Eetes, and he went, on his return
To his own city, with the Colchian train; Casting within his troubled mind, how best With sharper trial to confront the chiefs. Day fell, and so the contest was fulfilled.
THE COMBAT BETWEEN POLLUX AND AMYCUS.*
FAST by the beach oxstalls and tents were spread
By bold Bebrycians, Amycus their head,
Whom, on the precincts of the winding shore,
A fair Bithynian Hamadryad bore
To genial Neptune, in base commerce join'd,
Proud Amycus, most barbarous of mankind.
Who made this stern, unequitable law,
Of mighty monsters, which the heaving earth,
Incens'd at Jove, brought forth, a formidable birth.
But Pollux shone like that mild star on high
Whose rising ray illumes the evening sky.
Down spread his cheek, ripe manhood's early
sign,
And in his eye fair beam'd the glance divine:
Such seem'd Jove's valiant son, supremely bright,
And equal to the lion in his might.
His arms he pois'd, advancing in the ring,
To try if still they kept their pristine spring-
If pliant still and vigorous as before,
Accustom'd to hard toil, the labour of the oar.
But Amycus aloof and silent stood,
That from his realm no stranger should with- Glar'd on his foe, and seem'd athirst for blood:
"Learn what 'tis meet ye knew, ye vagrant Whether to make the cestus firm and good,
None that e'er touches on Bebrycia's coast,
Is hence by law permitted to depart,
Till match'd with me he prove the boxer's art.
Choose then a chief that can the gauntlet wield,
And let him try the fortune of the field:
If thus my edicts ye despise and me,
Yield to the last immutable decree."
Thus spoke the chief with insolent disdain,
And rous'd resentment in the martial train:
But most his words did Pollux' rage provoke,
Who thus, a champion for his fellows, spoke:
"Threat not, whoe'er thou art, the bloody fray;
Lo, we, obsequious, thy decrees obey!
Unforc'd this instant to the lists I go,
Thy rival I, thy voluntary foe."
Stung to the quick with this severe reply,
On him he turn'd his fury-flaming eye:
As the grim lion, pierced by some keen wound,
Whom hunters on the mountain-top surround;
Though close hemm'd in, his glaring eye-balls
glance
On him alone who threw the pointed lance.
Then Pollux doff'd his mantle, richly wrought,
Late from the Lemnian territory brought,
Which some fair nymph who had her flame
avow'd,
The pledge of hospitable love bestow'd:
His double cloak, with clasps of sable hue,
Bebrycia's ruler on the greensward threw,
And his rough sheep-hook of wild-olive made,
Which lately flourish'd in the woodland shade.
Then sought the heroes for a place at hand
Commodious for the fight, and on the strand
They placed their friends, who saw, with won-
dering eyes,
The chiefs how different, both in make and
For Amycus like fell Typhoeus stood, Enormous; or that miscreated brood
Or stain the cheeks of enemies with blood." Thus spoke he boastful; Pollux nought replied, But smiling chose the pair which lay beside. Castor, his brother both by blood and fame, And Talaus the son of Bias came;
Firm round his arms the gloves of death they bind,
And animate the vigour of his mind.
To Amycus Aratus, and his friend
Bold Ornytus, their kind assistance lend:
Alas! they little knew, this conflict o'er,
Those gauntlets never should be buckled more.
Accoutred thus each ardent hero stands,
And raises high in air his iron hands.
With clashing gauntlets fiercely now they close,
And mutual meditate death-dealing blows.
First Amycus a furious onset gave,
Like the rude shock of an impetuous wave,
That, heap'd on high by driving wind and tide,
Bursts thundering on some gallant vessel's side;
The wary pilot by superior skill
Foresees the storm, and shuns the menac'd ill.
Thus threatening Amycus on Pollux prest,
Nor suffer'd his antagonist to rest:
But Jove's brave son observes each coming blow,
Quick leaps aside, and disappoints the foe;
And where a weak unguarded part he spies,
There all the thunder of his arm he plies.
As busy shipwrights stoutly labouring strive
Through sturdy planks the piercing spikes to
From head to stern repeated blows go round, And ceaseless hammers send a various soundThus from their batter'd cheeks loud echoes
Their dash'd teeth crackled, and their jawbones rung:
Nor ceas'd they from the strokes that threaten'd
Till faint with toil they fairly gasp'd for breath:
Then first awhile remit the bloody fray,
• see this combat described by Theocritus, pp. 223, 224. | And panting wipe the copious sweat away.
But adverse soon they meet, with rage they | Bent back his head; defeated of its aim
The blow impetuous on his shoulder came.
Fierce as two bulls fight for some favourite Then Pollux with firm step approaching near,
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MOST glorious of the immortal powers above!
Oh thou of many names! mysterious Jove!
For evermore almighty! Nature's source!
That govern'st all things in their order'd course!
All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame,
E'en mortal creatures may address thy name;
For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,
Echo thy being with reflected birth—
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:
The universe, that rolls this globe around,
Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire;
The double-fork'd, and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hands they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-arm'd, thou dost creation draw,
To one immense, inevitable law:
And, with the various mass of breathing souls
Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation! all things bow
To thee; the universal monarch thou!
Nor aught is done without thy wise control,
On earth, or sea, or round th' ethereal pole,
Save wher, the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind.
Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion to thy sight
Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.
Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunn'd, resisted, by the sinner's soul.
Wretches! while still they course the glittering
prize,
The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life then were virtue, did they this obey;
But wide from life's chief good they headlong
stray.
Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease;
And the sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,
And their whole souls are center'd in their sin.
But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given!
Dweller with lightnings, and the clouds of heaven!
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!
Father! disperse these shadows of the mind!
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;
Wherevith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honour'd by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honour to thyself repay;
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring;
As well befits a mortal's lips to sing:
More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers, can be,
Than when their songs are of thy law and
thee!
RHIANUS, a native of Bena in the isle of Crete, | by Pausanias, and composed similar poems on was originally master of the Palæstra, or circus of other Grecian states. Tiberius was so partial to gymnastic exercises; but by honourable study and the works of Rhianus, that he caused his bust to exertion, became at length distinguished as a poet be placed in the public libraries, amongst those and grammarian. He wrote a history of Mes- of the most eminent poets. For a list of his sene in verse, the accuracy of which is praised works, see Clinton's Fast. Hell. vol. ii. p. 512.
STILL err our mortal souls: nor wisely bear
The heaven-dealt lots, that still depress the scale
From side to side. The man of indigence
Loads with his bitter blame the gods; and,
stung
With discontent, neglects his mental powers,
And energies; nor dares, courageous, aught
Of speech or action; trembling, when the rich
Appear before him: sadness and despair
Eating his very heart. While he, who swells
With proud prosperity, whom heaven endows
With riches, and with power above the crowd;
Forgets his being's nature; that his feet
Tread the low earth, and that himself was born
Of mortal parents; but, with puff'd-up mind,
Sinful in haughtiness, like Jove, he wields
The thunder; and, though small in stature, lifts
The neck, with high-rein'd head, as though he
wooed
Fair-arm'd Minerva; and had cleft a way
To high Olympus' top; that, with the gods
There number'd, he might feast in blessedness.
But lo! Destruction, running with soft feet,
Unlook'd for, and unseen, bows suddenly
The loftiest heads. Deceitfully she steals
In unexpected forms upon their sins;
To youthful follies wears the face of age;
To aged crimes the features of a maid;
And her dread deed is pleasant in the sigh
Of Justice, and of him who rules the gods.
A LOVER'S WISH.
DETIONICA, with a limed thread,
Her snare beneath a verdant plane-tree spread,
And caught a blackbird by the quivering wing:
The struggling bird's shrill outeries piping ring.
O God of Love! O Graces, blooming fair!
I would that I a thrush, or blackbird, were;
So, in her grasp, to breathe my murmur'd cries,
And shed a sweet tear from my silent eyes.
In early youth, of all our hopes bereft;
But that his darkening age is lonely left.
DYING IN HER HUSBAND'S ABSENCE.
THESE, the last words, Theano, swift descending
To the deep shades of night, was heard to
say-
"Alas! and is it thus my life is ending,
And thou, my husband, far o'er seas away?
And, with it, this,-"We mourn not that we fell Ah! could I but that dear hand press with
A CONTEMPORARY and ardent partisan of the | Philip, whose defeat by the former he celebrates Roman consul, Titus Flaminius, against King in some of his epigrams.
ON THE EXPEDITION OF FLAMINIUS.
XERXES from Persia led his mighty host, And Titus his from fair Italia's coast.
ON HIPPONAX THE SATIRIST. THY tomb no purple clusters rise to grace, But thorns and briars choke the fearful place;
Both warred with Greece; but here the differ- These herbs malign and bitter fruits supply
Unwholesome juices to the passer-by;
And as, Hipponax, near thy tomb he goes,
Shuddering he turns, and prays for thy repose.
THE visionary dream of life is o'er;
The bard of heroes sleeps on Ios' shore:
Fair Ios' sons their lamentations pay,
And wake the funeral dirge, or solemn lay.
O'er his pale lifeless corse and drooping head,
Ambrosial sweets the weeping Nereids shed,
And on the shore their weeping poet laid,
Beneath the towering mountain's peaceful shade.
Nor undeserved their care-his tuneful tongue
Achilles' wrath and Thetis' sorrows sung;
His strains Laërtes' son in triumph bore,
Through woes unnumbered, to his native shore.
Blest isle of Ios! On thy rocky steeps
The Star of Song-the Grace of Graces-sleeps.
BION was a native of Smyrna, in Ionia, and | appears that he died by poison: but when, why, lived some time under Ptolemy Philometor. or by whom, the foul act was perpetrated, it is From the monody on his death by Moschus,* it useless to conjecture.
I MOURN Adonis, fair Adonis, dead:
The Loves their tears for fair Adonis shed:
No more, oh Venus! sleep in purple vest;
Rise robed in blue: ah, sad one! smite thy breast,
O hapless Bion! Poison was thy fate;
The baneful potion circumscribed thy date
How could fell poison cause effect so strange?
Touch thy sweet lips and not to honey change?
And cry "the fair Adonis is no more!"
I mourn Adonis: him the Loves deplore:
See fair Adonis on the mountains lie;
The boar's white tusk has rent his whiter thigh:
While in vain gasps his life-breath ebbs away,
Grief's harrowing agonies on Venus prey:
Black through the snowy flesh the blood-drops
The eyes beneath his brows in torpor sleep:
The rose has fled his lips, and with him dies The kiss, that Venus, though in death, shall prize: Dear is the kiss, though life the lips have fled; But not Adonis feels it warm the dead.
I mourn Adonis: mourn the Loves around:
Ah! cruel, cruel, is that bleeding wound:
Yet Venus feels more agonising smart;
A deeper wound has pierced within her heart.
Around the youth his hounds in howlings yell;
And shriek the nymphs from every mountain
dell;
Venus, herself, among the forest-dales,
Unsandal'd, strews her tresses to the gales:
The wounding brambles, bent beneath her tread,
With sacred blood-drops of her feet are red:
She through the lengthening valleys shrieks and
cries,
So Venus mourns: her loss the Loves deplore: Woe, Venus, woe! Adonis is no more. As many drops as from Adonis bled, So many tears the sorrowing Venus shed: For every drop on earth a flower there grows: Anemones for tears; for blood the rose.
I mourn Adonis: fair Adonis dead: Not o'er the youth in words thy sorrows shed: For thy Adonis' limbs a couch is strown, That couch he presses, Venus! 'tis thy own. There dead he lies, yet fair in blooming graceStill fair, as if with slumber on his face. Haste, lay him on the golden stand, and spread The garments that enrobed him in thy bed, When on thy heavenly breast the livelong night He slept, and court him, though he scare thy sight:
"Say, where my young Assyrian bridegroom Lay him with garlands and with flowers; but all
But round his navel black the life-blood flow'd;
His snowy breast and side with purple glow'd. |
Ah! Venus! ah! the Loves for thee bewail;
With that lost youth thy fading graces fail;
Her beauty bloom'd, while life was in his eyes;
Ah, woe with him it bloom'd, with him it
dies.
The oaks and mountains "Ah! Adonis!" sigh:
The rivers moan to Venus' agony:
The mountain springs all trickle into tears:
The blush of grief on every flower appears:
And Venus o'er each solitary hill,
And through wide cities chaunts her dirges shrill.
Woe, Venus! woe! Adonis is no more:
Echoes repeat the lonely mountains o'er,
"Adonis is no more:" woe, woe is me!
Who at her grievous love dry-eyed can be?
Mute at th' intolerable wound she stood,
And saw, and knew the thigh dash'd red with
blood:
Groaning she stretch'd her arms: and "Stay!" she said,
"Stay, poor Adonis!—lift thy languid head:
Ah! let me find thy last expiring breath,
Mix lips with lips, and suck thy soul in death.
Wake but a little, for a last, last kiss:
Be it the last, but warm with life as this,
That through my lips I may thy spirit drain,
Suck thy sweet breath, drink love through every
vein:
This kiss shall serve me ever in thy stead;
Since thou thyself, unhappy one! art fled:
Thou art fled far to Acheron's drear scene,
A king abhorr'd, and an inhuman queen:
I feel the woe, yet live: and fain would be
No goddess, thus in death to follow thee.
Take, Proserpine, my spouse: all loveliest things
Time to thy realm, oh, mightier Goddess! brings:
Disconsolate, I mourn Adonis dead,
With tears unsated, and thy name I dread.
Oh thrice belov'd, thou now art dead and gone!
And all my sweet love, like a dream, is flown.
Venus sinks lonely on a widow'd bed:
The Loves with listless feet my chamber tread:
My cestus perish'd with thyself: ah, why,
Fair as thou wert, the coverts venturous try,
And tempt the woodland monster's cruelty?"
With him are dead, and wither'd at his fall.
With balms anoint him from the myrtle tree:
Or perish ointments; for thy balm was he.
Now on his purple vest Adonis lies:
The groans of weeping Loves around him rise:
Shorn of their locks, beneath their feet they
throw
The quiver plumed, the darts, and broken bow:
One slips the sandal, one the water brings
In golden ewer, one fans him with his wings.
The Loves o'er Venus' self bewail with tears, And Hymen in the vestibule appears Shrouding his torch; and spreads in silent grief The vacant wreath that twined its nuptial leaf. "Hymen!" no more: but "Woe, alas!" they sing: Ah, for Adonis!" "Ah! for Hymen!" ring: The Graces for the son of Myrrha pine; And, Venus! shriek with shriller voice than thine. Muses, Adonis! fair Adonis! call, And sing him back; but he is deaf to all. Bootless the sorrow, that would touch his sprite, Nor Proserpine shall loose him to the light: Cease, Venus! now thy wail: reserve thy tear: Again to fall with each Adonian year.
THE TEACHER TAUGHT.
As late I slumbering lay, before my sight
Bright Venus rose in visions of the night:
She led young Cupid; as in thought profound
His modest eyes were fix'd upon the ground;
And thus she spoke: "To thee, dear swain, I
bring
My little son; instruct the boy to sing."
No more she said; but vanish'd intò air, And left the wily pupil to my care: I,-sure I was an idiot for my pains,Began to teach him old bucolic strains; How Pan the pipe, how Pallas form'd the flute, Phoebus the lyre, and Mercury the lute: Love, to my lessons quite regardless grown, Sung lighter lays, and sonnets of his own; Th' amours of men below, and gods above, And all the triumphs of the Queen of Love. I,-sure the simplest of all shepherd-swains,Full soon forgot my old bucolic strains; The lighter lays of love my fancy caught, And I remember'd all that Cupid taught.
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