Or brave Deiphobus, laid down

The burden of a manly life.

Before Atrides men were brave,

But ah! oblivion dark and long

Has locked them in a tearless grave,

For lack of consecrating song.

'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,

What difference? Youshall ne'er be dumb,

While strains of mine have voice and breath:

The dull neglect of days to come

Those hard-won honours shall not blight:

No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours

Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright

When Fortune smiles and when she lowers:

To greed and rapine still severe,

Spurning the gain men find so sweet:

A consul not of one brief year,

But oft as on the judgement-seat

You bend the expedient to the right,

Turn haughty eyes from bribes array,

Or bear your banners through the fight,

Scattering the foeman's firm array.

The lord of countless revenues

Salute not him as happy: no,

Call him the happy who can use

The bounty that the gods bestow,

Can bear the load of poverty,

And tremble not at death, but sin:

No recreant he when called to die

In cause of country or of kin.

J. Conington.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,

Which sounds the silver Thames along,

Taught on the wings of Truth to fly

Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,

In Spenser native Muses play;

Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,

Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay—

Sages and chiefs long since had birth

Ere Caesar was, or Newton, named;

Those raised new empires o'er the earth,

And these new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!

They had no poet, and they died.

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!

They had no poet, and are dead.

Pope.

124

ANGEL of Love, high-thronлd in Cnidos,

Regent of Paphos, no more repine:

Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us

Visit our soberly censлd shrine.

Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,

Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste

The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,

And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.

H.W.G.

125

WHAT slender youth bedewed with liquid odours

Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha, for whom bindst thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he

On faith and changed gods complain: and seas

Rough with black winds and storms

Unwonted shall admire:

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,

Who always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee, of flattering gales

Unmindful. Hapless they

To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed

Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung

My dank and dripping weeds

To the stern God of Sea.

Milton.

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

WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours

Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?

For whom retired to secret shade,

Soft on thy panting bosom laid,

Set'st thou thy looks with nicest care,

O neatly plain? How oft shall he

Bewail thy false inconstancy!

Condemned perpetual frowns to prove,

How often weep thy altered love,

Who thee, too credulous, hopes to find,

As now, still golden and still kind!

W. Hamilton.

126

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

Hor.WHILE, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee,

Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me

To hug thy whitest neck: than I,

The Persian King liv'd not more happily.

Lyd.While thou no other didst affect,

Nor Cloe was of more respect;

Then Lydia, far-fam'd Lydia,

I flourish't more than Roman Ilia.

Hor.Now Thracian Cloe governs me,

Skilfull i' th' Harpe, and Melodie:

For whose affection, Lydia, I