Virgil and Lucretius: Passages Translated by William Stebbing
William Stebbing
9781465662989
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
This is the tale old Proteus by the sea Erst told of Orpheus and Eurydice. Virgil at Parthenope overheard, And has resung it, if not word by word. Orpheus had been espoused but one short hour, And went to gather roses for the bower, When a rejected wooer, mad with love, Sprang upon the light-footed nymph, and strove For an embrace; she, heeding nought, alas! Trod on a serpent sleeping in the grass; And when on the instant, answering her cries, Her Bridegroom knelt there, kissing her closed eyes, Half fainting with the sense of all her charms, Sudden he woke, a dead Bride in his arms! Not his alone the woe and misery; Nor he sole mourner for Eurydice; From Rhodope to Pangæa’s peaks, above The cave where Boreas hid his Attic love, Through the fierce realm of Rhesus, echo bore The wail to the wild Getes, to the shore Of Hebrus, while in forest, hill, and dale The tuneful Dryads told the tearful tale. But how conjure by the best ordered show Of grief an irremediable woe! Orpheus fled Pity, and neighbourly Care; All human fellowship but his despair. With but that and his lyre communion still He held, from dawn to sunset, then until The planets rose and sank, banishing sleep, Keeping sad vigils by the moaning deep, Thinking each shadow on the desert shore Was his lost Bride restored to life once more.
