
Out of the field my cattle yester-even,
By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed,
He right down to the river-ford had driven;
And mere astonishment would make you daft
To see the double kind of footsteps strange
He has impressed wherever he did range.
58.
'The cattle's track on the black dust, full well
Is evident, as if they went towards
The place from which they came—that asphodel
Meadow, in which I feed my many herds,—
HIS steps were most incomprehensible—
I know not how I can describe in words
Those tracks—he could have gone along the sands
Neither upon his feet nor on his hands;—
59.
'He must have had some other stranger mode
Of moving on: those vestiges immense,
16
Far as I traced them on the sandy road,
Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings:—but thence
No mark nor track denoting where they trod
The hard ground gave:—but, working at his fence,
A mortal hedger saw him as he passed
To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste.
60.
'I found that in the dark he quietly
Had sacrificed some cows, and before light
Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly
About the road—then, still as gloomy night,
Had crept into his cradle, either eye
Rubbing, and cogitating some new sleight.
No eagle could have seen him as he lay
Hid in his cavern from the peering day.
61.
'I taxed him with the fact, when he averred
Most solemnly that he did neither see
Nor even had in any manner heard
Of my lost cows, whatever things cows be;
Nor could he tell, though offered a reward,
Not even who could tell of them to me.'
So speaking, Phoebus sate; and Hermes then
Addressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men:—
62.
'Great Father, you know clearly beforehand
That all which I shall say to you is sooth;
I am a most veracious person, and
Totally unacquainted with untruth.
At sunrise Phoebus came, but with no band
Of Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath,
To my abode, seeking his heifers there,
And saying that I must show him where they are,
63.
'Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss.
I know that every Apollonian limb
Is clothed with speed and might and manliness,
As a green bank with flowers—but unlike him
I was born yesterday, and you may guess
He well knew this when he indulged the whim
Of bullying a poor little new-born thing
That slept, and never thought of cow-driving.
17
64.
'Am I like a strong fellow who steals kine?
Believe me, dearest Father—such you are—
This driving of the herds is none of mine;
Across my threshold did I wander ne'er,
So may I thrive! I reverence the divine
Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and care
Even for this hard accuser—who must know
I am as innocent as they or you.
65.
'I swear by these most gloriously-wrought portals
(It is, you will allow, an oath of might)
Through which the multitude of the Immortals
Pass and repass forever, day and night,
Devising schemes for the affairs of mortals—
I am guiltless; and I will requite,
Although mine enemy be great and strong,
His cruel threat—do thou defend the young!'
66.
So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont
Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted:—
And Jupiter, according to his wont,
Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted
Infant give such a plausible account,
And every word a lie. But he remitted
Judgement at present—and his exhortation
Was, to compose the affair by arbitration.
67.
And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden
To go forth with a single purpose both,
Neither the other chiding nor yet chidden:
And Mercury with innocence and truth
To lead the way, and show where he had hidden
The mighty heifers.—Hermes, nothing loth,
Obeyed the Aegis-bearer's will—for he
Is able to persuade all easily.
68.
These lovely children of Heaven's highest Lord
Hastened to Pylos and the pastures wide
And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford,
Where wealth in the mute night is multiplied
18
With silent growth. Whilst Hermes drove the herd
Out of the stony cavern, Phoebus spied
The hides of those the little babe had slain,
Stretched on the precipice above the plain.
69.
'How was it possible,' then Phoebus said,
'That you, a little child, born yesterday,
A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed,
Could two prodigious heifers ever flay?
Even I myself may well hereafter dread
Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May,
When you grow strong and tall.'—He spoke, and bound
Stiff withy bands the infant's wrists around.
70.
He might as well have bound the oxen wild;
The withy bands, though starkly interknit,
Fell at the feet of the immortal child,
Loosened by some device of his quick wit.
Phoebus perceived himself again beguiled,
And stared—while Hermes sought some hole or pit,
Looking askance and winking fast as thought,
Where he might hide himself and not be caught.
71.
Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill
Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might
Of winning music, to his mightier will;
His left hand held the lyre, and in his right
The plectrum struck the chords—unconquerable
Up from beneath his hand in circling flight
The gathering music rose—and sweet as Love
The penetrating notes did live and move
72.
Within the heart of great Apollo—he
Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.
Close to his side stood harping fearlessly
The unabashed boy; and to the measure
Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free
His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure
Of his deep song, illustrating the birth
Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth:
73.
19
And how to the Immortals every one
A portion was assigned of all that is;
But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son
Clothe in the light of his loud melodies;—
And, as each God was born or had begun,
He in their order due and fit degrees
Sung of his birth and being—and did move
Apollo to unutterable love.
74.
These words were winged with his swift delight:
'You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you
Deserve that fifty oxen should requite
Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now.
Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight,
One of your secrets I would gladly know,
Whether the glorious power you now show forth
Was folded up within you at your birth,
75.
'Or whether mortal taught or God inspired
The power of unpremeditated song?
Many divinest sounds have I admired,
The Olympian Gods and mortal men among;
But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired,
And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong,
Yet did I never hear except from thee,
Offspring of May, impostor Mercury!
76.
'What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use,
What exercise of subtlest art, has given
Thy songs such power?—for those who hear may choose
From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven,
Delight, and love, and sleep,—sweet sleep, whose dews
Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even:—
And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo
Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow:
77.
'And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise
Of song and overflowing poesy;
And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice
Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly;
But never did my inmost soul rejoice
In this dear work of youthful revelry
20
As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove;
Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love.
78.
'Now since thou hast, although so very small,
Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,—
And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,
Witness between us what I promise here,—
That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall,
Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear,
And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee,
And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee.'
79.
To whom thus Mercury with prudent speech:—
'Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill:
I envy thee no thing I know to teach
Even this day:—for both in word and will
I would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach
All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill
Is highest in Heaven among the sons of Jove,
Who loves thee in the fulness of his love.
80.
'The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee
Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude
Of his profuse exhaustless treasury;
By thee, 'tis said, the depths are understood
Of his far voice; by thee the mystery
Of all oracular fates,—and the dread mood
Of the diviner is breathed up; even I—
A child—perceive thy might and majesty.
81.
'Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit
Can find or teach;—yet since thou wilt, come take
The lyre—be mine the glory giving it—
Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake
Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit
Of tranced sound—and with fleet fingers make
Thy liquid-voiced comrade talk with thee,—
It can talk measured music eloquently.
82.
'Then bear it boldly to the revel loud,
Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state,
21
A joy by night or day—for those endowed
With art and wisdom who interrogate
It teaches, babbling in delightful mood
All things which make the spirit most elate,
Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play,
Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay.
83.
'To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue,
Though they should question most impetuously
Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong—
Some senseless and impertinent reply.
But thou who art as wise as thou art strong
Canst compass all that thou desirest. I
Present thee with this music-flowing shell,
Knowing thou canst interrogate it well.
84.
'And let us two henceforth together feed,
On this green mountain-slope and pastoral plain,
The herds in litigation—they will breed
Quickly enough to recompense our pain,
If to the bulls and cows we take good heed;—
And thou, though somewhat over fond of gain,
Grudge me not half the profit.'—Having spoke,
The shell he proffered, and Apollo took;
85.
And gave him in return the glittering lash,
Installing him as herdsman;—from the look
Of Mercury then laughed a joyous flash.
And then Apollo with the plectrum strook
The chords, and from beneath his hands a crash
Of mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook
The soul with sweetness, and like an adept
His sweeter voice a just accordance kept.
86.
The herd went wandering o'er the divine mead,
Whilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter
Won their swift way up to the snowy head
Of white Olympus, with the joyous lyre
Soothing their journey; and their father dread
Gathered them both into familiar
Affection sweet,—and then, and now, and ever,
Hermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver,
22
87.
To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded,
Which skilfully he held and played thereon.
He piped the while, and far and wide rebounded
The echo of his pipings; every one
Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded;
While he conceived another piece of fun,
One of his old tricks—which the God of Day
Perceiving, said:—'I fear thee, Son of May;—
88.
'I fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit,
Lest thou should steal my lyre and crooked bow;
This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit,
To teach all craft upon the earth below;
Thieves love and worship thee—it is thy merit
To make all mortal business ebb and flow
By roguery:—now, Hermes, if you dare
By sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear
89.
'That you will never rob me, you will do
A thing extremely pleasing to my heart.'
Then Mercury swore by the Stygian dew,
That he would never steal his bow or dart,
Or lay his hands on what to him was due,
Or ever would employ his powerful art
Against his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus swore
There was no God or Man whom he loved more.
90.
'And I will give thee as a good-will token,
The beautiful wand of wealth and happiness;
A perfect three-leaved rod of gold unbroken,
Whose magic will thy footsteps ever bless;
And whatsoever by Jove's voice is spoken
Of earthly or divine from its recess,
It, like a loving soul, to thee will speak,
And more than this, do thou forbear to seek.
91.
'For, dearest child, the divinations high
Which thou requirest, 'tis unlawful ever
That thou, or any other deity
Should understand—and vain were the endeavour;
23
For they are hidden in Jove's mind, and I,
In trust of them, have sworn that I would never
Betray the counsels of Jove's inmost will
To any God—the oath was terrible.
92.
'Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not
To speak the fates by Jupiter designed;
But be it mine to tell their various lot
To the unnumbered tribes of human-kind.
Let good to these, and ill to those be wrought
As I dispense—but he who comes consigned
By voice and wings of perfect augury
To my great shrine, shall find avail in me.
93.
'Him will I not deceive, but will assist;
But he who comes relying on such birds
As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist
The purpose of the Gods with idle words,
And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed
His road—whilst I among my other hoards
His gifts deposit. Yet, O son of May,
I have another wondrous thing to say.
96.
'There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who
Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings,
Their heads with flour snowed over white and new,
Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings
Its circling skirts—from these I have learned true
Vaticinations of remotest things.
My father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms,
They sit apart and feed on honeycombs.
95.
'They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow
Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter
With earnest willingness the truth they know;
But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter
All plausible delusions;—these to you
I give;—if you inquire, they will not stutter;
Delight your own soul with them:—any man
You would instruct may profit if he can.
96.
24
'Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia's child—
O'er many a horse and toil-enduring mule,
O'er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild
White-tusked boars, o'er all, by field or pool,
Of cattle which the mighty Mother mild
Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule—
Thou dost alone the veil from death uplift—
Thou givest not—yet this is a great gift.'
97.
Thus King Apollo loved the child of May
In truth, and Jove covered their love with joy.
Hermes with Gods and Men even from that day
Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy,
And little profit, going far astray
Through the dun night. Farewell, delightful Boy,
Of Jove and Maia sprung,—never by me,
Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unremembered be.
NOTES:
_13 cow-stealing]qy. cattle-stealing?
_57 stony Boscombe manuscript. Harvard manuscript; strong edition 1824.
_252 neighbouring]neighbour Harvard manuscript.
_336 hurl Harvard manuscript, editions 1839; haul edition 1824.
_402 Round]Roused edition 1824 only.
_488 wrath]ruth Harvard manuscript.
_580 heifer-stealing]heifer-killing Harvard manuscript.
_673 and like 1839, 1st edition; as of edition 1824, Harvard manuscript.
_713 loving]living cj. Rossetti.
_761 from Harvard manuscript; of editions 1824, 1839.
_764 their love with joy Harvard manuscript; them with love and joy,
editions 1824, 1839.
_767 going]wandering Harvard manuscript.
Homer's Hymn “To The Earth: Mother Of All”
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Poetical Works" 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.]
O universal Mother, who dost keep
From everlasting thy foundations deep,
Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!
All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,
All things that fly, or on the ground divine
Live, move, and there are nourished--these are thine;
These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee
25
Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree
Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!
The life of mortal men beneath thy sway
Is held; thy power both gives and takes away!
Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish;
All things unstinted round them grow and flourish.
For them, endures the life-sustaining field
Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield
Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled.
Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free,
The homes of lovely women, prosperously;
Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness,
And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness,
With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,
On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among,
Leap round them sporting--such delights by thee
Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.
Mother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven,
Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given
A happy life for this brief melody,
Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.
From The Odyssey by Homer 800 BC
Along with the Iliad, the Odyssey by Homer stands as
cornerstone of Western literature. In English literature
alone its far ranging influence is felt from the anonymous
poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to Shakespeare
in Hamlet. Of course it is a story of mythic greatness and
the fantastic and in doing so, like all epic poems, answers
some profound questions. One point to recall that this
translation by what Wikipedia calls “iconoclastic
(rebellious) Victorian-era English” author Samuel Butler
uses not the Greek names for gods and heros but the
Roman ones. Thus Odysseus is called Ulysses and
Poseidon is Neptune Zeus is Jupiter and so forth. Also keep in mind that while this is an
epic poem and exists in its original as poetry, Butler translated it as prose to try and be
sure of the accuracy of text and story.
BOOK I
TELL ME, O MUSE, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after
he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many
were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted;
26
moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men
safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through
their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented
them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove,
from whatsoever source you may know them.
BOOK IX Odysseus (or Ulysses) has been discovered by his host King Alcinous having
wept out loud when the court bard sang of the expedition sent out by Greece against
Troy. He reluctantly tells of his voyage. In book Nine he describes two of his most
famous encounters, one with the seductive Lotus Easters and with the dangerous monster
the Cyclops.
AND ULYSSES answered, "King Alcinous, it is a good thing to hear a bard with such a
divine voice as this man has. There is nothing better or more delightful than when a
whole people make merry together, with the guests sitting orderly to listen, while the
table is loaded with bread and meats, and the cup-bearer draws wine and fills his cup for
every man. This is indeed as fair a sight as a man can see. Now, however, since you are
inclined to ask the story of my sorrows, and rekindle my own sad memories in respect of
them, I do not know how to begin, nor yet how to continue and conclude my tale, for the
hand of heaven has been laid heavily upon me.
"Firstly, then, I will tell you my name that you too may know it, and one day, if I outlive
this time of sorrow, may become my there guests though I live so far away from all of
you. I am Ulysses son of Laertes, reknowned among mankind for all manner of subtlety,
so that my fame ascends to heaven. I live in Ithaca, where there is a high mountain called
Neritum, covered with forests; and not far from it there is a group of islands very near to
one another- Dulichium, Same, and the wooded island of Zacynthus. It lies squat on the
horizon, all highest up in the sea towards the sunset, while the others lie away from it
towards dawn. It is a rugged island, but it breeds brave men, and my eyes know none that
they better love to look upon. The goddess Calypso kept me with her in her cave, and
wanted me to marry her, as did also the cunning Aeaean goddess Circe; but they could
neither of them persuade me, for there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country
and his parents, and however splendid a home he may have in a foreign country, if it be
far from father or mother, he does not care about it. Now, however, I will tell you of the
many hazardous adventures which by Jove's will I met with on my return from Troy.
"When I had set sail thence the wind took me first to Ismarus, which is the city of the
Cicons. There I sacked the town and put the people to the sword. We took their wives and
also much booty, which we divided equitably amongst us, so that none might have reason
to complain. I then said that we had better make off at once, but my men very foolishly
would not obey me, so they stayed there drinking much wine and killing great numbers of
sheep and oxen on the sea shore. Meanwhile the Cicons cried out for help to other Cicons
who lived inland. These were more in number, and stronger, and they were more skilled
in the art of war, for they could fight, either from chariots or on foot as the occasion
27
served; in the morning, therefore, they came as thick as leaves and bloom in summer, and
the hand of heaven was against us, so that we were hard pressed. They set the battle in
array near the ships, and the hosts aimed their bronze-shod spears at one another. So long
as the day waxed and it was still morning, we held our own against them, though they
were more in number than we; but as the sun went down, towards the time when men
loose their oxen, the Cicons got the better of us, and we lost half a dozen men from every
ship we had; so we got away with those that were left.
"Thence we sailed onward with sorrow in our hearts, but glad to have escaped death
though we had lost our comrades, nor did we leave till we had thrice invoked each one of
the poor fellows who had perished by the hands of the Cicons. Then Jove raised the
North wind against us till it blew a hurricane, so that land and sky were hidden in thick
clouds, and night sprang forth out of the heavens. We let the ships run before the gale, but
the force of the wind tore our sails to tatters, so we took them down for fear of shipwreck,
and rowed our hardest towards the land. There we lay two days and two nights suffering
much alike from toil and distress of mind, but on the morning of the third day we again
raised our masts, set sail, and took our places, letting the wind and steersmen direct our
ship. I should have got home at that time unharmed had not the North wind and the
currents been against me as I was doubling Cape Malea, and set me off my course hard
by the island of Cythera.
"I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of nine days upon the sea, but on the tenth
day we reached the land of the Lotus-eater, who live on a food that comes from a kind of
flower. Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on
the shore near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk I sent two of my company to see
what manner of men the people of the place might be, and they had a third man under
them. They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-eaters, who did them no
hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left
off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to
them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eater without thinking
further of their return; nevertheless, though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the
ships and made them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at once,
lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home, so they took
their places and smote the grey sea with their oars.
"We sailed hence, always in much distress, till we came to the land of the lawless and
inhuman Cyclopes. Now the Cyclopes neither plant nor plough, but trust in providence,
and live on such wheat, barley, and grapes as grow wild without any kind of tillage, and
their wild grapes yield them wine as the sun and the rain may grow them. They have no
28
laws nor assemblies of the people, but live in caves on the tops of high mountains; each is
lord and master in his family, and they take no account of their neighbours.
"Now off their harbour there lies a wooded and fertile island not quite close to the land of
the Cyclopes, but still not far. It is overrun with wild goats, that breed there in great
numbers and are never disturbed by foot of man; for sportsmen- who as a rule will suffer
so much hardship in forest or among mountain precipices- do not go there, nor yet again
is it ever ploughed or fed down, but it lies a wilderness untilled and unsown from year to
year, and has no living thing upon it but only goats. For the Cyclopes have no ships, nor
yet shipwrights who could make ships for them; they cannot therefore go from city to
city, or sail over the sea to one another's country as people who have ships can do; if they
had had these they would have colonized the island, for it is a very good one, and would
yield everything in due season. There are meadows that in some places come right down
to the sea shore, well watered and full of luscious grass; grapes would do there
excellently; there is level land for ploughing, and it would always yield heavily at harvest
time, for the soil is deep. There is a good harbour where no cables are wanted, nor yet
anchors, nor need a ship be moored, but all one has to do is to beach one's vessel and stay
there till the wind becomes fair for putting out to sea again. At the head of the harbour
there is a spring of clear water coming out of a cave, and there are poplars growing all
round it.
"Here we entered, but so dark was the night that some god must have brought us in, for
there was nothing whatever to be seen. A thick mist hung all round our ships; the moon
was hidden behind a mass of clouds so that no one could have seen the island if he had
looked for it, nor were there any breakers to tell us we were close in shore before we
found ourselves upon the land itself; when, however, we had beached the ships, we took
down the sails, went ashore and camped upon the beach till daybreak.
"When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, we admired the island and
wandered all over it, while the nymphs Jove's daughters roused the wild goats that we
might get some meat for our dinner. On this we fetched our spears and bows and arrows
from the ships, and dividing ourselves into three bands began to shoot the goats. Heaven
sent us excellent sport; I had twelve ships with me, and each ship got nine goats, while
my own ship had ten; thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we ate
and drank our fill,- and we had plenty of wine left, for each one of us had taken many jars
full when we sacked the city of the Cicons, and this had not yet run out. While we were
feasting we kept turning our eyes towards the land of the Cyclopes, which was hard by,
and saw the smoke of their stubble fires. We could almost fancy we heard their voices
and the bleating of their sheep and goats, but when the sun went down and it came on
dark, we camped down upon the beach, and next morning I called a council.
29
"'Stay here, my brave fellows,' said I, 'all the rest of you, while I go with my ship and
exploit these people myself: I want to see if they are uncivilized savages, or a hospitable
and humane race.'
"I went on board, bidding my men to do so also and loose the hawsers; so they took their
places and smote the grey sea with their oars. When we got to the land, which was not
far, there, on the face of a cliff near the sea, we saw a great cave overhung with laurels. It
was a station for a great many sheep and goats, and outside there was a large yard, with a
high wall round it made of stones built into the ground and of trees both pine and oak.
This was the abode of a huge monster who was then away from home shepherding his
flocks. He would have nothing to do with other people, but led the life of an outlaw. He
was a horrid creature, not like a human being at all, but resembling rather some crag that
stands out boldly against the sky on the top of a high mountain.
"I told my men to draw the ship ashore, and stay where they were, all but the twelve best
among them, who were to go along with myself. I also took a goatskin of sweet black
wine which had been given me by Maron, Apollo son of Euanthes, who was priest of
Apollo the patron god of Ismarus, and lived within the wooded precincts of the temple.
When we were sacking the city we respected him, and spared his life, as also his wife and
child; so he made me some presents of great value- seven talents of fine gold, and a bowl
of silver, with twelve jars of sweet wine, unblended, and of the most exquisite flavour.
Not a man nor maid in the house knew about it, but only himself, his wife, and one
housekeeper: when he drank it he mixed twenty parts of water to one of wine, and yet the
fragrance from the mixing-bowl was so exquisite that it was impossible to refrain from
drinking. I filled a large skin with this wine, and took a wallet full of provisions with me,
for my mind misgave me that I might have to deal with some savage who would be of
great strength, and would respect neither right nor law.
"We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock
of all that we could see. His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses, and he had more
lambs and kids than his pens could hold. They were kept in separate flocks; first there
were the hoggets, then the oldest of the younger lambs and lastly the very young ones all
kept apart from one another; as for his dairy, all the vessels, bowls, and milk pails into
which he milked, were swimming with whey. When they saw all this, my men begged me
to let them first steal some cheeses, and make off with them to the ship; they would then
return, drive down the lambs and kids, put them on board and sail away with them. It
would have been indeed better if we had done so but I would not listen to them, for I
30
wanted to see the owner himself, in the hope that he might give me a present. When,
however, we saw him my poor men found him ill to deal with.
"We lit a fire, offered some of the cheeses in sacrifice, ate others of them, and then sat
waiting till the Cyclops should come in with his sheep. When he came, he brought in with
him a huge load of dry firewood to light the fire for his supper, and this he flung with
such a noise on to the floor of his cave that we hid ourselves for fear at the far end of the
cavern. Meanwhile he drove all the ewes inside, as well as the she-goats that he was
going to milk, leaving the males, both rams and he-goats, outside in the yards. Then he
rolled a huge stone to the mouth of the cave- so huge that two and twenty strong fourwheeled waggons would not be enough to draw it from its place against the doorway.
When he had so done he sat down and milked his ewes and goats, all in due course, and
then let each of them have her own young. He curdled half the milk and set it aside in
wicker strainers, but the other half he poured into bowls that he might drink it for his
supper. When he had got through with all his work, he lit the fire, and then caught sight
of us, whereon he said:
"'Strangers, who are you? Where do sail from? Are you traders, or do you sail the as
rovers, with your hands against every man, and every man's hand against you?'
"We were frightened out of our senses by his loud voice and monstrous form, but I
managed to say, 'We are Achaeans on our way home from Troy, but by the will of Jove,
and stress of weather, we have been driven far out of our course. We are the people of
Agamemnon, son of Atreus, who has won infinite renown throughout the whole world,
by sacking so great a city and killing so many people. We therefore humbly pray you to
show us some hospitality, and otherwise make us such presents as visitors may
reasonably expect. May your excellency fear the wrath of heaven, for we are your
suppliants, and Jove takes all respectable travellers under his protection, for he is the
avenger of all suppliants and foreigners in distress.'
"To this he gave me but a pitiless answer, 'Stranger,' said he, 'you are a fool, or else you
know nothing of this country. Talk to me, indeed, about fearing the gods or shunning
their anger? We Cyclopes do not care about Jove or any of your blessed gods, for we are
ever so much stronger than they. I shall not spare either yourself or your companions out
of any regard for Jove, unless I am in the humour for doing so. And now tell me where
you made your ship fast when you came on shore. Was it round the point, or is she lying
straight off the land?'
31
"He said this to draw me out, but I was too cunning to be caught in that way, so I
answered with a lie; 'Neptune,' said I, 'sent my ship on to the rocks at the far end of your
country, and wrecked it. We were driven on to them from the open sea, but I and those
who are with me escaped the jaws of death.'
"The cruel wretch vouchsafed me not one word of answer, but with a sudden clutch he
gripped up two of my men at once and dashed them down upon the ground as though
they had been puppies. Their brains were shed upon the ground, and the earth was wet
with their blood. Then he tore them limb from limb and supped upon them. He gobbled
them up like a lion in the wilderness, flesh, bones, marrow, and entrails, without leaving
anything uneaten. As for us, we wept and lifted up our hands to heaven on seeing such a
horrid sight, for we did not know what else to do; but when the Cyclops had filled his
huge paunch, and had washed down his meal of human flesh with a drink of neat milk, he
stretched himself full length upon the ground among his sheep, and went to sleep. I was
at first inclined to seize my sword, draw it, and drive it into his vitals, but I reflected that
if I did we should all certainly be lost, for we should never be able to shift the stone
which the monster had put in front of the door. So we stayed sobbing and sighing where
we were till morning came.
"When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, he again lit his fire, milked
his goats and ewes, all quite rightly, and then let each have her own young one; as soon
as he had got through with all his work, he clutched up two more of my men, and began
eating them for his morning's meal. Presently, with the utmost ease, he rolled the stone
away from the door and drove out his sheep, but he at once put it back again- as easily as
though he were merely clapping the lid on to a quiver full of arrows. As soon as he had
done so he shouted, and cried 'Shoo, shoo,' after his sheep to drive them on to the
mountain; so I was left to scheme some way of taking my revenge and covering myself
with glory.
"In the end I deemed it would be the best plan to do as follows. The Cyclops had a great
club which was lying near one of the sheep pens; it was of green olive wood, and he had
cut it intending to use it for a staff as soon as it should be dry. It was so huge that we
could only compare it to the mast of a twenty-oared merchant vessel of large burden, and
able to venture out into open sea. I went up to this club and cut off about six feet of it; I
then gave this piece to the men and told them to fine it evenly off at one end, which they
proceeded to do, and lastly I brought it to a point myself, charring the end in the fire to
make it harder. When I had done this I hid it under dung, which was lying about all over
the cave, and told the men to cast lots which of them should venture along with myself to
32
lift it and bore it into the monster's eye while he was asleep. The lot fell upon the very
four whom I should have chosen, and I myself made five. In the evening the wretch came
back from shepherding, and drove his flocks into the cave- this time driving them all
inside, and not leaving any in the yards; I suppose some fancy must have taken him, or a
god must have prompted him to do so. As soon as he had put the stone back to its place
against the door, he sat down, milked his ewes and his goats all quite rightly, and then let
each have her own young one; when he had got through with all this work, he gripped up
two more of my men, and made his supper off them. So I went up to him with an ivywood bowl of black wine in my hands:
"'Look here, Cyclops,' said I, you have been eating a great deal of man's flesh, so take this
and drink some wine, that you may see what kind of liquor we had on board my ship. I
was bringing it to you as a drink-offering, in the hope that you would take compassion
upon me and further me on my way home, whereas all you do is to go on ramping and
raving most intolerably. You ought to be ashamed yourself; how can you expect people
to come see you any more if you treat them in this way?'
"He then took the cup and drank. He was so delighted with the taste of the wine that he
begged me for another bowl full. 'Be so kind,' he said, 'as to give me some more, and tell
me your name at once. I want to make you a present that you will be glad to have. We
have wine even in this country, for our soil grows grapes and the sun ripens them, but this
drinks like nectar and ambrosia all in one.'
"I then gave him some more; three times did I fill the bowl for him, and three times did
he drain it without thought or heed; then, when I saw that the wine had got into his head,
I said to him as plausibly as I could: 'Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you;
give me, therefore, the present you promised me; my name is Noman; this is what my
father and mother and my friends have always called me.'
"But the cruel wretch said, 'Then I will eat all Noman's comrades before Noman himself,
and will keep Noman for the last. This is the present that I will make him.'
As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground. His great neck
hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon him. Presently he turned sick,
and threw up both wine and the gobbets of human flesh on which he had been gorging,
for he was very drunk. Then I thrust the beam of wood far into the embers to heat it, and
33
encouraged my men lest any of them should turn faint-hearted. When the wood, green
though it was, was about to blaze, I drew it out of the fire glowing with heat, and my men
gathered round me, for heaven had filled their hearts with courage. We drove the sharp
end of the beam into the monster's eye, and bearing upon it with all my weight I kept
turning it round and round as though I were boring a hole in a ship's plank with an auger,
which two men with a wheel and strap can keep on turning as long as they choose. Even
thus did we bore the red hot beam into his eye, till the boiling blood bubbled all over it as
we worked it round and round, so that the steam from the burning eyeball scalded his
eyelids and eyebrows, and the roots of the eye sputtered in the fire. As a blacksmith
plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to temper it- for it is this that gives strength to
the iron- and it makes a great hiss as he does so, even thus did the Cyclops' eye hiss
round the beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We ran
away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore from his eye, and
hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain, shouting as he did so to the other
Cyclopes who lived on the bleak headlands near him; so they gathered from all quarters
round his cave when they heard him crying, and asked what was the matter with him.
"'What ails you, Polyphemus,' said they, 'that you make such a noise, breaking the
stillness of the night, and preventing us from being able to sleep? Surely no man is
carrying off your sheep? Surely no man is trying to kill you either by fraud or by force?
"But Polyphemus shouted to them from inside the cave, 'Noman is killing me by fraud!
Noman is killing me by force!'
"'Then,' said they, 'if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when Jove makes people
ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray to your father Neptune.'
"Then they went away, and I laughed inwardly at the success of my clever stratagem, but
the Cyclops, groaning and in an agony of pain, felt about with his hands till he found the
stone and took it from the door; then he sat in the doorway and stretched his hands in
front of it to catch anyone going out with the sheep, for he thought I might be foolish
enough to attempt this.
"As for myself I kept on puzzling to think how I could best save my own life and those of
my companions; I schemed and schemed, as one who knows that his life depends upon it,
for the danger was very great. In the end I deemed that this plan would be the best. The
34
male sheep were well grown, and carried a heavy black fleece, so I bound them
noiselessly in threes together, with some of the withies on which the wicked monster
used to sleep. There was to be a man under the middle sheep, and the two on either side
were to cover him, so that there were three sheep to each man. As for myself there was a
ram finer than any of the others, so I caught hold of him by the back, esconced myself in
the thick wool under his belly, and flung on patiently to his fleece, face upwards, keeping
a firm hold on it all the time.
"Thus, then, did we wait in great fear of mind till morning came, but when the child of
morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, the male sheep hurried out to feed, while the
ewes remained bleating about the pens waiting to be milked, for their udders were full to
bursting; but their master in spite of all his pain felt the backs of all the sheep as they
stood upright, without being sharp enough to find out that the men were underneath their
bellies. As the ram was going out, last of all, heavy with its fleece and with the weight of
my crafty self; Polyphemus laid hold of it and said:
"'My good ram, what is it that makes you the last to leave my cave this morning? You are
not wont to let the ewes go before you, but lead the mob with a run whether to flowery
mead or bubbling fountain, and are the first to come home again at night; but now you lag
last of all. Is it because you know your master has lost his eye, and are sorry because that
wicked Noman and his horrid crew have got him down in his drink and blinded him? But
I will have his life yet. If you could understand and talk, you would tell me where the
wretch is hiding, and I would dash his brains upon the ground till they flew all over the
cave. I should thus have some satisfaction for the harm a this no-good Noman has done
me.'
"As spoke he drove the ram outside, but when we were a little way out from the cave and
yards, I first got from under the ram's belly, and then freed my comrades; as for the
sheep, which were very fat, by constantly heading them in the right direction we managed
to drive them down to the ship. The crew rejoiced greatly at seeing those of us who had
escaped death, but wept for the others whom the Cyclops had killed. However, I made
signs to them by nodding and frowning that they were to hush their crying, and told them
to get all the sheep on board at once and put out to sea; so they went aboard, took their
places, and smote the grey sea with their oars. Then, when I had got as far out as my
voice would reach, I began to jeer at the Cyclops.
"'Cyclops,' said I, 'you should have taken better measure of your man before eating up his
comrades in your cave. You wretch, eat up your visitors in your own house? You might
35
have known that your sin would find you out, and now Jove and the other gods have
punished you.'
"He got more and more furious as he heard me, so he tore the top from off a high
mountain, and flung it just in front of my ship so that it was within a little of hitting the
end of the rudder. The sea quaked as the rock fell into it, and the wash of the wave it
raised carried us back towards the mainland, and forced us towards the shore. But I
snatched up a long pole and kept the ship off, making signs to my men by nodding my
head, that they must row for their lives, whereon they laid out with a will. When we had
got twice as far as we were before, I was for jeering at the Cyclops again, but the men
begged and prayed of me to hold my tongue.
"'Do not,' they exclaimed, 'be mad enough to provoke this savage creature further; he has
thrown one rock at us already which drove us back again to the mainland, and we made
sure it had been the death of us; if he had then heard any further sound of voices he
would have pounded our heads and our ship's timbers into a jelly with the rugged rocks
he would have heaved at us, for he can throw them a long way.'
"But I would not listen to them, and shouted out to him in my rage, 'Cyclops, if any one
asks you who it was that put your eye out and spoiled your beauty, say it was the valiant
warrior Ulysses, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca.'
"On this he groaned, and cried out, 'Alas, alas, then the old prophecy about me is coming
true. There was a prophet here, at one time, a man both brave and of great stature,
Telemus son of Eurymus, who was an excellent seer, and did all the prophesying for the
Cyclopes till he grew old; he told me that all this would happen to me some day, and said
I should lose my sight by the hand of Ulysses. I have been all along expecting some one
of imposing presence and superhuman strength, whereas he turns out to be a little
insignificant weakling, who has managed to blind my eye by taking advantage of me in
my drink; come here, then, Ulysses, that I may make you presents to show my
hospitality, and urge Neptune to help you forward on your journey- for Neptune and I are
father and son. He, if he so will, shall heal me, which no one else neither god nor man
can do.'
"Then I said, 'I wish I could be as sure of killing you outright and sending you down to
the house of Hades, as I am that it will take more than Neptune to cure that eye of yours.'
"On this he lifted up his hands to the firmament of heaven and prayed, saying, 'Hear me,
great Neptune; if I am indeed your own true-begotten son, grant that Ulysses may never
reach his home alive; or if he must get back to his friends at last, let him do so late and in
sore plight after losing all his men [let him reach his home in another man's ship and find
trouble in his house.']
36
"Thus did he pray, and Neptune heard his prayer. Then he picked up a rock much larger
than the first, swung it aloft and hurled it with prodigious force. It fell just short of the
ship, but was within a little of hitting the end of the rudder. The sea quaked as the rock
fell into it, and the wash of the wave it raised drove us onwards on our way towards the
shore of the island.
"When at last we got to the island where we had left the rest of our ships, we found our
comrades lamenting us, and anxiously awaiting our return. We ran our vessel upon the
sands and got out of her on to the sea shore; we also landed the Cyclops' sheep, and
divided them equitably amongst us so that none might have reason to complain. As for
the ram, my companions agreed that I should have it as an extra share; so I sacrificed it
on the sea shore, and burned its thigh bones to Jove, who is the lord of all. But he heeded
not my sacrifice, and only thought how he might destroy my ships and my comrades.
"Thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we feasted our fill on meat
and drink, but when the sun went down and it came on dark, we camped upon the beach.
When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I bade my men on board and
loose the hawsers. Then they took their places and smote the grey sea with their oars; so
we sailed on with sorrow in our hearts, but glad to have escaped death though we had lost
our comrades.
Tennyson's Mythic Poems
The Hesperides
Hesperus and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree.
—COMUS.
The Northwind fall'n, in the newstarréd night
Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
The hoary promontory of Soloë
Past Thymiaterion, in calmèd bays,
Between the Southern and the Western Horn,
37
Heard neither warbling of the nightingale,
Nor melody o' the Lybian lotusflute
Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope
That ran bloombright into the Atlantic blue,
Beneath a highland leaning down a weight
Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedarshade,
Came voices, like the voices in a dream,
Continuous till he reached the other sea.
Song
I
The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charméd root.
Round about all is mute,
As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks,
As the sandfield at the mountain-foot.
Crocodiles in briny creeks
Sleep and stir not: all is mute.
If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
We shall lose eternal pleasure,
Worth eternal want of rest.
Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
Of the wisdom of the West.
In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three
(Let it not be preached abroad) make an awful mystery.
For the blossom unto three-fold music bloweth;
Evermore it is born anew;
And the sap to three-fold music floweth,
From the root
Drawn in the dark,
Up to the fruit,
Creeping under the fragrant bark,
Liquid gold, honeysweet thro' and thro'.
Keen-eyed Sisters, singing airily,
Looking warily
Every way,
Guard the apple night and day,
Lest one from the East come and take it away.
II
Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, ever and aye,
38
Looking under silver hair with a silver eye.
Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight;
Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and races die;
Honour comes with mystery;
Hoarded wisdom brings delight.
Number, tell them over and number
How many the mystic fruit-tree holds,
Lest the redcombed dragon slumber
Rolled together in purple folds.
Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol'n away,
For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
Round about the hallowed fruit tree curled—
Sing away, sing aloud and evermore in the wind, without stop,
Lest his scalèd eyelid drop,
For he is older than the world.
If he waken, we waken,
Rapidly levelling eager eyes.
If he sleep, we sleep,
Dropping the eyelid over the eyes.
If the golden apple be taken
The world will be overwise.
Five links, a golden chain, are we,
Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,
Bound about the golden tree.
III
Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day,
Lest the old wound of the world be healèd,
The glory unsealèd,
The golden apple stol'n away,
And the ancient secret revealèd.
Look from west to east along:
Father, old Himla weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong.
Wandering waters unto wandering waters call;
Let them clash together, foam and fall.
Out of watchings, out of wiles,
Comes the bliss of secret smiles,
All things are not told to all,
Half round the mantling night is drawn,
Purplefringed with even and dawn.
Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn.
IV
Every flower and every fruit the redolent breath
39
Of this warm seawind ripeneth,
Arching the billow in his sleep;
But the land-wind wandereth,
Broken by the highland-steep,
Two streams upon the violet deep:
For the western sun and the western star,
And the low west wind, breathing afar,
The end of day and beginning of night
Make the apple holy and bright,
Holy and bright, round and full, bright and blest,
Mellowed in a land of rest;
Watch it warily day and night;
All good things are in the west,
Till midnoon the cool east light
Is shut out by the round of the tall hillbrow;
But when the fullfaced sunset yellowly
Stays on the flowering arch of the bough,
The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly,
Goldenkernelled, goldencored,
Sunset ripened, above on the tree,
The world is wasted with fire and sword,
But the apple of gold hangs over the sea,
Five links, a golden chain, are we,
Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,
Daughters three,
Bound about
All round about
The gnarlèd bole of the charmèd tree,
The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Watch it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charmèd root.
Inspired by The Odyssey
For Tennyson the recurring theme within Homer's The Odyssey of temptation and one's
resistance to it took on the specific problem of being engaged and active in one's society
or to leave as ease within the beauty of poetic esthetics. Tennyson firmly believed that
poets could shape society but that it was a dangerous task which could lead to
compromise and even death. However, in these poems especially, he seems to be arguing
that retreating into ease was a kind of death as well, although some critics have seen
Ulysses' choice in the last poem as not a call to action but in fact a call to escape since he
refuses to fulfill his responsibility to the society which relies on him. This remained a
living issue for Tennyson throughout his life.
40
“The Sea Faries”
Slow sail'd the weary mariners and saw
Betwixt the green brink and the run-Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bossoms prest [they mused,
To little harps of gold: and while
Whispering to each other half in fear,
Shrill music reach'd them on the middle sea.
Wither away, whither away, whither away? Fly no more
Wither away from the high green field,
and the happy blossoming shore?
Day and night to the billow the fountain calls;
Down shower the gamboiling waterfalls
From wandering over the lea:
Out of the livgreen heart of the dells,
They freshen the silver-crim shells,
And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells
High over the full toned sea:
O, hither come hither and furl your sails,
Come hither to me and to me,
Here is only the mew that wails;
We will sing to you all the day;
Mariners mariners, furl your sails,
For here are the blessed downs and dales,
and merrily, merrily carol the gales,
And the rainbow forms and flies on the land
Over the islands free;
And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand;
Hither come hither and see;
And the rainbow hangs on the posing wave,
And sweet is the color of cove and cave,
And sweet shall your welcome be;
O, hither come hither and be our lords
For merry brides are we.
We will kiss sweet kisses and speak sweet words
O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten
With the sharp clear twang of the golden chords
Runs up the ridged sea.
Who can light on as happy shore
all the world o'er, all the worldo'er?
Wither away? Listen and stay:
Mariner , mariner, fly no more.
41
“The Lotos-Eaters”
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem'd the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
42
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more";
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."
Choric Song
I
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II
Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm!"
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
43
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whisper'd speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
44
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile:
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill-To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine-To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
45
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer--some, 'tis whisper'd--down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
“Ulysses”
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
46
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,-Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,-That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
47
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Here is an interesting comparison poem about old age describing a man who asked the
Goddess of the dawn to give him eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth.
Tithonus
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man—
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd
To his great heart none other than a God!
I ask'd thee, 'Give me immortality.'
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men, who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills,
And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me,
And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
48
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renew'd.
Thy cheek begins to redden thro' the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
'The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.'
Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch—if I be he that watch'd—
The lucid outline forming round thee; saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss'd
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
49
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Metamorphoses by Ovid
This portion of the Roman poet’s Ovid’s collection of mythic stories is
delightful in its narrative and insightful in how ready the pagan world was
for the Good News of Christ which was just appearing on the scene.
From Book One
The Creation of the World
Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois'd, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.
But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end:
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv'n,
And grosser air sunk from aetherial Heav'n.
Thus disembroil'd, they take their proper place;
The next of kin, contiguously embrace;
50
And foes are sunder'd, by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a num'rous throng
Of pondrous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had form'd the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded Earth into a spacious round:
Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
And bad the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in Earth are swallow'd up, the most
In ample oceans, disembogu'd, are lost.
He shades the woods, the vallies he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
And as five zones th' aetherial regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to Earth assign'd:
The sun with rays, directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
Betwixt th' extreams, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
The lighter parts lye next the fires above;
The grosser near the watry surface move:
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder's voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds that on their wings cold winter bear.
Nor were those blustring brethren left at large,
On seas, and shores, their fury to discharge:
Bound as they are, and circumscrib'd in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent);
And Eastern realms, where early Persians run,
51
To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton Zephyr wings his flight;
Pleas'd with the remnants of departing light:
Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
T' invade the frozen waggon of the North.
While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
And rots, with endless rain, th' unwholsom year.
High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for Heav'n design'd;
Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
Purg'd from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.
Scarce had the Pow'r distinguish'd these, when streight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads, from underneath the mass;
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffusive light adorn their heav'nly place.
Then, every void of Nature to supply,
With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
New colonies of birds, to people air:
And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heav'nly fire
The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
From such rude principles our form began;
And earth was metamorphos'd into Man.
The Golden Age
The golden age was first; when Man yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:
52
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law, where none opprest:
The law of Man was written in his breast:
No suppliant crowds before the judge appear'd,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,
E're yet the pine descended to the seas:
E're sails were spread, new oceans to explore:
And happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,
Confin'd their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:
Nor swords were forg'd; but void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovok'd, did fruitful stores allow:
Content with food, which Nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish'd out a feast.
The flow'rs unsown, in fields and meadows reign'd:
And Western winds immortal spring maintain'd.
In following years, the bearded corn ensu'd
From Earth unask'd, nor was that Earth renew'd.
From veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;
And honey sweating through the pores of oak.
The Silver Age
But when good Saturn, banish'd from above,
Was driv'n to Hell, the world was under Jove.
Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell'd by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear:
And spring was but a season of the year.
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarg'd the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow;
The wings of winds were clogg'd with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driv'n,
Sought shelter from th' inclemency of Heav'n.
Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds;
With twining oziers fenc'd; and moss their beds.
53
Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labour'd first beneath the yoke.
The Brazen Age
To this came next in course, the brazen age:
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet...
The Iron Age
Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal, were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.
Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:
Trees, rudely hollow'd, did the waves sustain;
E're ships in triumph plough'd the watry plain.
Then land-marks limited to each his right:
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone requir'd to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digg'd from her entrails first the precious oar;
Which next to Hell, the prudent Gods had laid;
And that alluring ill, to sight display'd.
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:
And double death did wretched Man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betray'd,
Now (brandish'd weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands;
No rights of hospitality remain:
The guest, by him who harbour'd him, is slain,
The son-in-law pursues the father's life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife.
The step-dame poyson for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father's years.
Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here opprest, to Heav'n returns.
The Giants' War
Nor were the Gods themselves more safe above;
54
Against beleaguer'd Heav'n the giants move.
Hills pil'd on hills, on mountains mountains lie,
To make their mad approaches to the skie.
'Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time
T' avenge with thunder their audacious crime:
Red light'ning plaid along the firmament,
And their demolish'd works to pieces rent.
Sing'd with the flames, and with the bolts transfixt,
With native Earth, their blood the monsters mixt;
The blood, indu'd with animating heat,
Did in th' impregnant Earth new sons beget:
They, like the seed from which they sprung, accurst,
Against the Gods immortal hatred nurst,
An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood;
Expressing their original from blood.
Which when the king of Gods beheld from high
(Withal revolving in his memory,
What he himself had found on Earth of late,
Lycaon's guilt, and his inhumane treat),
He sigh'd; nor longer with his pity strove;
But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove:
Then call'd a general council of the Gods;
Who summon'd, issue from their blest abodes,
And fill th' assembly with a shining train.
A way there is, in Heav'n's expanded plain,
Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,
And mortals, by the name of Milky, know.
The ground-work is of stars; through which the road
Lyes open to the Thunderer's abode:
The Gods of greater nations dwell around,
And, on the right and left, the palace bound;
The commons where they can: the nobler sort
With winding-doors wide open, front the court.
This place, as far as Earth with Heav'n may vie,
I dare to call the Louvre of the skie.
When all were plac'd, in seats distinctly known,
And he, their father, had assum'd the throne,
Upon his iv'ry sceptre first he leant,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:
Air, Earth, and seas, obey'd th' almighty nod;
And, with a gen'ral fear, confess'd the God.
At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the Pow'rs bespoke.
55
I was not more concern'd in that debate
Of empire, when our universal state
Was put to hazard, and the giant race
Our captive skies were ready to imbrace:
For tho' the foe was fierce, the seeds of all
Rebellion, sprung from one original;
Now, wheresoever ambient waters glide,
All are corrupt, and all must be destroy'd.
Let me this holy protestation make,
By Hell, and Hell's inviolable lake,
I try'd whatever in the godhead lay:
But gangren'd members must be lopt away,
Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay.
There dwells below, a race of demi-gods,
Of nymphs in waters, and of fawns in woods:
Who, tho' not worthy yet, in Heav'n to live,
Let 'em, at least, enjoy that Earth we give.
Can these be thought securely lodg'd below,
When I my self, who no superior know,
I, who have Heav'n and Earth at my command,
Have been attempted by Lycaon's hand?
At this a murmur through the synod went,
And with one voice they vote his punishment.
Thus, when conspiring traytors dar'd to doom
The fall of Caesar, and in him of Rome,
The nations trembled with a pious fear;
All anxious for their earthly Thunderer:
Nor was their care, o Caesar, less esteem'd
By thee, than that of Heav'n for Jove was deem'd:
Who with his hand, and voice, did first restrain
Their murmurs, then resum'd his speech again.
The Gods to silence were compos'd, and sate
With reverence, due to his superior state.
Cancel your pious cares; already he
Has paid his debt to justice, and to me.
Yet what his crimes, and what my judgments were,
Remains for me thus briefly to declare.
The clamours of this vile degenerate age,
The cries of orphans, and th' oppressor's rage,
Had reach'd the stars: I will descend, said I,
In hope to prove this loud complaint a lye.
Disguis'd in humane shape, I travell'd round
The world, and more than what I heard, I found.
O'er Maenalus I took my steepy way,
56
By caverns infamous for beasts of prey:
Then cross'd Cyllene, and the piny shade
More infamous, by curst Lycaon made:
Dark night had cover'd Heaven, and Earth, before
I enter'd his unhospitable door.
Just at my entrance, I display'd the sign
That somewhat was approaching of divine.
The prostrate people pray; the tyrant grins;
And, adding prophanation to his sins,
I'll try, said he, and if a God appear,
To prove his deity shall cost him dear.
'Twas late; the graceless wretch my death prepares,
When I shou'd soundly sleep, opprest with cares:
This dire experiment he chose, to prove
If I were mortal, or undoubted Jove:
But first he had resolv'd to taste my pow'r;
Not long before, but in a luckless hour,
Some legates, sent from the Molossian state,
Were on a peaceful errand come to treat:
Of these he murders one, he boils the flesh;
And lays the mangled morsels in a dish:
Some part he roasts; then serves it up, so drest,
And bids me welcome to this humane feast.
Mov'd with disdain, the table I o'er-turn'd;
And with avenging flames, the palace burn'd.
The tyrant in a fright, for shelter gains
The neighb'ring fields, and scours along the plains.
Howling he fled, and fain he wou'd have spoke;
But humane voice his brutal tongue forsook.
About his lips the gather'd foam he churns,
And, breathing slaughters, still with rage he burns,
But on the bleating flock his fury turns.
His mantle, now his hide, with rugged hairs
Cleaves to his back; a famish'd face he bears;
His arms descend, his shoulders sink away
To multiply his legs for chase of prey.
He grows a wolf, his hoariness remains,
And the same rage in other members reigns.
His eyes still sparkle in a narr'wer space:
His jaws retain the grin, and violence of his face
This was a single ruin, but not one
Deserves so just a punishment alone.
Mankind's a monster, and th' ungodly times
Confed'rate into guilt, are sworn to crimes.
All are alike involv'd in ill, and all
57
Must by the same relentless fury fall.
Thus ended he; the greater Gods assent;
By clamours urging his severe intent;
The less fill up the cry for punishment.
Yet still with pity they remember Man;
And mourn as much as heav'nly spirits can.
They ask, when those were lost of humane birth,
What he wou'd do with all this waste of Earth:
If his dispeopl'd world he would resign
To beasts, a mute, and more ignoble line;
Neglected altars must no longer smoke,
If none were left to worship, and invoke.
To whom the Father of the Gods reply'd,
Lay that unnecessary fear aside:
Mine be the care, new people to provide.
I will from wondrous principles ordain
A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.
Already had he toss'd the flaming brand;
And roll'd the thunder in his spacious hand;
Preparing to discharge on seas and land:
But stopt, for fear, thus violently driv'n,
The sparks should catch his axle-tree of Heav'n.
Remembring in the fates, a time when fire
Shou'd to the battlements of Heaven aspire,
And all his blazing worlds above shou'd burn;
And all th' inferior globe to cinders turn.
His dire artill'ry thus dismist, he bent
His thoughts to some securer punishment:
Concludes to pour a watry deluge down;
And what he durst not burn, resolves to drown.
The northern breath, that freezes floods, he binds;
With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds:
The south he loos'd, who night and horror brings;
And foggs are shaken from his flaggy wings.
From his divided beard two streams he pours,
His head, and rheumy eyes distill in show'rs,
With rain his robe, and heavy mantle flow:
And lazy mists are lowring on his brow;
Still as he swept along, with his clench'd fist
He squeez'd the clouds, th' imprison'd clouds resist:
The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound;
And show'rs inlarg'd, come pouring on the ground.
Then, clad in colours of a various dye,
Junonian Iris breeds a new supply
58
To feed the clouds: impetuous rain descends;
The bearded corn beneath the burden bends:
Defrauded clowns deplore their perish'd grain;
And the long labours of the year are vain.
Nor from his patrimonial Heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;
Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,
To help him with auxiliary waves.
The watry tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who rowl from mossie caves (their moist abodes);
And with perpetual urns his palace fill:
To whom in brief, he thus imparts his will.
Small exhortation needs; your pow'rs employ:
And this bad world, so Jove requires, destroy.
Let loose the reins to all your watry store:
Bear down the damms, and open ev'ry door.
The floods, by Nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,
Remove the living stones, that stopt their way,
And gushing from their source, augment the sea.
Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground;
With inward trembling Earth receiv'd the wound;
And rising streams a ready passage found.
Th' expanded waters gather on the plain:
They float the fields, and over-top the grain;
Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway,
Bear flocks, and folds, and lab'ring hinds away.
Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sap'd by floods,
Their houses fell upon their houshold Gods.
The solid piles, too strongly built to fall,
High o'er their heads, behold a watry wall:
Now seas and Earth were in confusion lost;
A world of waters, and without a coast.
One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is born:
And ploughs above, where late he sow'd his corn.
Others o'er chimney-tops and turrets row,
And drop their anchors on the meads below:
Or downward driv'n, they bruise the tender vine,
Or tost aloft, are knock'd against a pine.
And where of late the kids had cropt the grass,
The monsters of the deep now take their place.
Insulting Nereids on the cities ride,
59
And wond'ring dolphins o'er the palace glide.
On leaves, and masts of mighty oaks they brouze;
And their broad fins entangle in the boughs.
The frighted wolf now swims amongst the sheep;
The yellow lion wanders in the deep:
His rapid force no longer helps the boar:
The stag swims faster, than he ran before.
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main.
Now hills, and vales no more distinction know;
And levell'd Nature lies oppress'd below.
The most of mortals perish in the flood:
The small remainder dies for want of food.
A mountain of stupendous height there stands
Betwixt th' Athenian and Boeotian lands,
The bound of fruitful fields, while fields they were,
But then a field of waters did appear:
Parnassus is its name; whose forky rise
Mounts thro' the clouds, and mates the lofty skies.
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion wafting, moor'd his little skiff.
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perish'd Man; they two were human kind.
The mountain nymphs, and Themis they adore,
And from her oracles relief implore.
The most upright of mortal men was he;
The most sincere, and holy woman, she.
When Jupiter, surveying Earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie,
That where so many millions lately liv'd,
But two, the best of either sex, surviv'd;
He loos'd the northern wind; fierce Boreas flies
To puff away the clouds, and purge the skies:
Serenely, while he blows, the vapours driv'n,
Discover Heav'n to Earth, and Earth to Heav'n.
The billows fall, while Neptune lays his mace
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrow'd face.
Already Triton, at his call, appears
Above the waves; a Tyrian robe he wears;
And in his hand a crooked trumpet bears.
The soveraign bids him peaceful sounds inspire,
And give the waves the signal to retire.
His writhen shell he takes; whose narrow vent
Grows by degrees into a large extent,
60
Then gives it breath; the blast with doubling sound,
Runs the wide circuit of the world around:
The sun first heard it, in his early east,
And met the rattling ecchos in the west.
The waters, listning to the trumpet's roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.
A thin circumference of land appears;
And Earth, but not at once, her visage rears,
And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds;
The streams, but just contain'd within their bounds,
By slow degrees into their channels crawl;
And Earth increases, as the waters fall.
In longer time the tops of trees appear,
Which mud on their dishonour'd branches bear.
At length the world was all restor'd to view;
But desolate, and of a sickly hue:
Nature beheld her self, and stood aghast,
A dismal desart, and a silent waste.
Which when Deucalion, with a piteous look
Beheld, he wept, and thus to Pyrrha spoke:
Oh wife, oh sister, oh of all thy kind
The best, and only creature left behind,
By kindred, love, and now by dangers joyn'd;
Of multitudes, who breath'd the common air,
We two remain; a species in a pair:
The rest the seas have swallow'd; nor have we
Ev'n of this wretched life a certainty.
The clouds are still above; and, while I speak,
A second deluge o'er our heads may break.
Shou'd I be snatcht from hence, and thou remain,
Without relief, or partner of thy pain,
How cou'dst thou such a wretched life sustain?
Shou'd I be left, and thou be lost, the sea
That bury'd her I lov'd, shou'd bury me.
Oh cou'd our father his old arts inspire,
And make me heir of his informing fire,
That so I might abolisht Man retrieve,
And perisht people in new souls might live.
But Heav'n is pleas'd, nor ought we to complain,
That we, th' examples of mankind, remain.
He said; the careful couple joyn their tears:
And then invoke the Gods, with pious prayers.
Thus, in devotion having eas'd their grief,
61
From sacred oracles they seek relief;
And to Cephysus' brook their way pursue:
The stream was troubled, but the ford they knew;
With living waters, in the fountain bred,
They sprinkle first their garments, and their head,
Then took the way, which to the temple led.
The roofs were all defil'd with moss, and mire,
The desart altars void of solemn fire.
Before the gradual, prostrate they ador'd;
The pavement kiss'd; and thus the saint implor'd.
O righteous Themis, if the Pow'rs above
By pray'rs are bent to pity, and to love;
If humane miseries can move their mind;
If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;
Tell how we may restore, by second birth,
Mankind, and people desolated Earth.
Then thus the gracious Goddess, nodding, said;
Depart, and with your vestments veil your head:
And stooping lowly down, with losen'd zones,
Throw each behind your backs, your mighty mother's bones.
Amaz'd the pair, and mute with wonder stand,
'Till Pyrrha first refus'd the dire command.
Forbid it Heav'n, said she, that I shou'd tear
Those holy reliques from the sepulcher.
They ponder'd the mysterious words again,
For some new sense; and long they sought in vain:
At length Deucalion clear'd his cloudy brow,
And said, the dark Aenigma will allow
A meaning, which, if well I understand,
From sacrilege will free the God's command:
This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones
In her capacious body, are her bones:
These we must cast behind. With hope, and fear,
The woman did the new solution hear:
The man diffides in his own augury,
And doubts the Gods; yet both resolve to try.
Descending from the mount, they first unbind
Their vests, and veil'd, they cast the stones behind:
The stones (a miracle to mortal view,
But long tradition makes it pass for true)
Did first the rigour of their kind expel,
And suppled into softness, as they fell;
Then swell'd, and swelling, by degrees grew warm;
And took the rudiments of human form.
Imperfect shapes: in marble such are seen,
62
When the rude chizzel does the man begin;
While yet the roughness of the stone remains,
Without the rising muscles, and the veins.
The sappy parts, and next resembling juice,
Were turn'd to moisture, for the body's use:
Supplying humours, blood, and nourishment;
The rest, too solid to receive a bent,
Converts to bones; and what was once a vein,
Its former name and Nature did retain.
By help of pow'r divine, in little space,
What the man threw, assum'd a manly face;
And what the wife, renew'd the female race.
Hence we derive our nature; born to bear
Laborious life; and harden'd into care.
The rest of animals, from teeming Earth
Produc'd, in various forms receiv'd their birth.
The native moisture, in its close retreat,
Digested by the sun's aetherial heat,
As in a kindly womb, began to breed:
Then swell'd, and quicken'd by the vital seed.
And some in less, and some in longer space,
Were ripen'd into form, and took a sev'ral face.
Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
And seeks, with ebbing tides, his ancient bed,
The fat manure with heav'nly fire is warm'd;
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are form'd;
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find;
Some rude, and yet unfinish'd in their kind:
Short of their limbs, a lame imperfect birth:
One half alive; and one of lifeless earth.
For heat, and moisture, when in bodies join'd,
The temper that results from either kind
Conception makes; and fighting 'till they mix,
Their mingled atoms in each other fix.
Thus Nature's hand the genial bed prepares
With friendly discord, and with fruitful wars.
From hence the surface of the ground, with mud
And slime besmear'd (the faeces of the flood),
Receiv'd the rays of Heav'n: and sucking in
The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin:
Some were of sev'ral sorts produc'd before,
But of new monsters, Earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
63
Thee, Python too, the wondring world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight:
So monstrous was his bulk, so large a space
Did his vast body, and long train embrace.
Whom Phoebus basking on a bank espy'd;
E're now the God his arrows had not try'd
But on the trembling deer, or mountain goat;
At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.
Though ev'ry shaft took place, he spent the store
Of his full quiver; and 'twas long before
Th' expiring serpent wallow'd in his gore.
Then, to preserve the fame of such a deed,
For Python slain, he Pythian games decred.
Where noble youths for mastership shou'd strive,
To quoit, to run, and steeds, and chariots drive.
The prize was fame: in witness of renown
An oaken garland did the victor crown.
The laurel was not yet for triumphs born;
But every green alike by Phoebus worn,
Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn
The Fourth Eclogue by Virgil “The Messianic Eclogue”
The Roman poet Virgil had, by the thirteen and fourteenth
centuries AD, acquired a reputation as the anima naturaliter
Christiana. This is Latin for the “soul of the natural Christian”
and it came as the result of the interpretation of some of his
poetry, especially the fourth Eclogue. This reputation has
stayed with Virgil since that time and it certainly played a role
in preserving his poetry when other poetry was lost during the
Dark Ages after the fall of Rome in 476 AD. Although Virgil
lived before the advent of Jesus Christ and Christianity, it was
proposed that his poetry anticipated a Christian ethic before Jesus Christ was born. It is in
the fourth of ten Eclogues that this was demonstrated most dramatically.
The Eclogues are a series of ten poems that Virgil wrote circa 40 BC. The majority of
these poems deal with shepherds and their various concerns. The fourth Eclogue is
decidedly different in this respect. In the poem Virgil makes several statements about a
child destined to bring a Golden Age and free the world from fear. Taken from Classics
Network (http://classicsnetwork.com/essays/virgil-and-the-messianic-eclogue/824)
Eclogue IV: The Golden Age Translated by A. S. Kline
64
Muses of Sicily, let me sing a little more grandly.
Orchards and humble tamarisks don’t please everyone:
if I sing of the woods, let the woods be fit for a Consul.
Now the last age of the Cumaean prophecy begins:
the great roll-call of the centuries is born anew:
now Virgin Justice returns, and Saturn’s reign:
now a new race descends from the heavens above.
Only favour the child who’s born, pure Lucina, under whom
the first race of iron shall end, and a golden race
rise up throughout the world: now your Apollo reigns.
For, Pollio, in your consulship, this noble age begins,
and the noble months begin their advance:
any traces of our evils that remain will be cancelled,
while you lead, and leave the earth free from perpetual fear.
He will take on divine life, and he will see gods
mingled with heroes, and be seen by them,
and rule a peaceful world with his father’s powers.
And for you, boy, the uncultivated earth will pour out
her first little gifts, straggling ivy and cyclamen everywhere
and the bean flower with the smiling acanthus.
The goats will come home themselves, their udders swollen
with milk, and the cattle will have no fear of fierce lions:
Your cradle itself will pour out delightful flowers:
And the snakes will die, and deceitful poisonous herbs
will wither: Assyrian spice plants will spring up everywhere.
And you will read both of heroic glories, and your father’s deeds,
and will soon know what virtue can be.
The plain will slowly turn golden with tender wheat,
and the ripe clusters hang on the wild briar,
and the tough oak drip with dew-wet honey.
Some small traces of ancient error will lurk,
that will command men to take to the sea in ships,
encircle towns with walls, plough the earth with furrows.
Another Argo will arise to carry chosen heroes, a second
Tiphys as helmsman: there will be another War,
and great Achilles will be sent once more to Troy.
Then when the strength of age has made you a man,
the merchant himself will quit the sea, nor will the pine ship
trade its goods: every land will produce everything.
The soil will not feel the hoe: nor the vine the pruning hook:
65
the strong ploughman too will free his oxen from the yoke:
wool will no longer be taught to counterfeit varied colours,
the ram in the meadow will change his fleece of himself,
now to a sweet blushing purple, now to a saffron yellow:
scarlet will clothe the browsing lambs of its own accord.
‘Let such ages roll on’ the Fates said, in harmony,
to the spindle, with the power of inexorable destiny.
O dear child of the gods, take up your high honours
(the time is near), great son of Jupiter!
See the world, with its weighty dome, bowing,
earth and wide sea and deep heavens:
see how everything delights in the future age!
O let the last days of a long life remain to me,
and the inspiration to tell how great your deeds will be:
Thracian Orpheus and Linus will not overcome me in song,
though his mother helps the one, his father the other,
Calliope Orpheus, and lovely Apollo Linus.
Even Pan if he competed with me, with Arcady as Judge,
even Pan, with Arcady as judge, would account himself beaten.
Little child, begin to recognise your mother with a smile:
ten months have brought a mother’s long labour.
Little child, begin: he on whom his parents do not smile
no god honours at his banquets, no goddess in her bed.
Found at http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilEclogues.htm
There is also a Latin-English side by side translation also available at this site:
(http://www.rainybluedawn.com/translations/latin/eclogue4.htm)
A Hymn to the Sun
We cannot tell whether Ikhnaton had adopted his theory from
Syria, and whether Aton was merely a form of Adonis.
Of whatever origin, the new god filled the king's soul with
delight; he changed his own name from Amenhotep, which
contained the name of Amon, to Ikhnaton, meaning "Aton is
satisfied"; and helping himself with old hymns, and certain
monotheistic poems published in the preceding reign.
66
He composed passionate Hymn to the sun and songs to Aton, of which this, the longest
and the best Hymn to the sun, is the fairest surviving remnant of Egyptian literature:
Text and commentary taken from Love Egypt. com
http://www.love-egypt.com/hymn-to-the-sun.html
Thy dawning is beautiful,
In the horizon of the sky,
O living Aton, Beginning of life.
When thou risest in the eastern horizon,
Thou fillest every land,
With thy beauty.
Thou art beautiful,
Great,
Glittering,
High above every land,
Thy rays,
They encompass the land,
Even all that thou hast made.
Thou art Re,
and thou carriest them all away captive;
Thou bindest them by thy love.
Though thou art far away,
Thy rays are upon earth;
Though thou art on high,
thy footprints are the day.
When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky,
The earth is in darkness like the dead;
They sleep in their chambers,
Their heads are wrapped up,
Their nostrils are stopped,
And none seeth the other,
All their things are stolen
Which are under their heads,
And they know it not.
Every lion cometh forth from his den,
All serpents they sting. . . .
The world is in silence,
He that made them resteth in his horizon.
67
Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon.
When thou shinest as Aton by day,
Thou drivest away the darkness.
When thou sendest forth thy rays,
The Two Lands are in daily festivity,
Awake and standing upon their feet,
When thou hast raised them up.
Their limbs bathed,
they take their clothing,
Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.
In all the world they do their work.
All cattle rest upon their pasturage,
The trees and the plants flourish,
The birds flutter in their marshes,
Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
All the sheep dance upon their feet,
All winged things fly,
They live when thou hast shone upon them.
The barks sail upstream and downstream.
Every highway is open because thou dawnest.
The fish in the river leap up before thee.
Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.
Creator of the germ in woman,
Maker of seed in man,
Giving life to the son in the body of his mother,
Soothing him that he may not weep,
Nurse even in the womb,
Giver of breath to animate every one that he maketh!
When he cometh forth from the body ...
on the day of his birth,
Thou openest his mouth in speech,
Thou suppliest his necessities.
When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the egg,
Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive.
When thou hast brought him together,
To the point of bursting the egg,
68
He cometh forth from the egg,
To chirp with all his might.
He goeth about upon his two feet,
When he hath come forth therefrom.
How manifold are thy works!
They are hidden from before us,
O sole god, whose powers no other possesseth.
Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart
While thou wast alone:
Men, all cattle large and small,
All that are upon the earth,
That go about upon their feet;
All that are on high,
That fly with their wings.
The foreign countries,
Syria and Kush,
The land of Egypt;
Thou settest every man into his place,
Thou suppliest their necessities. . . .
Thou makest the Nile in the nether world,
Thou bringest it as thou desirest,
To preserve alive the people. . . .
How excellent are thy designs,
O Lord of eternity!
There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers
And for the cattle of every country,
That go upon their feet. . . .
Thy rays nourish every garden;
When thou risest they live,
They grow by thee.
Thou makest the seasons,
In order to create all thy work:
Winter to bring them coolness,
And heat that they may taste thee.
Thou didst make the distant sky to rise therein,
In order to behold all that thou hast made,
Thou alone, shining in the form as living Aton,
69
Dawning, glittering, going afar and returning.
Thou makest millions of forms
Through thyself alone;
Cities, towns and tribes,
Highways and rivers.
All eyes see thee before them,
For thou art Aton of the day over the earth. . . .
Thou art in my heart,
There is no other that knoweth thee
Save thy son Ikhnaton.
Thou hast made him wise
In thy designs and in thy might.
The world is in thy hand,
Even as thou hast made them.
When thou hast risen they live,
When thou settest they die;
For thou art length of life of thyself,
Men live through thee,
While their eyes are upon thy beauty,
Until thou settest.
All labor is put away,
When thou settest in the west. . . .
Thou didst establish the world,
And raised them up for thy son. . . .
Ikhnaton, whose life is long;
And for the chief royal wife, his beloved,
Mistress of the Two Lands,
Nefer-nefru-aton, Nofretete,
Living and flourishing for ever and ever.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400?) was a soldier,
statesman, diplomat, scribe and England’s first great
known poet. There were other geniuses in his time such
as the unknown author of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight and William Langland author of the allegory Piers
Plowman. However none of them had both his range or
success. In a time when English was playing second
fiddle to French and even more so Latin, he composed in
the voice of the vernacular and made English respectable.
He has been called the Father of English Literature and was the first to be buried in
“Poets Corner” in Westminster Abbey. The Canterbury Tales contains a number of
70
works which could be included in a study of the fantastic. The Nun’s Priest’s tale is a
Beast Fable with a courtly lord rooster named Chanteclear and “The Pardoner’s Tale”
features a figure much like the Wandering Jew who directs a group of rowdies to an
encounter with Death. However, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” not only introduced in her
prologue by one of the most engaging and lively of his pilgrims, Alyson--the intimidating
and love hungry wife-- but it is also an example of.one of the major developments in
fantastic literature, the Arthurian Romance.
THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE
By Geoffrey Chaucer1
(1343-1400)
Experience, though no authority
Were in this world, were good enough for me,
To speak of woe that is in all marriage;
For, masters, since I was twelve years of age, Thanks be to God Who is for aye alive,
Of husbands at church door have I had five;
For men so many times have wedded me;
And all were worthy men in their degree.
But someone told me not so long ago
That since Our Lord, save once, would never go
To wedding (that at Cana in Galilee),
Thus, by this same example, showed He me
I never should have married more than once.
Lo and behold! What sharp words, for the nonce,
Beside a well Lord Jesus, God and man,
Spoke in reproving the Samaritan:
'For thou hast had five husbands,' thus said He,
'And he whom thou hast now to be with thee
Is not thine husband.' Thus He said that day,
But what He meant thereby I cannot say;
And I would ask now why that same fifth man
Was not husband to the Samaritan?
How many might she have, then, in marriage?
For I have never heard, in all my age,
Clear exposition of this number shown,
Though men may guess and argue up and down.
But well I know and say, and do not lie,
God bade us to increase and multiply;
That worthy text can I well understand.
And well I know He said, too, my husband
Should father leave, and mother, and cleave to me;
But no specific number mentioned He,
1
The breaks in the text were added by Prof. Rearick to help follow the different directions the Wife of Bath
goes in her prologue.
71
Whether of bigamy or octogamy;
Why should men speak of it reproachfully?
Lo, there's the wise old king Dan Solomon;
I understand he had more wives than one;
And now would God it were permitted me
To be refreshed one half as oft as he!
Which gift of God he had for all his wives!
No man has such that in this world now lives.
God knows, this noble king, it strikes my wit,
The first night he had many a merry fit
With each of them, so much he was alive!
Praise be to God that I have wedded five!
Of whom I did pick out and choose the best
Both for their nether purse and for their chest
Different schools make divers perfect clerks,
Different methods learned in sundry works
Make the good workman perfect, certainly.
Of full five husbands tutoring am I.
Welcome the sixth whenever come he shall.
Forsooth, I'll not keep chaste for good and all;
When my good husband from the world is gone,
Some Christian man shall marry me anon;
For then, the apostle says that I am free
To wed, in God's name, where it pleases me.
He says that to be wedded is no sin;
Better to marry than to burn within.
What care I though folk speak reproachfully
Of wicked Lamech and his bigamy?
I know well Abraham was holy man,
And Jacob, too, as far as know I can;
And each of them had spouses more than two;
And many another holy man also.
Or can you say that you have ever heard
That God has ever by His express word
Marriage forbidden? Pray you, now, tell me.
Or where commanded He virginity?
I read as well as you no doubt have read
The apostle when he speaks of maidenhead;
He said, commandment of the Lord he'd none.
Men may advise a woman to be one,
But such advice is not commandment, no;
He left the thing to our own judgment so.
72
For had Lord God commanded maidenhood,
He'd have condemned all marriage as not good;
And certainly, if there were no seed sown,
Virginity- where then should it be grown?
Paul dared not to forbid us, at the least,
A thing whereof his Master'd no behest.
The dart is set up for virginity;
Catch it who can; who runs best let us see.
"But this word is not meant for every wight,
But where God wills to give it, of His might.
I know well that the apostle was a maid;
Nevertheless, and though he wrote and said
He would that everyone were such as he,
All is not counsel to virginity;
And so to be a wife he gave me leave
Out of permission; there's no shame should grieve
In marrying me, if that my mate should die,
Without exception, too, of bigamy.
And though 'twere good no woman flesh to touch,
He meant, in his own bed or on his couch;
For peril 'tis fire and tow to assemble;
You know what this example may resemble.
This is the sum: he held virginity
Nearer perfection than marriage for frailty.
And frailty's all, I say, save he and she
Would lead their lives throughout in chastity.
"I grant this well, I have no great envy
Though maidenhood's preferred to bigamy;
Let those who will be clean, body and ghost,
Of my condition I will make no boast.
For well you know, a lord in his household,
He has not every vessel all of gold;
Some are of wood and serve well all their days.
God calls folk unto Him in sundry ways,
And each one has from God a proper gift,
Some this, some that, as pleases Him to shift.
"Virginity is great perfection known,
And continence e'en with devotion shown.
But Christ, Who of perfection is the well,
Bade not each separate man he should go sell
All that he had and give it to the poor
And follow Him in such wise going before.
73
He spoke to those that would live perfectly;
And, masters, by your leave, such am not I.
I will devote the flower of all my age
To all the acts and harvests of marriage.
"Tell me also, to what purpose or end
The genitals were made, that I defend,
And for what benefit was man first wrought?
Trust you right well, they were not made for naught.
Explain who will and argue up and down
That they were made for passing out, as known,
Of urine, and our two belongings small
Were just to tell a female from a male,
And for no other cause- ah, say you no?
Experience knows well it is not so;
And, so the clerics be not with me wroth,
I say now that they have been made for both,
That is to say, for duty and for ease
In getting, when we do not God displease.
Why should men otherwise in their books set
That man shall pay unto his wife his debt?
Now wherewith should he ever make payment,
Except he used his blessed instrument?
Then on a creature were devised these things
For urination and engenderings.
"But I say not that every one is bound,
Who's fitted out and furnished as I've found,
To go and use it to beget an heir;
Then men would have for chastity no care.
Christ was a maid, and yet shaped like a man,
And many a saint, since this old world began,
Yet has lived ever in perfect chastity.
I bear no malice to virginity;
Let such be bread of purest white wheat-seed,
And let us wives be called but barley bread;
And yet with barley bread (if Mark you scan)
Jesus Our Lord refreshed full many a man.
In such condition as God places us
I'll persevere, I'm not fastidious.
In wifehood I will use my instrument
As freely as my Maker has it sent.
If I be niggardly, God give me sorrow!
My husband he shall have it, eve and morrow,
74
When he's pleased to come forth and pay his debt.
I'll not delay, a husband I will get
Who shall be both my debtor and my thrall
And have his tribulations therewithal
Upon his flesh, the while I am his wife.
I have the power during all my life
Over his own good body, and not he.
For thus the apostle told it unto me;
And bade our husbands that they love us well.
And all this pleases me whereof I tell."
Up rose the pardoner, and that anon.
"Now dame," said he, "by God and by Saint John,
You are a noble preacher in this case!
I was about to wed a wife, alas!
Why should I buy this on my flesh so dear?
No, I would rather wed no wife this year."
"But wait," said she, "my tale is not begun;
Nay, you shall drink from out another tun
Before I cease, and savour worse than ale.
And when I shall have told you all my tale
Of tribulation that is in marriage,
Whereof I've been an expert all my age,
That is to say, myself have been the whip,
Then may you choose whether you will go sip
Out of that very tun which I shall broach.
Beware of it ere you too near approach;
For I shall give examples more than ten.
Whoso will not be warned by other men
By him shall other men corrected be,
The self-same words has written Ptolemy;
Read in his Almagest and find it there."
"Lady, I pray you, if your will it were,"
Spoke up this pardoner, "as you began,
Tell forth your tale, nor spare for any man,
And teach us younger men of your technique."
"Gladly," said she, "since it may please, not pique.
But yet I pray of all this company
That if I speak from my own phantasy,
They will not take amiss the things I say;
For my intention's only but to play.
"Now, sirs, now will I tell you forth my tale.
75
And as I may drink ever wine and ale,
I will tell truth of husbands that I've had,
For three of them were good and two were bad.
The three were good men and were rich and old.
Not easily could they the promise hold
Whereby they had been bound to cherish me.
You know well what I mean by that, pardie!
So help me God, I laugh now when I think
How pitifully by night I made them swink;
And by my faith I set by it no store.
They'd given me their gold, and treasure more;
I needed not do longer diligence
To win their love, or show them reverence.
They all loved me so well, by God above,
I never did set value on their love!
A woman wise will strive continually
To get herself loved, when she's not, you see.
But since I had them wholly in my hand,
And since to me they'd given all their land,
Why should I take heed, then, that I should please,
Save it were for my profit or my ease?
I set them so to work, that, by my fay,
Full many a night they sighed out 'Welaway!'
The bacon was not brought them home, I trow,
That some men have in Essex at Dunmowe.
I governed them so well, by my own law,
That each of them was happy as a daw,
And fain to bring me fine things from the fair.
And they were right glad when I spoke them fair;
For God knows that I nagged them mercilessly.
"Now hearken how I bore me properly,
All you wise wives that well can understand.
"Thus shall you speak and wrongfully demand;
For half so brazenfacedly can no man
Swear to his lying as a woman can.
I say not this to wives who may be wise,
Except when they themselves do misadvise.
A wise wife, if she knows what's for her good,
Will swear the crow is mad, and in this mood
Call up for witness to it her own maid;
But hear me now, for this is what I said.
76
"'Sir Dotard, is it thus you stand today?
Why is my neighbour's wife so fine and gay?
She's honoured over all where'er she goes;
I sit at home, I have no decent clo'es.
What do you do there at my neighbour's house?
Is she so fair? Are you so amorous?
Why whisper to our maid? Benedicite!
Sir Lecher old, let your seductions be!
And if I have a gossip or a friend,
Innocently, you blame me like a fiend
If I but walk, for company, to his house!
You come home here as drunken as a mouse,
And preach there on your bench, a curse on you!
You tell me it's a great misfortune, too,
To wed a girl who costs more than she's worth;
And if she's rich and of a higher birth,
You say it's torment to abide her folly
And put up with her pride and melancholy.
And if she be right fair, you utter knave,
You say that every lecher will her have;
She may no while in chastity abide
That is assailed by all and on each side.
"'You say, some men desire us for our gold,
Some for our shape and some for fairness told:
And some, that she can either sing or dance,
And some, for courtesy and dalliance;
Some for her hands and for her arms so small;
Thus all goes to the devil in your tale.
You say men cannot keep a castle wall
That's long assailed on all sides, and by all.
"'And if that she be foul, you say that she
Hankers for every man that she may see;
For like a spaniel will she leap on him
Until she finds a man to be victim;
And not a grey goose swims there in the lake
But finds a gander willing her to take.
You say, it is a hard thing to enfold
Her whom no man will in his own arms hold.
This say you, worthless, when you go to bed;
And that no wise man needs thus to be wed,
No, nor a man that hearkens unto Heaven.
With furious thunder-claps and fiery levin
May your thin, withered, wrinkled neck be broke:
77
"'You say that dripping eaves, and also smoke,
And wives contentious, will make men to flee
Out of their houses; ah, benedicite!
What ails such an old fellow so to chide?
"'You say that all we wives our vices hide
Till we are married, then we show them well;
That is a scoundrel's proverb, let me tell!
"'You say that oxen, asses, horses, hounds
Are tried out variously, and on good grounds;
Basins and bowls, before men will them buy,
And spoons and stools and all such goods you try.
And so with pots and clothes and all array;
But of their wives men get no trial, you say,
Till they are married, base old dotard you!
And then we show what evil we can do.
"'You say also that it displeases me
Unless you praise and flatter my beauty,
And save you gaze always upon my face
And call me "lovely lady" every place;
And save you make a feast upon that day
When I was born, and give me garments gay;
And save due honour to my nurse is paid
As well as to my faithful chambermaid,
And to my father's folk and his alliesThus you go on, old barrel full of lies!
"'And yet of our apprentice, young Jenkin,
For his crisp hair, showing like gold so fine,
Because he squires me walking up and down,
A false suspicion in your mind is sown;
I'd give him naught, though you were dead tomorrow.
"'But tell me this, why do you hide, with sorrow,
The keys to your strong-box away from me?
It is my gold as well as yours, pardie.
Why would you make an idiot of your dame?
Now by Saint James, but you shall miss your aim,
You shall not be, although like mad you scold,
Master of both my body and my gold;
One you'll forgo in spite of both your eyes;
Why need you seek me out or set on spies?
I think you'd like to lock me in your chest!
You should say: "Dear wife, go where you like best,
Amuse yourself, I will believe no tales;
78
You're my wife Alis true, and truth prevails."
We love no man that guards us or gives charge
Of where we go, for we will be at large.
"'Of all men the most blessed may he be,
That wise astrologer, Dan Ptolemy,
Who says this proverb in his Almagest:
"Of all men he's in wisdom the highest
That nothing cares who has the world in hand."
And by this proverb shall you understand:
Since you've enough, why do you reck or care
How merrily all other folks may fare?
For certainly, old dotard, by your leave,
You shall have cunt all right enough at eve.
He is too much a niggard who's so tight
That from his lantern he'll give none a light.
For he'll have never the less light, by gad;
Since you've enough, you need not be so sad.
"'You say, also, that if we make us gay
With clothing, all in costliest array,
That it's a danger to our chastity;
And you must back the saying up, pardie!
Repeating these words in the apostle's name:
"In habits meet for chastity, not shame,
Your women shall be garmented," said he,
"And not with broidered hair, or jewellery,
Or pearls, or gold, or costly gowns and chic;"
After your text and after your rubric
I will not follow more than would a gnat.
You said this, too, that I was like a cat;
For if one care to singe a cat's furred skin,
Then would the cat remain the house within;
And if the cat's coat be all sleek and gay,
She will not keep in house a half a day,
But out she'll go, ere dawn of any day,
To show her skin and caterwaul and play.
This is to say, if I'm a little gay,
To show my rags I'll gad about all day.
"'Sir Ancient Fool, what ails you with your spies?
Though you pray Argus, with his hundred eyes,
To be my body-guard and do his best,
Faith, he sha'n't hold me, save I am modest;
I could delude him easily- trust me!
79
"'You said, also, that there are three things- threeThe which things are a trouble on this earth,
And that no man may ever endure the fourth:
O dear Sir Rogue, may Christ cut short your life!
Yet do you preach and say a hateful wife
Is to be reckoned one of these mischances.
Are there no other kinds of resemblances
That you may liken thus your parables to,
But must a hapless wife be made to do?
"'You liken woman's love to very Hell,
To desert land where waters do not well.
You liken it, also, unto wildfire;
The more it burns, the more it has desire
To consume everything that burned may be.
You say that just as worms destroy a tree,
Just so a wife destroys her own husband;
Men know this who are bound in marriage band.'
++
"Masters, like this, as you must understand,
Did I my old men charge and censure, and
Claim that they said these things in drunkenness;
And all was false, but yet I took witness
Of Jenkin and of my dear niece also.
O Lord, the pain I gave them and the woe,
All guiltless, too, by God's grief exquisite!
For like a stallion could I neigh and bite.
I could complain, though mine was all the guilt,
Or else, full many a time, I'd lost the tilt.
Whoso comes first to mill first gets meal ground;
I whimpered first and so did them confound.
They were right glad to hasten to excuse
Things they had never done, save in my ruse.
"With wenches would I charge him, by this hand,
When, for some illness, he could hardly stand.
Yet tickled this the heart of him, for he
Deemed it was love produced such jealousy.
I swore that all my walking out at night
Was but to spy on girls he kept outright;
And under cover of that I had much mirth.
For all such wit is given us at birth;
Deceit, weeping, and spinning, does God give
To women, naturally, the while they live.
And thus of one thing I speak boastfully,
80
I got the best of each one, finally,
By trick, or force, or by some kind of thing,
As by continual growls or murmuring;
Especially in bed had they mischance,
There would I chide and give them no pleasance;
I would no longer in the bed abide
If I but felt his arm across my side,
Till he had paid his ransom unto me;
Then would I let him do his nicety.
And therefore to all men this tale I tell,
Let gain who may, for everything's to sell.
With empty hand men may no falcons lure;
For profit would I all his lust endure,
And make for him a well-feigned appetite;
Yet I in bacon never had delight;
And that is why I used so much to chide.
For if the pope were seated there beside
I'd not have spared them, no, at their own board.
For by my truth, I paid them, word for word.
So help me the True God Omnipotent,
Though I right now should make my testament,
I owe them not a word that was not quit.
I brought it so about, and by my wit,
That they must give it up, as for the best,
Or otherwise we'd never have had rest.
For though he glared and scowled like lion mad,
Yet failed he of the end he wished he had.
"Then would I say: 'Good dearie, see you keep
In mind how meek is Wilkin, our old sheep;
Come near, my spouse, come let me kiss your cheek!
You should be always patient, aye, and meek,
And have a sweetly scrupulous tenderness,
Since you so preach of old Job's patience, yes.
Suffer always, since you so well can preach;
And, save you do, be sure that we will teach
That it is well to leave a wife in peace.
One of us two must bow, to be at ease;
And since a man's more reasonable, they say,
Than woman is, you must have patience aye.
What ails you that you grumble thus and groan?
Is it because you'd have my cunt alone?
Why take it all, lo, have it every bit;
Peter! Beshrew you but you're fond of it!
For if I would go peddle my belle chose,
I could walk out as fresh as is a rose;
81
But I will keep it for your own sweet tooth.
You are to blame, by God I tell the truth.'
"Such were the words I had at my command.
Now will I tell you of my fourth husband.
"My fourth husband, he was a reveller,
That is to say, he kept a paramour;
And young and full of passion then was I,
Stubborn and strong and jolly as a pie.
Well could I dance to tune of harp, nor fail
To sing as well as any nightingale
When I had drunk a good draught of sweet wine.
Metellius, the foul churl and the swine,
Did with a staff deprive his wife of life
Because she drank wine; had I been his wife
He never should have frightened me from drink;
For after wine, of Venus must I think:
For just as surely as cold produces hail,
A liquorish mouth must have a lickerish tail.
In women wine's no bar of impotence,
This know all lechers by experience.
"But Lord Christ! When I do remember me
Upon my youth and on my jollity,
It tickles me about my heart's deep root.
To this day does my heart sing in salute
That I have had my world in my own time.
But age, alas! that poisons every prime,
Has taken away my beauty and my pith;
Let go, farewell, the devil go therewith!
The flour is gone, there is no more to tell,
The bran, as best I may, must I now sell;
But yet to be right merry I'll try, and
Now will I tell you of my fourth husband.
"I say that in my heart I'd great despite
When he of any other had delight.
But he was quit by God and by Saint Joce!
I made, of the same wood, a staff most gross;
Not with my body and in manner foul,
But certainly I showed so gay a soul
That in his own thick grease I made him fry
For anger and for utter jealousy.
By God, on earth I was his purgatory,
For which I hope his soul lives now in glory.
For God knows, many a time he sat and sung
82
When the shoe bitterly his foot had wrung.
There was no one, save God and he, that knew
How, in so many ways, I'd twist the screw.
He died when I came from Jerusalem,
And lies entombed beneath the great rood-beam,
Although his tomb is not so glorious
As was the sepulchre of Darius,
The which Apelles wrought full cleverly;
'Twas waste to bury him expensively.
Let him fare well. God give his soul good rest,
He now is in the grave and in his chest.
"And now of my fifth husband will I tell.
God grant his soul may never get to Hell!
And yet he was to me most brutal, too;
My ribs yet feel as they were black and blue,
And ever shall, until my dying day.
But in our bed he was so fresh and gay,
And therewithal he could so well impose,
What time he wanted use of my belle chose,
That though he'd beaten me on every bone,
He could re-win my love, and that full soon.
I guess I loved him best of all, for he
Gave of his love most sparingly to me.
We women have, if I am not to lie,
In this love matter, a quaint fantasy;
Look out a thing we may not lightly have,
And after that we'll cry all day and crave.
Forbid a thing, and that thing covet we;
Press hard upon us, then we turn and flee.
Sparingly offer we our goods, when fair;
Great crowds at market for dearer ware,
And what's too common brings but little price;
All this knows every woman who is wise.
"My fifth husband, may God his spirit bless!
Whom I took all for love, and not riches,
Had been sometime a student at Oxford,
And had left school and had come home to board
With my best gossip, dwelling in our town,
God save her soul! Her name was Alison.
She knew my heart and all my privity
Better than did our parish priest, s'help me!
83
To her confided I my secrets all.
For had my husband pissed against a wall,
Or done a thing that might have cost his life,
To her and to another worthy wife,
And to my niece whom I loved always well,
I would have told it- every bit I'd tell,
And did so, many and many a time, God wot,
Which made his face full often red and hot
For utter shame; he blamed himself that he
Had told me of so deep a privity.
"So it befell that on a time, in Lent
(For oftentimes I to my gossip went,
Since I loved always to be glad and gay
And to walk out, in March, April, and May,
From house to house, to hear the latest malice),
Jenkin the clerk, and my gossip Dame Alis,
And I myself into the meadows went.
My husband was in London all that Lent;
I had the greater leisure, then, to play,
And to observe, and to be seen, I say,
By pleasant folk; what knew I where my face
Was destined to be loved, or in what place?
Therefore I made my visits round about
To vigils and processions of devout,
To preaching too, and shrines of pilgrimage,
To miracle plays, and always to each marriage,
And wore my scarlet skirt before all wights.
These worms and all these moths and all these mites,
I say it at my peril, never ate;
And know you why? I wore it early and late.
"Now will I tell you what befell to me.
I say that in the meadows walked we three
Till, truly, we had come to such dalliance,
This clerk and I, that, of my vigilance,
I spoke to him and told him how that he,
Were I a widow, might well marry me.
For certainly I say it not to brag,
But I was never quite without a bag
Full of the needs of marriage that I seek.
I hold a mouse's heart not worth a leek
That has but one hole into which to run,
And if it fail of that, then all is done.
"I made him think he had enchanted me;
84
My mother taught me all that subtlety.
And then I said I'd dreamed of him all night,
He would have slain me as I lay upright,
And all my bed was full of very blood;
But yet I hoped that he would do me good,
For blood betokens gold, as I was taught.
And all was false, I dreamed of him just- naught,
Save as I acted on my mother's lore,
As well in this thing as in many more.
"But now, let's see, what was I going to say?
Aha, by God, I know! It goes this way.
"When my fourth husband lay upon his bier,
I wept enough and made but sorry cheer,
As wives must always, for it's custom's grace,
And with my kerchief covered up my face;
But since I was provided with a mate,
I really wept but little, I may state.
"To church my man was borne upon the morrow
By neighbours, who for him made signs of sorrow;
And Jenkin, our good clerk, was one of them.
So help me God, when rang the requiem
After the bier, I thought he had a pair
Of legs and feet so clean-cut and so fair
That all my heart I gave to him to hold.
He was, I think, but twenty winters old,
And I was forty, if I tell the truth;
But then I always had a young colt's tooth.
Gap-toothed I was, and that became me well;
I had the print of holy Venus' seal.
So help me God, I was a healthy one,
And fair and rich and young and full of fun;
And truly, as my husbands all told me,
I had the silkiest quoniam that could be.
For truly, I am all Venusian
In feeling, and my brain is Martian.
Venus gave me my lust, my lickerishness,
And Mars gave me my sturdy hardiness.
Taurus was my ascendant, with Mars therein.
Alas, alas, that ever love was sin!
I followed always my own inclination
By virtue of my natal constellation;
Which wrought me so I never could withdraw
My Venus-chamber from a good fellow.
85
Yet have I Mars's mark upon my face,
And also in another private place.
For God so truly my salvation be
As I have never loved for policy,
But ever followed my own appetite,
Though he were short or tall, or black or white;
I took no heed, so that he cared for me,
How poor he was, nor even of what degree.
"What should I say now, save, at the month's end,
This jolly, gentle, Jenkin clerk, my friend,
Had wedded me full ceremoniously,
And to him gave I all the land in fee
That ever had been given me before;
But, later I repented me full sore.
He never suffered me to have my way.
By God, he smote me on the ear, one day,
Because I tore out of his book a leaf,
So that from this my ear is grown quite deaf.
Stubborn I was as is a lioness,
And with my tongue a very jay, I guess,
And walk I would, as I had done before,
From house to house, though I should not, he swore.
For which he oftentimes would sit and preach
And read old Roman tales to me and teach
How one Sulpicius Gallus left his wife
And her forsook for term of all his life
Because he saw her with bared head, I say,
Looking out from his door, upon a day.
"Another Roman told he of by name
Who, since his wife was at a summer-game
Without his knowing, he forsook her eke.
And then would he within his Bible seek
That proverb of the old Ecclesiast
Where he commands so freely and so fast
That man forbid his wife to gad about;
Then would he thus repeat, with never doubt:
'Whoso would build his whole house out of sallows,
And spur his blind horse to run over fallows,
And let his wife alone go seeking hallows,
Is worthy to be hanged upon the gallows.'
But all for naught, I didn't care a haw
For all his proverbs, nor for his old saw,
86
Nor yet would I by him corrected be.
I hate one that my vices tells to me,
And so do more of us- God knows!- than I.
This made him mad with me, and furiously,
That I'd not yield to him in any case.
"Now will I tell you truth, by Saint Thomas,
Of why I tore from out his book a leaf,
For which he struck me so it made me deaf.
"He had a book that gladly, night and day,
For his amusement he would read alway.
He called it 'Theophrastus' and 'Valerius',
At which book would he laugh, uproarious.
And, too, there sometime was a clerk at Rome,
A cardinal, that men called Saint Jerome,
Who made a book against Jovinian;
In which book, too, there was Tertullian,
Chrysippus, Trotula, and Heloise
Who was abbess near Paris' diocese;
And too, the Proverbs of King Solomon,
And Ovid's Art, and books full many a one.
And all of these were bound in one volume.
And every night and day 'twas his custom,
When he had leisure and took some vacation
From all his other worldly occupation,
To read, within this book, of wicked wives.
He knew of them more legends and more lives
Than are of good wives written in the Bible.
For trust me, it's impossible, no libel,
That any cleric shall speak well of wives,
Unless it be of saints and holy lives,
But naught for other women will they do.
Who painted first the lion, tell me who?
By God, if women had but written stories,
As have these clerks within their oratories,
They would have written of men more wickedness
Than all the race of Adam could redress.
The children of Mercury and of Venus
Are in their lives antagonistic thus;
For Mercury loves wisdom and science,
And Venus loves but pleasure and expense.
Because they different dispositions own,
Each falls when other's in ascendant shown.
And God knows Mercury is desolate
87
In Pisces, wherein Venus rules in state;
And Venus falls when Mercury is raised;
Therefore no woman by a clerk is praised.
A clerk, when he is old and can naught do
Of Venus' labours worth his worn-out shoe,
Then sits he down and writes, in his dotage,
That women cannot keep vow of marriage!
"But now to tell you, as I started to,
Why I was beaten for a book, pardieu.
Upon a night Jenkin, who was our sire,
Read in his book, as he sat by the fire,
Of Mother Eve who, by her wickedness,
First brought mankind to all his wretchedness,
For which Lord Jesus Christ Himself was slain,
Who, with His heart's blood, saved us thus again.
Lo here, expressly of woman, may you find
That woman was the ruin of mankind.
"Then read he out how Samson lost his hairs,
Sleeping, his leman cut them with her shears;
And through this treason lost he either eye.
"Then read he out, if I am not to lie,
Of Hercules, and Deianira's desire
That caused him to go set himself on fire.
"Nothing escaped him of the pain and woe
That Socrates had with his spouses two;
How Xantippe threw piss upon his head;
This hapless man sat still, as he were dead;
He wiped his head, no more durst he complain
Than 'Ere the thunder ceases comes the rain.'
"Then of Pasiphae, the queen of Crete,
For cursedness he thought the story sweet;
Fie! Say no more- it is an awful thingOf her so horrible lust and love-liking.
"Of Clytemnestra, for her lechery,
Who caused her husband's death by treachery,
He read all this with greatest zest, I vow.
"He told me, too, just when it was and how
Amphiaraus at Thebes lost his life;
My husband had a legend of his wife
Eriphyle who, for a brooch of gold,
88
In secrecy to hostile Greeks had told
Whereat her husband had his hiding place,
For which he found at Thebes but sorry grace.
"Of Livia and Lucia told he me,
For both of them their husbands killed, you see,
The one for love, the other killed for hate;
Livia her husband, on an evening late,
Made drink some poison, for she was his foe.
Lucia, lecherous, loved her husband so
That, to the end he'd always of her think,
She gave him such a, philtre, for love-drink,
That he was dead or ever it was morrow;
And husbands thus, by same means, came to sorrow.
"Then did he tell how one Latumius
Complained unto his comrade Arrius
That in his garden grew a baleful tree
Whereon, he said, his wives, and they were three,
Had hanged themselves for wretchedness and woe.
'O brother,' Arrius said, 'and did they so?
Give me a graft of that same blessed tree
And in my garden planted it shall be!'
"Of wives of later date he also read,
How some had slain their husbands in their bed
And let their lovers shag them all the night
While corpses lay upon the floor upright.
And some had driven nails into the brain
While husbands slept and in such wise were slain.
And some had given them poison in their drink.
He told more evil than the mind can think.
And therewithal he knew of more proverbs
Than in this world there grows of grass or herbs.
'Better,' he said, 'your habitation be
With lion wild or dragon foul,' said he,
'Than with a woman who will nag and chide.'
'Better,' he said, 'on the housetop abide
Than with a brawling wife down in the house;
Such are so wicked and contrarious
They hate the thing their husband loves, for aye.'
He said, 'a woman throws her shame away
89
When she throws off her smock,' and further, too:
'A woman fair, save she be chaste also,
Is like a ring of gold in a sow's nose.'
Who would imagine or who would suppose
What grief and pain were in this heart of mine?
"And when I saw he'd never cease, in fine,
His reading in this cursed book at night,
Three leaves of it I snatched and tore outright
Out of his book, as he read on; and eke
I with my fist so took him on the cheek
That in our fire he reeled and fell right down.
Then he got up as does a wild lion,
And with his fist he struck me on the head,
And on the floor I lay as I were dead.
And when he saw how limp and still I lay,
He was afraid and would have run away,
Until at last, out of my swoon I made:
'Oh, have you slain me, you false thief?' I said,
'And for my land have you thus murdered me?
Kiss me before I die, and let me be.'
"He came to me and near me he knelt down,
And said: 'O my dear sister Alison,
So help me God, I'll never strike you more;
What I have done, you are to blame therefor.
But all the same forgiveness now I seek!'
And thereupon I hit him on the cheek,
And said: 'Thief, so much vengeance do I wreak!
Now will I die; I can no longer speak!'
But at the last, and with much care and woe,
We made it up between ourselves. And so
He put the bridle reins within my hand
To have the governing of house and land;
And of his tongue and of his hand, also;
And made him burn his book, right then, oho!
And when I had thus gathered unto me
Masterfully, the entire sovereignty,
And he had said: 'My own true wedded wife,
Do as you please the term of all your life,
Guard your own honour and keep fair my state'After that day we never had debate.
90
God help me now, I was to him as kind
As any wife from Denmark unto Ind,
And also true, and so was he to me.
I pray to God, Who sits in majesty,
To bless his soul, out of His mercy dear!
Now will I tell my tale, if you will hear."
BEHOLD THE WORDS BETWEEN THE SUMMONER, AND THE FRIAR
The friar laughed when he had heard all this.
"Now dame," said he, "so have I joy or bliss
This is a long preamble to a tale!"
And when the summoner heard this friar's hail,
"Lo," said the summoner, "by God's arms two!
A friar will always interfere, mark you.
Behold, good men, a housefly and a friar
Will fall in every dish and matters higher.
Why speak of preambling; you in your gown?
What! Amble, trot, hold peace, or go sit down;
You hinder our diversion thus to inquire."
"Aye, say you so, sir summoner?" said the friar,
"Now by my faith I will, before I go,
Tell of a summoner such a tale, or so,
That all the folk shall laugh who're in this place'
"Otherwise, friar, I beshrew your face,"
Replied this summoner, "and beshrew me
If I do not tell tales here, two or three,
Of friars ere I come to Sittingbourne,
That certainly will give you cause to mourn,
For well I know your patience will be gone."
Our host cried out, "Now peace, and that anon!"
And said he: "Let the woman tell her tale.
You act like people who are drunk with ale.
Do, lady, tell your tale, and that is best."
"All ready, sir," said she, "as you request,
If I have license of this worthy friar."
"Yes, dame," said he, "to hear you's my desire."
HERE THE WIFE OF BATH ENDS HER PROLOGUE
THE TALE OF THE WIFE OF BATH
91
By Geoffrey Chaucer
(1343-1400)
Now in the olden days of King Arthur,
Of whom the Britons speak with great honour,
All this wide land was land of faery.
The elf-queen, with her jolly company,
Danced oftentimes on many a green mead;
This was the old opinion, as I read.
I speak of many hundred years ago;
But now no man can see the elves, you know.
For now the so-great charity and prayers
Of limiters and other holy friars
That do infest each land and every stream
As thick as motes are in a bright sunbeam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchens, ladies' bowers,
Cities and towns and castles and high towers,
Manors and barns and stables, aye and dairiesThis causes it that there are now no fairies.
For where was wont to walk full many an elf,
Right there walks now the limiter himself
In noons and afternoons and in mornings,
Saying his matins and such holy things,
As he goes round his district in his gown.
Women may now go safely up and down,
In every copse or under every tree;
There is no other incubus, than he,
And would do them nothing but dishonour.
And so befell it that this King Arthur
Had at his court a lusty bachelor
Who, on a day, came riding from river;
And happened that, alone as she was born,
He saw a maiden walking through the corn,
From whom, in spite of all she did and said,
Straightway by force he took her maidenhead;
For which violation was there such clamour,
And such appealing unto King Arthur,
That soon condemned was this knight to be dead
By course of law, and should have lost his head,
Peradventure, such being the statute then;
But that the other ladies and the queen
So long prayed of the king to show him grace,
He granted life, at last, in the law's place,
And gave him to the queen, as she should will,
Whether she'd save him, or his blood should spill.
92
The queen she thanked the king with all her might,
And after this, thus spoke she to the knight,
When she'd an opportunity, one day:
"You stand yet," said she, "in such poor a way
That for your life you've no security.
I'll grant you life if you can tell to me
What thing it is that women most desire.
Be wise, and keep your neck from iron dire!
And if you cannot tell it me anon,
Then will I give you license to be gone
A twelvemonth and a day, to search and learn
Sufficient answer in this grave concern.
And your knight's word I'll have, ere forth you pace,
To yield your body to me in this place."
Grieved was this knight, and sorrowfully he sighed;
But there! he could not do as pleased his pride.
And at the last he chose that he would wend
And come again upon the twelvemonth's end,
With such an answer as God might purvey;
And so he took his leave and went his way.
He sought out every house and every place
Wherein he hoped to find that he had grace
To learn what women love the most of all;
But nowhere ever did it him befall
To find, upon the question stated here,
Two, persons who agreed with statement clear.
Some said that women all loved best riches,
Some said, fair fame, and some said, prettiness;
Some, rich array, some said 'twas lust abed
And often to be widowed and re-wed.
Some said that our poor hearts are aye most eased
When we have been most flattered and thus pleased
And he went near the truth, I will not lie;
A man may win us best with flattery;
And with attentions and with busyness
We're often limed, the greater and the less.
And some say, too, that we do love the best
To be quite free to do our own behest,
And that no man reprove us for our vice,
But saying we are wise, take our advice.
For truly there is no one of us all,
If anyone shall rub us on a gall,
That will not kick because he tells the truth.
93
Try, and he'll find, who does so, I say sooth.
No matter how much vice we have within,
We would be held for wise and clean of sin.
And some folk say that great delight have we
To be held constant, also trustworthy,
And on one purpose steadfastly to dwell,
And not betray a thing that men may tell.
But that tale is not worth a rake's handle;
By God, we women can no thing conceal,
As witness Midas. Would you hear the tale?
Ovid, among some other matters small,
Said Midas had beneath his long curled hair,
Two ass's ears that grew in secret there,
The which defect he hid, as best he might,
Full cunningly from every person's sight,
And, save his wife, no one knew of it, no.
He loved her most, and trusted her also;
And he prayed of her that to no creature
She'd tell of his disfigurement impure.
She swore him: Nay, for all this world to win
She would do no such villainy or sin
And cause her husband have so foul a name;
Nor would she tell it for her own deep shame.
Nevertheless, she thought she would have died
Because so long the secret must she hide;
It seemed to swell so big about her heart
That some word from her mouth must surely start;
And since she dared to tell it to no man,
Down to a marsh, that lay hard by, she ran;
Till she came there her heart was all afire,
And as a bittern booms in the quagmire,
She laid her mouth low to the water down:
"Betray me not, you sounding water blown,"
Said she, "I tell it to none else but you:
Long ears like asses' has my husband two!
Now is my heart at ease, since that is out;
I could no longer keep it, there's no doubt."
Here may you see, though for a while we bide,
Yet out it must; no secret can we hide.
The rest of all this tale, if you would hear,
Read Ovid: in his book does it appear.
This knight my tale is chiefly told about
When what he went for he could not find out,
94
That is, the thing that women love the best,
Most saddened was the spirit in his breast;
But home he goes, he could no more delay.
The day was come when home he turned his way;
And on his way it chanced that he should ride
In all his care, beneath a forest's side,
And there he saw, a-dancing him before,
Full four and twenty ladies, maybe more;
Toward which dance eagerly did he turn
In hope that there some wisdom he should learn.
But truly, ere he came upon them there,
The dancers vanished all, he knew not where.
No creature saw he that gave sign of life,
Save, on the greensward sitting, an old wife;
A fouler person could no man devise.
Before the knight this old wife did arise,
And said: "Sir knight, hence lies no travelled way.
Tell me what thing you seek, and by your fay.
Perchance you'll find it may the better be;
These ancient folk know many things," said she.
"Dear mother," said this knight assuredly,
"I am but dead, save I can tell, truly,
What thing it is that women most desire;
Could you inform me, I'd pay well your hire."
"Plight me your troth here, hand in hand," said she,
"That you will do, whatever it may be,
The thing I ask if it lie in your might;
And I'll give you your answer ere the night."
"Have here my word," said he. "That thing I grant."
"Then," said the crone, "of this I make my vaunt,
Your life is safe; and I will stand thereby,
Upon my life, the queen will say as I.
Let's see which is the proudest of them all
That wears upon her hair kerchief or caul,
Shall dare say no to that which I shall teach;
Let us go now and without longer speech."
Then whispered she a sentence in his ear,
And bade him to be glad and have no fear.
When they were come unto the court, this knight
Said he had kept his promise as was right,
And ready was his answer, as he said.
Full many a noble wife, and many a maid,
And many a widow, since they are so wise,
The queen herself sitting as high justice,
95
Assembled were, his answer there to hear;
And then the knight was bidden to appear.
Command was given for silence in the hall,
And that the knight should tell before them all
What thing all worldly women love the best.
This knight did not stand dumb, as does a beast,
But to this question presently answered
With manly voice, so that the whole court heard:
"My liege lady, generally," said he,
"Women desire to have the sovereignty
As well upon their husband as their love,
And to have mastery their man above;
This thing you most desire, though me you kill
Do as you please, I am here at your will."
In all the court there was no wife or maid
Or widow that denied the thing he said,
But all held, he was worthy to have life.
And with that word up started the old wife
Whom he had seen a-sitting on the green.
"Mercy," cried she, "my sovereign lady queen!
Before the court's dismissed, give me my right.
'Twas I who taught the answer to this knight;
For which he did plight troth to me, out there,
That the first thing I should of him require
He would do that, if it lay in his might.
Before the court, now, pray I you, sir knight,"
Said she, "that you will take me for your wife;
For well you know that I have saved your life.
If this be false, say nay, upon your fay!"
This knight replied: "Alas and welaway!
That I so promised I will not protest.
But for God's love pray make a new request.
Take all my wealth and let my body go."
"Nay then," said she, "beshrew us if I do!
For though I may be foul and old and poor,
I will not, for all metal and all ore
That from the earth is dug or lies above,
Be aught except your wife and your true love."
"My love?" cried he, "nay, rather my damnation!
Alas! that any of my race and station
96
Should ever so dishonoured foully be!"
But all for naught; the end was this, that he
Was so constrained he needs must go and wed,
And take his ancient wife and go to bed.
Now, peradventure, would some men say here,
That, of my negligence, I take no care
To tell you of the joy and all the array
That at the wedding feast were seen that day.
Make a brief answer to this thing I shall;
I say, there was no joy or feast at all;
There was but heaviness and grievous sorrow;
For privately he wedded on the morrow,
And all day, then, he hid him like an owl;
So sad he was, his old wife looked so foul.
Great was the woe the knight had in his thought
When he, with her, to marriage bed was brought;
He rolled about and turned him to and fro.
His old wife lay there, always smiling so,
And said: "O my dear husband, ben'cite!
Fares every knight with wife as you with me?
Is this the custom in King Arthur's house?
Are knights of his all so fastidious?
I am your own true love and, more, your wife;
And I am she who saved your very life;
And truly, since I've never done you wrong,
Why do you treat me so, this first night long?
You act as does a man who's lost his wit;
What is my fault? For God's love tell me it,
And it shall be amended, if I may."
"Amended!" cried this knight, "Alas, nay, nay!
It will not be amended ever, no!
You are so loathsome, and so old also,
And therewith of so low a race were born,
It's little wonder that I toss and turn.
Would God my heart would break within my breast!"
"Is this," asked she, "the cause of your unrest?"
"Yes, truly," said he, "and no wonder 'tis."
"Now, sir," said she, "I could amend all this,
If I but would, and that within days three,
If you would bear yourself well towards me.
"But since you speak of such gentility
As is descended from old wealth, till ye
97
Claim that for that you should be gentlemen,
I hold such arrogance not worth a hen.
Find him who is most virtuous alway,
Alone or publicly, and most tries aye
To do whatever noble deeds he can,
And take him for the greatest gentleman.
Christ wills we claim from Him gentility,
Not from ancestors of landocracy.
For though they give us all their heritage,
For which we claim to be of high lineage,
Yet can they not bequeath, in anything,
To any of us, their virtuous living,
That made men say they had gentility,
And bade us follow them in like degree.
"Well does that poet wise of great Florence,
Called Dante, speak his mind in this sentence;
Somewhat like this may it translated be:
'Rarely unto the branches of the tree
Doth human worth mount up: and so ordains
He Who bestows it; to Him it pertains.'
For of our fathers may we nothing claim
But temporal things, that man may hurt and maim
"And everyone knows this as well as I,
If nobleness were implanted naturally
Within a certain lineage, down the line,
In private and in public, I opine,
The ways of gentleness they'd alway show
And never fall to vice and conduct low.
"Take fire and carry it in the darkest house
Between here and the Mount of Caucasus,
And let men shut the doors and from them turn;
Yet will the fire as fairly blaze and burn
As twenty thousand men did it behold;
Its nature and its office it will hold,
On peril of my life, until it die.
"From this you see that true gentility
Is not allied to wealth a man may own,
Since folk do not their deeds, as may be shown,
As does the fire, according to its kind.
For God knows that men may full often find
A lord's son doing shame and villainy;
And he that prizes his gentility
In being born of some old noble house,
With ancestors both noble and virtuous,
98
But will himself do naught of noble deeds
Nor follow him to whose name he succeeds,
He is not gentle, be he duke or earl;
For acting churlish makes a man a churl.
Gentility is not just the renown
Of ancestors who have some greatness shown,
In which you have no portion of your own.
Your own gentility comes from God alone;
Thence comes our true nobility by grace,
It was not willed us with our rank and place
"Think how noble, as says Valerius,
Was that same Tullius Hostilius,
Who out of poverty rose to high estate.
Seneca and Boethius inculcate,
Expressly (and no doubt it thus proceeds),
That he is noble who does noble deeds;
And therefore, husband dear, I thus conclude:
Although my ancestors mayhap were rude,
Yet may the High Lord God, and so hope I,
Grant me the grace to live right virtuously.
Then I'll be gentle when I do begin
To live in virtue and to do no sin.
"And when you me reproach for poverty,
The High God, in Whom we believe, say I,
In voluntary poverty lived His life.
And surely every man, or maid, or wife
May understand that Jesus, Heaven's King,
Would not have chosen vileness of living.
Glad poverty's an honest thing, that's plain,
Which Seneca and other clerks maintain.
Whoso will be content with poverty,
I hold him rich, though not a shirt has he.
And he that covets much is a poor wight,
For he would gain what's all beyond his might,
But he that has not, nor desires to have,
Is rich, although you hold him but a knave.
"True poverty, it sings right naturally;
Juvenal gaily says of poverty:
'The poor man, when he walks along the way,
Before the robbers he may sing and play.'
Poverty's odious good, and, as I guess,
It is a stimulant to busyness;
A great improver, too, of sapience
In him that takes it all with due patience.
99
Poverty's this, though it seem miseryIts quality may none dispute, say I.
Poverty often, when a man is low,
Makes him his God and even himself to know.
And poverty's an eye-glass, seems to me,
Through which a man his loyal friends may see.
Since you've received no injury from me,
Then why reproach me for my poverty.
"Now, sir, with age you have upbraided me;
And truly, sir, though no authority
Were in a book, you gentles of honour
Say that men should the aged show favour,
And call him father, of your gentleness;
And authors could I find for this, I guess.
"Now since you say that I am foul and old,
Then fear you not to be made a cuckold;
For dirt and age, as prosperous I may be,
Are mighty wardens over chastity.
Nevertheless, since I know your delight,
I'll satisfy your worldly appetite.
"Choose, now," said she, "one of these two things, aye,
To have me foul and old until I die,
And be to you a true and humble wife,
And never anger you in all my life;
Or else to have me young and very fair
And take your chance with those who will repair
Unto your house, and all because of me,
Or in some other place, as well may be.
Now choose which you like better and reply."
This knight considered, and did sorely sigh,
But at the last replied as you shall hear:
"My lady and my love, and wife so dear,
I put myself in your wise governing;
Do you choose which may be the more pleasing,
And bring most honour to you, and me also.
I care not which it be of these things two;
For if you like it, that suffices me."
"Then have I got of you the mastery,
Since I may choose and govern, in earnest?"
"Yes, truly, wife," said he, "I hold that best."
100
"Kiss me," said she, "we'll be no longer wroth,
For by my truth, to you I will be both;
That is to say, I'll be both good and fair.
I pray God I go mad, and so declare,
If I be not to you as good and true
As ever wife was since the world was new.
And, save I be, at dawn, as fairly seen
As any lady, empress, or great queen
That is between the east and the far west,
Do with my life and death as you like best.
Throw back the curtain and see how it is."
And when the knight saw verily all this,
That she so very fair was, and young too,
For joy he clasped her in his strong arms two,
His heart bathed in a bath of utter bliss;
A thousand times, all in a row, he'd kiss.
And she obeyed his wish in everything
That might give pleasure to his love-liking.
And thus they lived unto their lives' fair end,
In perfect joy; and Jesus to us send
Meek husbands, and young ones, and fresh in bed,
And good luck to outlive them that we wed.
And I pray Jesus to cut short the lives
Of those who'll not be governed by their wives;
And old and querulous niggards with their pence,
And send them soon a mortal pestilence!
HERE ENDS THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE
Tennyson not only tried drew from mythology but also from the
Arthurian tradition. In fact one of his longest and greatest works, a
portion of which is included in our text (“The Passing of Arthur”), is
The Idylls of the King. In it he narrates the rise and fall of
Camelot—in which he also saw similar dangers for Victorian
England. Much earlier however he wrote this lyrical romance
depicting a woman gifted by the arts but trapped as well. It is one of my favorites:
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
by
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Part I.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
101
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veil'd
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott."
Part II.
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
102
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
"I am half-sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
Part III.
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A redcross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle-bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
103
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Part IV.
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale-yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
104
And down the river's dim expanse-Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance-With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right-The leaves upon her falling light-Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
A corse between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
105
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
From The Pilgrim’s Progress. One of the most
important and popular allegories ever written is The
Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1628-1688).
Wikipedia notes that “Though he became a nonconformist and member of an Independent church, and
although he has been described both as a Baptist and as a
Congregationalist, he himself preferred to be described
simply as a Christian.” C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
notes that Bunyan was not a learned man yet one who
gave himself to God "That is why an uneducated believer
like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished
the whole world." He wrote the allegorical work while
serving years in jail for continuing to hold religious services when it was illegal to do so
without the approval of the Church of England. Published in 1678, The Pilgrim's
Progress has never been out of print since (wikipedia).
On top of his influence in the world as a Christian writer is the fact that at his time, many
Christians had a very hard time with “fiction” at all let along anything so fantastical as a
story filled with monsters, dragons and giants. Daniel Defoe of about the same time
(1719) never admitted to writing Robinson Crusoe (England’s first novel) and Bunyan
clearly revealed in his introductory poem uncertainty about telling such a fantastic story.
Christians and others are glad he did. At the turn of the last century this was considered
one of those books everyone, believer and non-believer, should have read to call
themselves educated. The portion describes Christian’s encounter with two of his
neighbors, Obstinate and Pliable, his failings in the Slough of Despond, the meeting with
Mr. Worldly Wiseman and his correction by Evangelist.
Now I saw, upon a time, when he was walking in the fields, that he was (as he was wont)
reading in his book, and greatly distressed in his mind; and as he read, he burst out, as he
had done before, crying, “What shall I do to be saved?” Acts 16:30,31.
I saw also that he looked this way, and that way, as if he would run; yet he stood still
because (as I perceived) he could not tell which way to go. I looked then, and saw a man
named Evangelist coming to him, and he asked, “Wherefore dost thou cry?”
He answered, “Sir, I perceive, by the book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and
after that to come to judgment, Heb. 9:27; and I find that I am not willing to do the first,
Job 10: 21,22, nor able to do the second.” Ezek. 22:14.
106
Then said Evangelist, “Why not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many
evils?” The man answered, “Because, I fear that this burden that is upon my back will
sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Tophet. Isa. 30:33. And Sir, if I be not
fit to go to prison, I am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the
thoughts of these things make me cry.”
Then said Evangelist, “If this be thy condition, why standest thou still?” He answered,
“Because I know not whither to go.” Then he gave him a parchment roll, and there was
written within, “Fly from the wrath to come.” Matt. 3:7.
The man therefore read it, and looking upon Evangelist very carefully, said, “Whither
must I fly?” Then said Evangelist, (pointing with his finger over a very wide field,) “Do
you see yonder wicket-gate?” Matt. 7:13,14. The man said, “No.” Then said the other,
“Do you see yonder shining light?” Psalm 119:105; 2 Pet. 1:19. He said, “I think I do.”
Then said Evangelist, “Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto, so shalt
thou see the gate; at which, when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do.”
So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now he had not run far from his own
door when his wife and children, perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the
man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on crying, Life! life! eternal life! Luke 14:26. So
he looked not behind him, Gen. 19:17, but fled towards the middle of the plain.
The neighbors also came out to see him run, Jer. 20:10; and as he ran, some mocked,
others threatened, and some cried after him to return; and among those that did so, there
were two that were resolved to fetch him back by force. The name of the one was
Obstinate and the name of the other Pliable. Now by this time the man was got a good
distance from them; but, however, they were resolved to pursue him, which they did, and
in a little time they overtook him. Then said the man, “Neighbors, wherefore are you
come?” They said, “To persuade you to go back with us.” But he said, “That can by no
means be: you dwell,” said he, “in the city of Destruction, the place also where I was
born: I see it to be so; and dying there, sooner or later, you will sink lower than the grave,
into a place that burns with fire and brimstone: be content, good neighbors, and go along
with me.”
Obstinate: What, said Obstinate, and leave our friends and our comforts behind us!
Christian: Yes, said Christian, (for that was his name,) because that all which you forsake
is not worthy to be compared with a little of that I am seeking to enjoy, 2 Cor. 4:18; and
if you will go along with me, and hold it, you shall fare as I myself; for there, where I go,
is enough and to spare. Luke 15:17. Come away, and prove my words.
Obstinate: What are the things you seek, since you leave all the world to find them?
Christian: I seek an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, 1 Peter
1:4; and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there, Heb. 11:16, to be bestowed, at the time
appointed, on them that diligently seek it. Read it so, if you will, in my book.
107
Obstinate: Tush, said Obstinate, away with your book; will you go back with us or no?
Christian: No, not I, said the other, because I have laid my hand to the plough. Luke 9:62.
Obstinate: Come then, neighbor Pliable, let us turn again, and go home without him:
there is a company of these crazy-headed coxcombs, that when they take a fancy by the
end, are wiser in their own eyes than seven men that can render a reason.
Pliable: Then said Pliable, Don’t revile; if what the good Christian says is true, the things
he looks after are better than ours: my heart inclines to go with my neighbor.
Obstinate: What, more fools still! Be ruled by me, and go back; who knows whither such
a brain-sick fellow will lead you? Go back, go back, and be wise.
Christian: Nay, but do thou come with thy neighbor Pliable; there are such things to be
had which I spoke of, and many more glories besides. If you believe not me, read here in
this book, and for the truth of what is expressed therein, behold, all is confirmed by the
blood of Him that made it. Heb. 9: 17-21.
Pliable: Well, neighbor Obstinate, said Pliable, I begin to come to a point; I intend to go
along with this good man, and to cast in my lot with him: but, my good companion, do
you know the way to this desired place?
Christian: I am directed by a man whose name is Evangelist, to speed me to a little gate
that is before us, where we shall receive instructions about the way.
Pliable: Come then, good neighbor, let us be going. Then they went both together.
Obstinate: And I will go back to my place, said Obstinate: I will be no companion of such
misled, fantastical fellows.
Now I saw in my dream, that when Obstinate was gone back, Christian and Pliable went
talking over the plain; and thus they began their discourse.
Christian: Come, neighbor Pliable, how do you do? I am glad you are persuaded to go
along with me. Had even Obstinate himself but felt what I have felt of the powers and
terrors of what is yet unseen, he would not thus lightly have given us the back.
Pliable: Come, neighbor Christian, since there are none but us two here, tell me now
farther, what the things are, and how to be enjoyed, whither we are going.
Christian: I can better conceive of them with my mind, than speak of them with my
tongue: but yet, since you are desirous to know, I will read of them in my book.
Pliable: And do you think that the words of your book are certainly true?
108
Christian: Yes, verily; for it was made by Him that cannot lie. Tit. 1:2.
Pliable: Well said; what things are they?
Christian: There is an endless kingdom to be inhabited, and everlasting life to be given
us, that we may inhabit that kingdom for ever. Isa. 65:17; John 10: 27-29.
Pliable: Well said; and what else?
Christian: There are crowns of glory to be given us; and garments that will make us shine
like the sun in the firmament of heaven. 2 Tim. 4:8; Rev. 22:5; Matt. 13:43.
Pliable: This is very pleasant; and what else?
Christian: There shall be no more crying, nor sorrow; for he that is owner of the place
will wipe all tears from our eyes. Isa. 25:8; Rev 7:16, 17; 21:4.
Pliable: And what company shall we have there?
Christian: There we shall be with seraphims and cherubims, Isaiah 6:2; 1 Thess. 4:16,17;
Rev. 5:11; creatures that will dazzle your eyes to look on them. There also you shall meet
with thousands and ten thousands that have gone before us to that place; none of them are
hurtful, but loving and holy; every one walking in the sight of God, and standing in his
presence with acceptance for ever. In a word, there we shall see the elders with their
golden crowns, Rev. 4:4; there we shall see the holy virgins with their golden harps, Rev.
14:1-5; there we shall see men, that by the world were cut in pieces, burnt in flames,
eaten of beasts, drowned in the seas, for the love they bare to the Lord of the place, John
12:25; all well, and clothed with immortality as with a garment. 2 Cor. 5:2.
Pliable: The hearing of this is enough to ravish one’s heart. But are these things to be
enjoyed? How shall we get to be sharers thereof?
Christian: The Lord, the governor of the country, hath recorded that in this book, Isaiah
55:1,2; John 6:37; 7:37; Rev. 21:6; 22:17; the substance of which is, if we be truly
willing to have it, he will bestow it upon us freely.
Pliable: Well, my good companion, glad am I to hear of these things: come on, let us
mend our pace.
Christian: I cannot go as fast as I would, by reason of this burden that is on my back.
Now I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended this talk, they drew nigh to a very
miry slough that was in the midst of the plain: and they being heedless, did both fall
suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they
109
wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of
the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire.
Pliable: Then said Pliable, Ah, neighbor Christian, where are you now?
Christian: Truly, said Christian, I do not know.
Pliable: At this Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, Is this the
happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting
out, what may we expect between this and our journey’s end? May I get out again with
my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me. And with that he gave a
desperate struggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the slough which was
next to his own house: so away he went, and Christian saw him no more.
Wherefore Christian was left to tumble in the Slough of Despond alone; but still he
endeavored to struggle to that side of the slough that was farthest from his own house,
and next to the wicket-gate; the which he did, but could not get out because of the burden
that was upon his back: but I beheld in my dream, that a man came to him, whose name
was Help, and asked him what he did there.
Christian: Sir, said Christian, I was bid to go this way by a man called Evangelist, who
directed me also to yonder gate, that I might escape the wrath to come. And as I was
going thither, I fell in here.
Help: But why did not you look for the steps?
Christian: Fear followed me so hard that I fled the next way, and fell in.
Help: Then, said he, Give me thine hand: so he gave him his hand, and he drew him out,
Psalm 40:2, and he set him upon sound ground, and bid him go on his way.
Then I stepped to him that plucked him out, and said, “Sir, wherefore, since over this
place is the way from the city of Destruction to yonder gate, is it, that this plat is not
mended, that poor travellers might go thither with more security?” And he said unto me,
“This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended: it is the descent whither the scum
and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the
Slough of Despond; for still, as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there
arise in his soul many fears and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of
them get together, and settle in this place: and this is the reason of the badness of this
ground.
“It is not the pleasure of the King that this place should remain so bad. Isa. 35:3,4. His
laborers also have, by the direction of his Majesty’s surveyors, been for above this
sixteen hundred years employed about this patch of ground, if perhaps it might have been
mended: yea, and to my knowledge,” said he, “there have been swallowed up at least
twenty thousand cart loads, yea, millions of wholesome instructions, that have at all
110
seasons been brought from all places of the King’s dominions, (and they that can tell, say,
they are the best materials to make good ground of the place,) if so be it might have been
mended; but it is the Slough of Despond still, and so will be when they have done what
they can.
“True, there are, by the direction of the Lawgiver, certain good and substantial steps,
placed even through the very midst of this slough; but at such time as this place doth
much spew out its filth, as it doth against change of weather, these steps are hardly seen;
or if they be, men, through the dizziness of their heads, step beside, and then they are
bemired to purpose, notwithstanding the steps be there: but the ground is good when they
are once got in at the gate.” 1 Sam. 12:23.
Now I saw in my dream, that by this time Pliable was got home to his house. So his
neighbors came to visit him; and some of them called him wise man for coming back,
and some called him fool for hazarding himself with Christian: others again did mock at
his cowardliness, saying, “Surely, since you began to venture, I would not have been so
base as to have given out for a few difficulties:” so Pliable sat sneaking among them. But
at last he got more confidence, and then they all turned their tales, and began to deride
poor Christian behind his back. And thus much concerning Pliable.
Now as Christian was walking solitary by himself, he espied one afar off come crossing
over the field to meet him; and their hap was to meet just as they were crossing the way
of each other. The gentleman’s name that met him was Mr. Worldly Wiseman: he dwelt
in the town of Carnal Policy, a very great town, and also hard by from whence Christian
came. This man then, meeting with Christian, and having some inkling4 of him, (for
Christian’s setting forth from the city of Destruction was much noised abroad, not only in
the town where he dwelt, but also it began to be the town-talk in some other places)—Mr.
Worldly Wiseman, therefore, having some guess of him, by beholding his laborious
going, by observing his sighs and groans, and the like, began thus to enter into some talk
with Christian.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: How now, good fellow, whither away after this burdened
manner?
Christian: A burdened manner indeed, as ever I think poor creature had! And whereas
you ask me, Whither away? I tell you, sir, I am going to yonder wicket-gate before me;
for there, as I am informed, I shall be put into a way to be rid of my heavy burden.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: Hast thou a wife and children?
Christian: Yes; but I am so laden with this burden, that I cannot take that pleasure in them
as formerly: methinks I am as if I had none. 1 Cor. 7:29.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: Wilt thou hearken to me, if I give thee counsel?
Christian: If it be good, I will; for I stand in need of good counsel.
111
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: I would advise thee, then, that thou with all speed get thyself rid
of thy burden; for thou wilt never be settled in thy mind till then: nor canst thou enjoy the
benefits of the blessings which God hath bestowed upon thee till then.
Christian: That is that which I seek for, even to be rid of this heavy burden: but get it off
myself I cannot, nor is there any man in our country that can take it off my shoulders;
therefore am I going this way, as I told you, that I may be rid of my burden.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: Who bid thee go this way to be rid of thy burden?
Christian: A man that appeared to me to be a very great and honorable person: his name,
as I remember, is Evangelist.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: I beshrew5 him for his counsel! there is not a more dangerous
and troublesome way in the world than is that into which he hath directed thee; and that
thou shalt find, if thou wilt be ruled by his counsel. Thou hast met with something, as I
perceive, already; for I see the dirt of the Slough of Despond is upon thee: but that slough
is the beginning of the sorrows that do attend those that go on in that way. Hear me; I am
older than thou: thou art like to meet with, in the way which thou goest, wearisomeness,
painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and, in a word,
death, and what not. These things are certainly true, having been confirmed by many
testimonies. And should a man so carelessly cast away himself, by giving heed to a
stranger?
Christian: Why, sir, this burden on my back is more terrible to me than are all these
things which you have mentioned: nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way,
if so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: How camest thou by thy burden at first?
Christian: By reading this book in my hand.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: I thought so; and it has happened unto thee as to other weak men,
who, meddling with things too high for them, do suddenly fall into thy distractions;
which distractions do not only unman men, as thine I perceive have done thee, but they
run them upon desperate ventures, to obtain they know not what.
Christian: I know what I would obtain; it is ease from my heavy burden.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: But why wilt thou seek for ease this way, seeing so many dangers
attend it? especially since (hadst thou but patience to hear me) I could direct thee to the
obtaining of what thou desirest, without the dangers that thou in this way wilt run thyself
into. Yea, and the remedy is at hand. Besides, I will add, that instead of those dangers,
thou shalt meet with much safety, friendship, and content.
112
Christian: Sir, I pray open this secret to me.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: Why, in yonder village (the village is named Morality) there
dwells a gentleman whose name is Legality, a very judicious man, and a man of a very
good name, that has skill to help men off with such burdens as thine is from their
shoulders; yea to my knowledge, he hath done a great deal of good this way; aye, and
besides, he hath skill to cure those that are somewhat crazed in their wits with their
burdens. To him, as I said, thou mayest go, and be helped presently. His house is not
quite a mile from this place; and if he should not be at home himself, he hath a pretty
young man to his son, whose name is Civility, that can do it (to speak on) as well as the
old gentleman himself: there, I say, thou mayest be eased of thy burden; and if thou art
not minded to go back to thy former habitation, (as indeed I would not wish thee,) thou
mayest send for thy wife and children to this village, where there are houses now
standing empty, one of which thou mayest have at a reasonable rate: provision is there
also cheap and good; and that which will make thy life the more happy is, to be sure there
thou shalt live by honest neighbors, in credit and good fashion.
Now was Christian somewhat at a stand; but presently he concluded, If this be true which
this gentleman hath said, my wisest course is to take his advice: and with that he thus
farther spake.
Christian: Sir, which is my way to this honest man’s house?
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: Do you see yonder high hill?
Christian: Yes, very well.
Mr. Worldly Wiseman: By that hill you must go, and the first house you come at is his.
So Christian turned out of his way to go to Mr. Legality’s house for help: but, behold,
when he was got now hard by the hill, it seemed so high, and also that side of it that was
next the way-side did hang so much over, that Christian was afraid to venture further, lest
the hill should fall on his head; wherefore there he stood still, and wotted not what to do.
Also his burden now seemed heavier to him than while he was in his way. There came
also flashes of fire, Ex. 19:16, 18, out of the hill, that made Christian afraid that he should
be burnt: here therefore he did sweat and quake for fear. Heb. 12:21. And now he began
to be sorry that he had taken Mr. Worldly Wiseman’s counsel; and with that he saw
Evangelist coming to meet him, at the sight also of whom he began to blush for shame.
So Evangelist drew nearer and nearer; and coming up to him, he looked upon him, with a
severe and dreadful countenance, and thus began to reason with Christian.
Evangelist: What doest thou here, Christian? said he: at which words Christian knew not
what to answer; wherefore at present he stood speechless before him. Then said
Evangelist farther, Art not thou the man that I found crying without the walls of the city
of Destruction?
113
Christian: Yes, dear sir, I am the man.
Evangelist: Did not I direct thee the way to the little wicket-gate?
Christian: Yes, dear sir, said Christian.
Evangelist: How is it then thou art so quickly turned aside? For thou art now out of the
way.
Christian: I met with a gentleman so soon as I had got over the Slough of Despond, who
persuaded me that I might, in the village before me, find a man that could take off my
burden.
Evangelist: What was he?
Christian: He looked like a gentleman, and talked much to me, and got me at last to yield:
so I came hither; but when I beheld this hill, and how it hangs over the way, I suddenly
made a stand, lest it should fall on my head.
Evangelist: What said that gentleman to you?
Christian: Why, he asked me whither I was going; and I told him.
Evangelist: And what said he then?
Christian: He asked me if I had a family; and I told him. But, said I, I am so laden with
the burden that is on my back, that I cannot take pleasure in them as formerly.
Evangelist: And what said he then?
Christian: He bid me with speed get rid of my burden; and I told him it was ease that I
sought. And, said I, I am therefore going to yonder gate, to receive farther direction how I
may get to the place of deliverance. So he said that he would show me a better way, and
short, not so attended with difficulties as the way, sir, that you set me in; which way, said
he, will direct you to a gentleman’s house that hath skill to take off these burdens: so I
believed him, and turned out of that way into this, if haply I might be soon eased of my
burden. But when I came to this place, and beheld things as they are, I stopped, for fear
(as I said) of danger: but I now know not what to do.
Evangelist: Then said Evangelist, Stand still a little, that I show thee the words of God.
So he stood trembling. Then said Evangelist, “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh;
for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we
escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.” Heb. 12:25. He said,
moreover, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if any man draw back, my soul shall have
no pleasure in him.” Heb. 10:38. He also did thus apply them: Thou art the man that art
114
running into this misery; thou hast begun to reject the counsel of the Most High, and to
draw back thy foot from the way of peace, even almost to the hazarding of thy perdition.
Then Christian fell down at his feet as dead, crying, Woe is me, for I am undone! At the
sight of which Evangelist caught him by the right hand, saying, “All manner of sin and
blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men.” Matt. 12:31. “Be not faithless, but believing.”
John 20:27. Then did Christian again a little revive, and stood up trembling, as at first,
before Evangelist.
Then Evangelist proceeded, saying, Give more earnest heed to the things that I shall tell
thee of. I will now show thee who it was that deluded thee, and who it was also to whom
he sent thee. The man that met thee is one Worldly Wiseman, and rightly is he so called;
partly because he savoreth only the doctrine of this world, 1 John 4:5, (therefore he
always goes to the town of Morality to church;) and partly because he loveth that doctrine
best, for it saveth him best from the cross, Gal. 6:12: and because he is of this carnal
temper, therefore he seeketh to pervert my ways, though right. Now there are three things
in this man’s counsel that thou must utterly abhor.
1. His turning thee out of the way.
2. His laboring to render the cross odious to thee.
3. And his setting thy feet in that way that leadeth unto the administration of death.
First, Thou must abhor his turning thee out of the way; yea, and thine own consenting
thereto; because this is to reject the counsel of God for the sake of the counsel of a
Worldly Wiseman. The Lord says, “Strive to enter in at the straight gate,” Luke 13:24,
the gate to which I send thee; “for strait is the gate that leadeth unto life, and few there be
that find it.” Matt. 7:13,14. From this little wicket-gate, and from the way thereto, hath
this wicked man turned thee, to the bringing of thee almost to destruction: hate, therefore,
his turning thee out of the way, and abhor thyself for hearkening to him.
Secondly, Thou must abhor his laboring to render the cross odious unto thee; for thou art
to prefer it before the treasures of Egypt. Heb. 11:25,26. Besides, the King of glory hath
told thee, that he that will save his life shall lose it. And he that comes after him, and
hates not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be his disciple. Mark 8:38; John 12:25; Matt. 10:39;
Luke 14:26. I say, therefore, for a man to labor to persuade thee that that shall be thy
death, without which, the truth hath said, thou canst not have eternal life, this doctrine
thou must abhor.
Thirdly, Thou must hate his setting of thy feet in the way that leadeth to the
administration of death. And for this thou must consider to whom he sent thee, and also
how unable that person was to deliver thee from thy burden.
115
He to whom thou wast sent for ease, being by name Legality, is the son of the bondwoman which now is, and is in bondage with her children, Gal. 4:21-27, and is, in a
mystery, this Mount Sinai, which thou hast feared will fall on thy head. Now if she with
her children are in bondage, how canst thou expect by them to be made free? This
Legality, therefore, is not able to set thee free from thy burden. No man was as yet ever
rid of his burden by him; no, nor ever is like to be: ye cannot be justified by the works of
the law; for by the deeds of the law no man living can be rid of his burden: Therefore Mr.
Worldly Wiseman is an alien, and Mr. Legality is a cheat; and for his son Civility,
notwithstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite, and cannot help thee. Believe
me, there is nothing in all this noise that thou hast heard of these sottish men, but a design
to beguile thee of thy salvation, by turning thee from the way in which I had set thee.
After this, Evangelist called aloud to the heavens for confirmation of what he had said;
and with that there came words and fire out of the mountain under which poor Christian
stood, which made the hair of his flesh stand up. The words were pronounced: “As many
as are of the works of the law, are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Gal.
3:10.
Now Christian looked for nothing but death, and began to cry out lamentably; even
cursing the time in which he met with Mr. Worldly Wiseman; still calling himself a
thousand fools for hearkening to his counsel. He also was greatly ashamed to think that
this gentleman’s arguments, flowing only from the flesh, should have the prevalency with
him so far as to cause him to forsake the right way. This done, he applied himself again to
Evangelist in words and sense as follows.
Christian: Sir, what think you? Is there any hope? May I now go back, and go up to the
wicket-gate? Shall I not be abandoned for this, and sent back from thence ashamed? I am
sorry I have hearkened to this man’s counsel; but may my sin be forgiven?
Evangelist: Then said Evangelist to him, Thy sin is very great, for by it thou hast
committed two evils: thou hast forsaken the way that is good, to tread in forbidden paths.
Yet will the man at the gate receive thee, for he has good-will for men; only, said he, take
heed that thou turn not aside again, lest thou “perish from the way, when his wrath is
kindled but a little.” Psalm 2:12.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
IN SEVEN PARTS
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam
visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium
familiam quis nobis enarrabit ? et gradus et
cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera ?
116
Quid agunt ? quae loca habitant ? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium
humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam
in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari : ne mens assuefacta
hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed
veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte,
distinguamus. - T. Burnet, Archaeol. Phil., p. 68 (slightly edited by Coleridge).
Translation: I can easily believe, that there are more invisible than visible Beings in the
universe. But who shall describe for us their families? and their ranks and relationships
and distinguishing features and functions? What they do? where they live? The human
mind has always circled around a knowledge of these things, never attaining it. I do not
doubt, however, that it is sometimes beneficial to contemplate, in thought, as in a Picture,
the image of a greater and better world; lest the intellect, habituated to the trivia of daily
life, may contract itself too much, and wholly sink into trifles. But at the same time we
must be vigilant for truth, and maintain proportion, that we may distinguish certain from
uncertain, day from night.
-- T. Burnet, Archaeol. Phil. p. 68 (1692)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Images drawn from
4umiweb: http://4umi.com/coleridge/rime/0
ARGUMENT
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the
South Pole ; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the
Great Pacific Ocean ; and of the strange things that befell ; and in what manner the
Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.
PART I
An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand,
`There was a ship,' quoth he.
`Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon !'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
117
The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained
to hear his tale.
He holds him with his glittering eye-The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child :
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone :
He cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
`The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it
reached the Line.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he !
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon--'
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The Wedding-Guest heareth2 the bridal music ; but the Mariner continueth his tale.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she ;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
I have always maintained that “The Rime of Ancient Mariner” is by Coleridge’s intention a religious
work. One way that the text seems to support this is Coleridge’s use of archaic English. The poet is
writing more than 150 years after the publication of King James Bible, but he makes his commentary sound
similar in tone. And remember, the scholars themselves of the King James Bible made their text archaic
because they knew people would hold words that sounded old in higher esteem than those that were more
contemporary. (Rearick Comment)
2
118
The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.
`And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong :
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
The southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold :
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen :
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around :
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound !
Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received
with great joy and hospitality.
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came ;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ;
The helmsman steered us through !
And lo ! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned
northward through fog and floating ice.
And a good south wind sprung up behind ;
The Albatross did follow,
119
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo !
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine ;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.
`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !-Why look'st thou so ?'--With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
PART II
The Sun now rose upon the right :
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners' hollo !
His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck.
And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe :
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch ! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow !
But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves
accomplices in the crime.
Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist :
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze continues ; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even
till it reaches the Line.
120
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free ;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be ;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea !
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
And the Albatross begins to be avenged.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot : O Christ !
That ever this should be !
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night ;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.
A Spirit had followed them ; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither
departed souls nor angels ; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the
Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very
numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more.
And some in dreams assuréd were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so ;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
121
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root ;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient
Mariner : in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck.
Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung
PART III
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time ! a weary time !
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off.
At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist ;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist !
And still it neared and neared :
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.
At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship ; and at a dear ransom he freeth his
speech from the bonds of thirst.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail ;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood !
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail ! a sail !
A flash of joy ;
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call :
Gramercy ! they for joy did grin,
122
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.
And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide?
See ! see ! (I cried) she tacks no more !
Hither to work us weal ;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel !
The western wave was all a-flame.
The day was well nigh done !
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun ;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven's Mother send us grace !)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered
With broad and burning face.
And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun.
Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears !
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres ?
The Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton ship.
And those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate ?
And is that Woman all her crew ?
Is that a DEATH ? and are there two ?
Is DEATH that woman's mate ?
[first version of this stanza through the end of Part III]
Like vessel, like crew !
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and she (the latter) winneth the
ancient Mariner.
123
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice ;
`The game is done ! I've won ! I've won !'
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
No twilight within the courts of the Sun.
The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out :
At one stride comes the dark ;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
At the rising of the Moon,
We listened and looked sideways up !
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip !
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steerman's face by his lamp gleamed white ;
From the sails the dew did drip-Till clomb above the eastern bar
The hornéd Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.
One after another,
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
His shipmates drop down dead.
Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.
The souls did from their bodies fly,-They fled to bliss or woe !
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow !
PART IV
The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him;
124
`I fear thee, ancient Mariner !
I fear thy skinny hand !
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.
(Coleridge's note on above stanza)
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.'-Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest !
This body dropt not down.
But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his
horrible penance.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea !
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
He despiseth the creatures of the calm,
The many men, so beautiful !
And they all dead did lie :
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on ; and so did I.
And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.
I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away ;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.
I looked to heaven, and tried to pray ;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat ;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.
The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
125
Nor rot nor reek did they :
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.
An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high ;
But oh ! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye !
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars
that still sojourn, yet still move onward ; and every where the blue sky belongs to them,
and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which
they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy
at their arrival.
The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide :
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside-Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread ;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charméd water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes :
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire :
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam ; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
Their beauty and their happiness.
He blesseth them in his heart.
O happy living things ! no tongue
Their beauty might declare :
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
126
And I blessed them unaware :
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The spell begins to break.
The self-same moment I could pray ;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
PART V
Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole !
To Mary Queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.
The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
I moved, and could not feel my limbs :
I was so light--almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blesséd ghost.
He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element.
And soon I heard a roaring wind :
It did not come anear ;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life !
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about !
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
127
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge ;
And the rain poured down from one black cloud ;
The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side :
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on;
The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on !
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on ;
Yet never a breeze up-blew ;
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do ;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother's son
Stood by me, knee to knee :
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me.
But not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed
troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint.
`I fear thee, ancient Mariner !'
Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest !
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest :
For when it dawned--they dropped their arms,
And clustered round the mast ;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies passed.
128
Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun ;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing ;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning !
And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute ;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute.
It ceased ; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
[Additional stanzas, dropped after the first edition.]
Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe :
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in
obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance.
Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid : and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed her to the ocean :
But in a minute she 'gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion-Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go,
129
She made a sudden bound :
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
The Polar Spirit's fellow-dæmons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his
wrong; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the
ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.
How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare ;
But ere my living life returned,
I heard and in my soul discerned
Two voices in the air.
`Is it he ?' quoth one, `Is this the man ?
By him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low
The harmless Albatross.
The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow.'
The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew :
Quoth he, `The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.'
PART VI
FIRST VOICE
`But tell me, tell me ! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing-What makes that ship drive on so fast ?
What is the ocean doing ?'
SECOND VOICE
`Still as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast ;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast--
130
If he may know which way to go ;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see ! how graciously
She looketh down on him.'
The Mariner hath been cast into a trance ; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to
drive northward faster than human life could endure.
FIRST VOICE
`But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind ?'
SECOND VOICE
`The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high !
Or we shall be belated :
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner's trance is abated.'
The supernatural motion is retarded ; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.
I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather :
'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high ;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter :
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away :
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
The curse is finally expiated.
And now this spell was snapt : once more
I viewed the ocean green,
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen-Like one, that on a lonesome road
131
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head ;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made :
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring-It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too :
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-On me alone it blew.
And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.
Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed
The light-house top I see ?
Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ?
Is this mine own countree ?
We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray-O let me be awake, my God !
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn !
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the Moon.
[Additional stanzas, dropped after the first edition.]
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock :
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies,
And the bay was white with silent light,
132
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
And appear in their own forms of light.
A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were :
I turned my eyes upon the deck-Oh, Christ ! what saw I there !
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood !
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand :
It was a heavenly sight !
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light ;
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart-No voice ; but oh ! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
But soon I heard the dash of oars,
I heard the Pilot's cheer ;
My head was turned perforce away
And I saw a boat appear.
[Additional stanza, dropped after the first edition.]
The Pilot and the Pilot's boy,
I heard them coming fast :
Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third--I heard his voice :
It is the Hermit good !
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away
The Albatross's blood.
PART VII
The Hermit of the Wood,
133
This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears !
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve-He hath a cushion plump :
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat neared : I heard them talk,
`Why, this is strange, I trow !
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now ?'
Approacheth the ship with wonder.
`Strange, by my faith !' the Hermit said-`And they answered not our cheer !
The planks looked warped ! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere !
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along ;
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf's young.'
`Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish look-(The Pilot made reply)
I am a-feared'--`Push on, push on !'
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred ;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.
The ship suddenly sinketh.
Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread :
It reached the ship, it split the bay ;
The ship went down like lead.
The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.
134
Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drowned
My body lay afloat ;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot's boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round ;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit ;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.
I took the oars : the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
`Ha ! ha !' quoth he, `full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.'
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land !
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him ; and the penance of
life falls on him.
`O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man !'
The Hermit crossed his brow.
`Say quick,' quoth he, `I bid thee say-What manner of man art thou ?'
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale ;
And then it left me free.
And ever and anon through out his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from
land to land;
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
135
That agony returns :
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door !
The wedding-guests are there :
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are :
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer !
O Wedding-Guest ! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea :
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company !-To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends
And youths and maidens gay !
And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and
loveth.
Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest !
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
136
Is gone : and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn :
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------1797-1798, first version published 1798, 1800, 1802, 1805; revised version, including
addition of his marginal glosses, published in 1817, 1828, 1829, 1834.
(proofed against E. H. Coleridge's 1927 edition of STC's poems and a ca. 1898 edition of
STC's Poetical Works, ``reprinted from the early editions'')
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rearick's Comment: A number of critics have felt that the ancient mariner in spite of
his claim that he is free from the guilt of his sin is still paying for as he continues his
onward journey. That he has not been redeemed. Such critics I think do not understand
the nature of having a message from God, a truth which must be shared. Note these
comments made by the prophet Jeremiah when he felt he had been made to live a foolish
life:
Jeremiah 20 (KJV)
7
8
9
O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived; thou art stronger than I, and
hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.
For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the
LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily.
Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But
his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary
with forbearing, and I could not stay.
Although we tend to think of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(1835-1910) (Mark Twain to his fans), as an author filled with
the exuberance of youth in works like Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn, those who have read the later know that he was also a
troubled soul and often found himself filled with disgust with
humanity in general. Especially noxious to him was the
business of war, war fought for honor. In jest he blamed Sir
Walter Scott for his novels of chivalry which were so popular
among Southern boys as actually causing The Civil War. He
clearly had no use for such ideas. His “Mysterious Stranger” is
included in our text but here is also another fable about a mysterious stranger who comes
to visit a church praying for victory.
137
The War Prayer3 by
Mark Twain
Found Originally at
http://www.lnstar.com/mall/literature/warpray.htm4
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the
war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating,
the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and
sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and
balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers
marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and
mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy
emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot
oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at
briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the
while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the
God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence
which moved every listener.
It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that
ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got
such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank
out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came-next day the battalions would leave for the front; the
church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreamsvisions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing
sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the
surrender!-then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in
golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by
the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of
honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service
proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it
was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house
rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation –
3
Dictated by Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] in 1904 in advance of his death in 1910.
During his writing career, he had criticized perhaps every type of person or institution either
living or dead. But this piece was just a little too hot for his family to tolerate. Since they believed
the short narrative would be regarded as sacrilege, they urged him not to publish it. However,
Sam was to have the last word, and even the word after that. Having directed it to be published
after his death, he said, "I have told the truth in that... and only dead men can tell the truth in this
world." -- William H. Huff
4
Outraged by American military intervention in the Phillipines, Mark Twain wrote this and sent
it to Harper's Bazaar. This women's magazine rejected it for being too radical, and it wasn't
published until after Mark Twain's death, when World War I made it even more timely. It
appeared in Harper's Monthly, November 1916
138
"God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate
pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an
ever--merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers
and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in
His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help
them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and
glory An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main
aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his
feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his
seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and
wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side
and stood there, waiting.
With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving
prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms,
grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled
minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound
audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said
"I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words
smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has
heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire
after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import.
For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters
it is aware of-except he pause and think.”
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought?
Is it one prayer? No, it is two- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of
His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in
mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a
curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your
crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some
neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.”
"You have heard your servant's prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned
by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in
your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it
was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient.
The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were
not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned
results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening
spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to
put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father,
139
our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battlebe Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet
peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God,
help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded,
writhing in pain;
help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;
help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended
the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of
the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter,
broken in spirit,
worn with travail,
imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied itfor our sakes who adore Thee, Lord,
blast their hopes,
blight their lives,
protract their bitter pilgrimage,
make heavy their steps,
water their way with their tears,
stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and
Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid
with humble and contrite hearts.
Amen.
(After a pause)
"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High
waits." It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense
in what he said.
140
Christmas
"Christmas Bells" by Henry Longfellow
Later retiled “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"
141
“Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated”
From Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
Hamlet Act: I, Scene: i, Line: 157
Nativity
By John Donne
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
The Oxen
By Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,
"Now they are all on their knees",
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
142
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel
"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know",
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
The World Is Too Much With Us
By William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
143
From The D'Aulaires Book of Greek Mythology
144
145
146