Before my conquering band,
“Yet knightly treatment shall you find,
On faith of cavalier:
Then join Sir Substantive behind,
And follow our career.”
Sir Substantive, that man of might,
Felt knightly anger rise;
For he had marked Sir Pronoun’s flight
With no approving eyes.
“Great Substantive, my sovereign liege!”
Thus sad Sir Pronoun cried,
“When you had fallen in furious siege,
Could I the shock abide?
“That all resistance would be vain,
Too well, alas! I knew:
For what could I, when you were ta’en,
Your poor lieutenant, do?”
Then louder rung Sir Hornbook’s horn,
In signals loud and shrill:
His merrymen all, for conquest born,
Went marching up the hill,
VI.
Now steeper grew the rising ground,
And rougher grew the road,
As up the steep ascent they wound
To bold Sir Verb’s abode.
Sir Verb was old, and many a year,
All scenes and climates seeing,
Had run a wild and strange career
Through every mode of being.
And every aspect, shape, and change
Of action, and of passion:
And known to him was all the range
Of feeling, taste, and fashion.
He was an Augur, quite at home
In all things present done,
Deeds past, and every act to come
In ages yet to run.
Entrenched in intricacies strong,
Ditch, fort, and palisado,
He marked with scorn the coming throng,
And breathed a bold bravado:
“Ho! who are you that dare invade
My turrets, moats, and fences?
Soon will your vaunting courage fade,
When on the walls, in lines arrayed,
You see me marshal undismayed
My host of moods and tenses.”
“In vain,” Childe Launcelot cried in scorn,
“On them is your reliance
Sir Hornbook wound his bugle horn,
And twang’d a loud defiance.
They swam the moat, they scaled the wall,
Sir Verb, with rage and shame,
Beheld his valiant general fall,
Infinitive by name.
Indicative declared the foes
Should perish by his hand;
And stout Imperative arose
The squadron to command.
Potential and Subjunctive t then
Came forth with doubt and chance:
All fell alike, with all their men,
Before Sir Hornbook’s lance.
Action and Passion nought could do
To save Sir Verb from fate;
Whose doom poor Participle knew,
He must participate.
Then Adverb, who had skulked behind,
To shun the mighty jar,
Came forward, and himself resigned
A prisoner of war.
Three children of Imperative,
Pull strong, though somewhat small,
Next forward came, themselves to give
To conquering Launcelot’s thrall.
Conjunction press’d to join the crowd;
But Preposition swore,
Though Interjection sobb’d aloud,
That he would go before.
Again his horn Sir Hornbook blew,
Full long, and loud, and shrill;
His merrymen all, so stout and true,
Went inarching up the hill.
VII.
SIR SYNTAX dwelt in thick fir-grove,
All strown with scraps of flowers,
Which he had pluck’d to please his love,
Among the Muses’ bowers.
His love was gentle Prosody,
More fair than morning beam;
Who lived beneath a flowering tree,
Beside a falling stream.
And these two claim’d, with high pretence,
The whole Parnassian ground,
Albeit some little difference
Between their taste was found:
Sir Syntax he was all for sense,
And Prosody for sound.
Yet in them both the Muses fair
Exceedingly delighted;
And thought no earthly thing so rare,
That might with that fond twain compare,
When they were both united.
“Ho! yield, Sir Syntax!” Hornbook cried,
“Tins youth must pass thy grove,
Led on by me, his faithful guide,
In yonder bowers to rove.”
Thereat full much Sir Syntax said,
But found resistance vain:
And through his grove Childe Launcelot sped,
With all Sir Hornbook’s train.
They reach’d the tree where Prosody
Was singing in the shade:
Great joy Childe Launcelot had to see,
And hear that lovely maid.
Now onward as they press’d along,
Did nought their course oppose;
Till full before the martial throng
The Muses’ gates arose.
There Etymology they found,
Who scorned surrounding fruits;
And ever dug in deepest ground,
For old and mouldy roots.
Sir Hornbook took Childe Launcelot’s hand,
And tears at parting fell:
“Sir Childe,” he said, “with all my band
I bid you here farewell.
“Then wander through these sacred bowers,
Unfearing and alone:
All shrubs are here, and fruits, and flowers,
To happiest climates known.”
Once more his horn Sir Hornbook blew,
A parting signal shrill:
His merrymen all, so stout and true,
Went marching down the hill.
Childe Launcelot pressed the sacred ground,
With hope’s exulting glow;
Some future song perchance may sound
The wondrous things which there he found,
If you the same would know.
RHODODAPHNE.
OR, THE THESSALIAN SPELL.
A POEM.
[Published by Hookhams, 1818.]
PREFACE.
The ancient celebrity of Thessalian magic is familiar, even from Horace, to every classical reader. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius turn entirely upon it, and the following passage in that work might serve as the text of a long commentary on the subject. “Considering that I was now in the middle of Thessaly, celebrated by the accordant voice of the world as the birthplace of the magic art, I examined all things with intense curiosity. Nor did I believe anything which I saw in that city (Hypata) to be what it appeared; but I imagined that every object around me had been changed by incantation from its natural shape; that the stones of the streets, and the waters of the fountains, were indurated and liquefied human bodies; and that the trees which surrounded the city, and the birds which were singing in their boughs, were equally human beings, in the disguise of leaves and feathers. I expected the statues and images to walk, the walls to speak; I anticipated prophetic voices from the cattle, and oracles from the morning sky.”
According to Pliny, Meander, who was skilled in the subtleties of learning, composed a Thessalian drama, in which he comprised the incantations and magic ceremonies of women drawing down the moon. Pliny considers the belief in magic as the combined effect of the operations of three powerful causes, medicine, superstition, and the mathematical arts. He does not mention music, to which the ancients (as is shown by the fables of Orpheus, Amphion, the Sirens, &c.) ascribed the most miraculous powers: but strictly speaking, it
was included in the mathematical arts, as being a science of numerical proportion.
The belief in the supernatural powers of music and pharmacy ascends to the earliest ages of poetry. Its most beautiful forms are the Circe of Homer, and Medea in the days of her youth, as she appears in the third book of Apollonius.
Lucian’s treatise on the Syrian Goddess contains much wild and wonderful imagery; and his Philopseudes, though it does not mention Thessalian magic in particular, is a compendium of almost all the ideas entertained by the ancients of supernatural power, distinct from, and subordinate to, that of the gods; though the gods were supposed to be drawn from their cars by magic, and compelled, however reluctantly, to yield it a temporary obedience. These subjects appear to have been favourite topics with the ancients in their social hours, as we may judge from the Philopseudes, and from the tales related by Niceros and Trimalchio at the feast given by the latter is the Satyricon of Petronius. Trimalchio concludes his marvellous narrative by saying (in the words which form the motto of this poem): “You must of necessity believe that there are women of supernatural science, framers of nocturnal incantations, who can turn the world upside down.”
It will appear from these references, and more might have been made if it had not appeared superfluous, that the power ascribed by the ancients to Thessalian magic is by no means exaggerated in the following poem, though its forms are in some measure diversified.
The opening scene of the poem is in the Temple of Love at Thespia, a town of Boeotia, near the foot of Mount Helicon. That Love was the principal deity of Thespia we learn from Pausanias; and Plutarch, in the beginning of his Erotic dialogue, informs us, that a festival in honour of this deity was celebrated by the Thespians with great splendour every fifth year. They also celebrated a quinquennial festival in honour of the Muses, who had a sacred grove and temple in Helicon. Both these festivals are noticed by Pausanias, who mentions likewise the three statues of Love (though without any distinguishing attributes), and those of Venus and Phryne by Praxiteles. The Winged Love of Praxiteles, in Pentelican marble, which he gave to his mistress Phryne, who bestowed it on her native Thespia, was held in immense admiration by the ancients. Cicero- speaks of it as the great and only attraction of Thespia.
The time is an intermediate period between the age of the Creek tragedians, who are alluded to in the second canto, and that of Pausanias, in whose time the Thespian altar had been violated by Nero, and Praxiteles’s statue of Love removed to Home, for which outrageous impiety, says Pausanias, he was pursued by the just and manifest vengeance of the gods, who, it would seem, had already terrified Claudius into restoring it, when Caligula had previously taken it away.
The second song in the fifth canto is founded on the Homeric- hymn, “Bacchus, or the Pirates.” Some other imitations of classical passages, but for the most part interwoven with unborrowed ideas, will occur to the classical reader.
The few notes subjoined are such as seemed absolutely necessary to explain or justify the text. Those of the latter description might, perhaps, have been more numerous, if much deference had seemed due to that species of judgment, which, having neither light nor tact of its own, can only see and feel through the medium of authority.
Wisdom and Liberty may never cease,
Once having been, to be: but from the tomb
Their mighty radiance streams along the gloom
Of ages evermore without decrease.
Among those gifted bards and sages old,
Shunning the living world, I dwell, and hear,
Reverent, the creeds they held, the tales they told:
And from the songs that charmed their latest ear,
A yet ungathered wreath, with fingers bold,
I weave, of bleeding love and magic mysteries drear.
CANTO I.
THE rose and myrtle blend in beauty
Round Thespian Love’s hypæthric fane;
And there alone, with festal duty
Of joyous song and choral train,
From many a mountain, stream, and vale,
And many a city fair and free,
The sons of Greece commingling hail
Love’s primogenial deity.
Central amid the myrtle grove
That venerable temple stands:
Three statues, raised by gifted hands,
Distinct with sculptured emblems fair,
His threefold influence imaged bear,
Creative, Heavenly, Earthly Love.
The first, of stone and sculpture rude,
From immemorial time has stood;
Not even in vague tradition known
The hand that raised that ancient stone.
Of brass the next, with holiest thought,
The skill of Sicyon’s artist wrought.
The third, a marble form divine, —
That seems to move, and breathe, and smile,
Fair Phryne to this holy shrine
Conveyed, when her propitious wile
Had forced her lover to impart
The choicest treasure of his art.
Her, too, in sculptured beauty’s pride,
His skill has placed by Venus’ side;
Nor well the enraptured gaze descries
Which best might claim the Hesperian prize.
Fairest youths and maids assembling
Dance the myrtle bowers among:
Harps to softest numbers trembling
Pour the impassioned strain along,
Where the poet’s gifted song
Holds the intensely listening throng.
Matrons grave and sages gray
Lead the youthful train to pay
Homage on the opening day
Of Love’s returning festival:
Every fruit and every flower
Sacred to his gentler power,
Twined in garlands bright and sweet,
They place before his sculptured feet,
And on his name they call:
From thousand lips, with glad acclaim,
Is breathed at once that sacred name;
And music, kindling at the sound,
Wafts holier, tenderer strains abound:
The rose a richer sweet exhales;
The myrtle waves in softer gales;
Through every breast one influence flies;
All hate, all evil passion dies;
The heart of man, in that blest spell,
Becomes at once a sacred cell,
Where Love, and only Love, can dwell.
From Ladon’s shores Anthemion came,
Arcadian Ladon, loveliest tide
Of all the streams of Grecian name
Through rocks and sylvan hills that glide.
The flower of all Arcadia’s youth
Was he: such form and face, in truth,
As thoughts of gentlest maidens seek
In their day-dreams: soft, glossy hair
Shadowed his forehead, snowy-fair,
With many a hyacinthine cluster:
Lips, that in silence seemed to speak,
Were his, and eyes of mild blue lustre:
And even the paleness of his cheek,
The passing trace of tender care,
Still showed how beautiful it were
If its own natural bloom were there.
His native vale, whose mountains high
The barriers of this world had been,
His ‘cottage home, and each dear scene
His haunt from earliest infancy,
He left, to Love’s fair fane to bring
His simple wild-flower offering.
She with whose life his life was twined,
His own Calliroe, long had pined
With some strange ill, and none could find
What secret cause did thus consume
That peerless maiden’s roseate bloom:
The Asclepian sage’s skill was vain;
And vainly have their vows been paid
To Pan, beneath the od
orous shade
Of his tall pine; and other aid
Must needs be sought to save the maid:
And hence Anthemion came, to try
In Thespia’s old solemnity,
If such a lover’s prayers may gain
From Love in his primaeval fane.
He mingled in the votive train,
That moved around the altar’s base.
Every statue’s beauteous face
Was turned towards that central altar.
Why did Anthemion’s footsteps falter?
Why paused he, like a tale-struck child,
Whom darkness fills with fancies wild?
A vision strange his sense had bound:
It seemed the brazen statue frowned — .
The marble statue smiled.
A moment, and the semblance fled:
And when again he lifts his head,
Each sculptured face alone presents
Its fixed and placid lineaments.
He bore a simple wild-flower wreath:
Narcissus, and the sweet-briar rose;
Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe
Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows
With purple bells; the amaranth bright,
That no decay nor fading knows,
Like true love’s holiest, rarest light;
And every purest flower, that blows
In that sweet time, which Love most blesses,
When spring on summer’s confines presses.
Beside the altar’s foot he stands,
And murmurs low his suppliant vow,
And now uplifts with duteous hands
The votive wild-flower wreath, and now —
At once, as when in vernal night
Comes pale frost or eastern blight,
Sweeping with destructive wing
Banks untimely blossoming,
Droops the wreath, the wild-flowers die;
One by one on earth they lie,
Blighted strangely, suddenly.
His brain swims round; portentous fear
Across his wildered fancy flies:
Shall death thus seize his maiden dear?
Does Love reject his sacrifice?
He caught the arm of a damsel near,
And soft sweet accents smote his ear:
— “What ails thee, stranger? Leaves are sear,
And flowers are dead, and fields are drear,
And streams are wild, and skies are bleak,
And white with snow each mountain’s peak.
When winter rules the year;
And children grieve, as if for aye
Leaves, flowers, and birds were past away:
But buds and blooms again are seen,
And fields are gay, and hills are green,
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 134