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PASSAGES

1

Evolution of human life

 
Prometheus. List rather to the deeds
                I did for mortals: how, being fools before
                I made them wise and true in aim of soul,
                And let me tell you – not as taunting men,
                But teaching you the intention of my gifts —
                How, first beholding, they beheld in vain,
                And hearing, heard not, but like shapes in dreams
                Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time;
                Nor knew to build a house against the sun
                With wicketed sides, nor any woodcraft knew,
                But lived, like silly ants, beneath the ground,
                In hollow caves unsunned. There came to them
                No steadfast sign of winter nor of spring,
                Flower perfumed, nor summer full of fruit;
                But blindly and lawlessly they did all things,
                Until I taught them how the stars do rise
                And set in mystery, and devised for them
                Number, the inducer of philosophies,
                The synthesis of letters, and, beside,
                The artificer of all things, Memory,
                That sweet Muse-Mother. I was first to yoke
                The servile beasts in couples, carrying
                An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs.
                I joined to chariots steeds that love the bit
                They clamp at – the chief pomp of golden ease.
                And none but I originated ships,
                The seaman's chariots wandering on the brine,
                With linen wings. And I – oh miserable! —
                Who did devise for mortals all these arts,
                Have no device left now to save myself
                From the woe I suffer.
 
 
Chorus. Most unseemly woe
                Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense
                Bewildered! like a bad leech falling sick,
                Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs
                Required to save thyself.
 
 
Prometheus. Hearken the rest,
                And marvel further, what more arts and means
                I did invent, this greatest: if a man
                Fell sick there was no cure, nor esculent,
                Nor chrism, nor liquid, but for lack of drugs
                Men pined and wasted, till I showed them all
                Those mixtures of emollient remedies,
                Whereby they might be rescued from disease,
                I fixed the various rules of mantic art,
                Discerned the vision from the common dream,
                Instructed them in vocal auguries,
                Hard to interpret, and defined as plain
                The wayside omens – flights of crook-clawed birds —
                Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,
                And which not so, and what the food of each,
                And what the hates, affections, social needs,
                Of all to one another, – taught what sign
                Of visceral lightness, colored to a shade,
                May charm the genial gods, and what fair spots
                Commend the lung and liver. Burning so
                The limbs encased in fat, and the long chine,
                I led my mortals on to an art abstruse,
                And cleared their eyes to the image in the fire,
                Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this:
                For the other helps of man hid underground,
                The iron and the brass, silver and gold,
                Can any dare affirm he found them out
                Before me? None, I know, unless he choose
                To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole:
                That all arts come to mortals from Prometheus.
                    Aeschylus: Prometheus. [Mrs. Browning's
                                               translation.]
 

2

(For comparison with the preceding)

 
Warmly this argument with others oft
Have I disputed, who assert that ill
To mortal man assign'd outweighs the good.
Far otherwise I deem, that good is dealt
To man in larger portions: were it not,
We could not bear the light of life. That Power,
Whatever god he be, that called us forth
From foul and savage life, hath my best thanks.
Inspiring reason first, he gave the tongue
Articulate sounds, the intercourse of language:
The fruits of earth he gave, and to that growth
The heaven-descending rain, that from the earth,
Cheer'd by its kindly dews, they might arise,
And bear their life-sustaining food mature: to this
The warm defense against th' inclement storm
He taught to raise, and the umbrageous roof
The fiery sun excluding: the tall bark
He gave to bound o'er the wide sea, and bear
From realm to realm in grateful interchange
The fruits each wants. Is aught obscure, aught hid?
Doubts darkening on the mind the mounting blaze
Removes; or from the entrail's panting fibres
The seer divines, or from the flight of birds.
Are we not then fastidious to repine
At such a life so furnish'd by the gods?
Euripides: Suppliants 214. [Potter.]
 

3

Specimen of Accelerated Rhythm in the exact metre

AEGISTHUS

 
How thy word and act shall issue thou shalt shortly understand.
CHORUS
Up to action, O my comrades! for the fight is hard at hand,
Swift, your right hands to the sword hilt! bare the weapon as for strife.
AEGISTHUS
Lo! I too am standing ready, hilt to hilt, for death, or life!
CHORUS
'Twas thy word and we accept it! onward to the chance of war!
CLYTEMNESTRA
Nay, enough, enough, my champion! we will smite and slay no more.
Already we have heaped enough the harvest-field of guilt,
Enough of wrong and murder, let no other blood be spilt!
Peace, old men! and pass away into the homes by fate decreed,
Lest ill valor meet our vengeance – 'twas a necessary deed.
But enough of toils and troubles – be the end, if ever, now,
Ere the wrath of the Avenger deal another deadly blow.
'Tis a woman's word of warning, and let who will list thereto.
AEGISTHUS
But that these should loose and lavish reckless blossoms of the tongue,
And in hazard of their fortune cast upon me words of wrong,
And forget the law of subjects, and to heed their ruler's word —
CHORUS
Ruler? but 'tis not for Argives, thus to own a dastard lord!
AEGISTHUS
I will follow to chastise thee in my coming days of sway.
CHORUS
Not if Fortune guide Orestes safely on his homeward way.
AEGISTHUS
Ah, well I know how exiles feed on hopes of their return!
CHORUS
Feed and batten on pollution of the right, while 'tis thy turn!
AEGISTHUS
Thou shalt pay, be well assured, heavy quittance for thy pride.
CHORUS
Crow and strut, with her beside thee, like a cock, his mate beside!
CLYTEMNESTRA
Heed not thou too highly of them – let the cur-pack growl and yell —
I and thou will rule the palace and will order all things well?
Conclusion of Agamemnon. (Morshead.)
 

4

Scene from the 'Hercules Mad' of Euripides

Translated by Robert Browning

CHORUS OF OLD MEN

 
Horror!
Are we come to the self-same passion of fear,
Old friends? – such a phantasm fronts me here
Visible over the palace-roof!
In flight, in flight, the laggard limb
Bestir, and haste aloof
From that on the roof there – grand and grim!
O Paian, king!
Be thou my safeguard from the woeful thing!
IRIS
Courage, old men! beholding here – Night's birth —
Madness, and me the handmaid of the gods,
Iris: since to your town we come no plague —
Wage war against the house of but one man
From Zeus and from Alkmene sprung, they say.
Now, till he made an end of bitter toils
Fate kept him safe, nor did his father Zeus
Let us once hurt him, Heré nor myself.
But since he has toiled through Eurustheus' task
Heré desires to fix fresh blood on him —
Slaying his children; I desire it too.
Up then, collecting the unsoftened heart,
Unwedded virgin of black Night! Drive, drag,
Frenzy upon the man here – whirls of brain
Big with child-murder, while his feet leap gay.
Let go the bloody cable its whole length!
So that, – when o'er the Acherousian ford
He has sent floating, by self-homicide,
His beautiful boy-garland, – he may know
First, Heré's anger, what it is to him,
And then learn mine. The gods are vile indeed
And mortal matters vast if he 'scape free.
MADNESS
Certes, from well-born sire and mother too
Had I my birth, whose blood is Night's and Heaven's;
But here's my glory, – not to grudge the good!
Nor love I raids against the friends of man.
I wish, then, to persuade, before I see
You stumbling, you and Heré: trust my words!
This man, the house of whom ye hound me to,
Is not unfamed on earth, nor gods among;
Since, having quelled waste land and savage sea,
He alone raised again the falling rights
Of gods – gone ruinous through impious men.
Desire no mighty mischief, I advise!
IRIS
Give thou no thought to Heré's faulty schemes!
MADNESS
Changing her step from faulty to fault-free!
IRIS
Not to be wise, did Zeus' wife send thee here!
MADNESS
Sun, thee I cite to witness – doing what I loath to do!
But since indeed to Heré and thyself I must subserve,
And follow you quick, with a whizz,
as the hounds a-hunt with the huntsman,
– Go I will! and neither the sea, as it groans
with its waves so furiously,
Nor earthquake, no, nor the bolt of thunder
gasping out heaven's labor-throe,
Shall cover the ground as I, at a bound,
rush into the bosom of Herakles!
And home I scatter and house I batter,
Having first of all made the children fall, —
And he who felled them is never to know
He gave birth to each child that received the blow,
Till the Madness I am have let him go!
Ha, behold, already he rocks his head – he is off
from the starting place!
Not a word, as he rolls his frightful orbs,
from their sockets wrenched in the ghastly race!
And the breathings of him he tempers and times no more
than a bull in act to toss,
And hideously he bellows invoking the Keres, daughters of Tartaros.
Ay and I soon will dance thee madder, and pipe thee
quite out of thy mind with fear!
So, up with the famous foot, thou Iris,
march to Olu[y?]mpus, leave me here!
Me and mine, who now combine, in the dreadful shape no mortal sees,
And now are about to pass, from without,
inside of the home of Herakles!
 

CHORAL ODE

 
Otototoi, – groan: Away is mown
Thy flower, Zeus' offspring, City!
Unhappy Hellas, who dost cast (the pity!)
Who worked thee all the good,
Away from thee, – destroyest in a mood
Of Madness him, to death whom pipings dance!
There goes she, in her chariot, – groans, her brood
And gives her team the goad, as though adrift
For doom, Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose glance
Turns man to marble! with what hissings lift
Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's inheritance!
Quick has the God changed fortune: through their sire
Quick will the children, that he saved, expire!
O miserable me! O Zeus! thy child —
Childless himself – soon vengeance, hunger-wild,
Craving for punishment, will lay how low —
Loaded with many a woe!
O palace-roofs! your courts about,
A measure begins all unrejoiced
By the tympanies and the thyrsos hoist
Of the Bromian revel-rout,
O ye domes! and the measure proceeds
For blood, not such as the cluster bleeds
Of the Dionusian pouring-out!
Break forth! fly, children! fatal this —
Fatal the lay that is piped, I wis!
Ay, for he hunts a children-chase —
Never shall madness lead her revel
And leave no trace in the dwelling-place!
Ai, ai, because of the evil!
Ai, ai, the old man – how I groan
For the father, and not the father alone!
She who was nurse of his children small, – small
Her gain that they never were born at all!
See! see!
A whirlwind shakes hither and thither
The house – the roof falls in together!
Ha, ha, what dost thou, son of Zeus?
A trouble of Tartaros broke loose,
Such as once Pallas on the Titan thundered,
Thou sendest on thy domes, roof-shattered and wall-sundered.
Ideas of Deity
 

5

 
  None of mortal men
  Escape unhurt by fortune, nor the gods,
  Unless the stories of the bards be false.
  Have they not formed connubial ties to which
  No law assents? Have they not gall'd with chains
  Their fathers through ambition? Yet they hold
  Their mansions on Olympus, and their wrongs
  With patience bear.
                             Euripides: Hercules 1414.
 

6

 
  These are your works, ye gods! these changes fraught
  With horrible confusion, mingled thus
  That we through ignorance might worship you.
                             Euripides: Hecuba 943.
 

7

 
          O supreme of heav'n,
  What shall we say? that thy firm providence
  Regards mankind? or vain the thoughts, which deem
  That the just gods are rulers in the sky,
  Since tyrant fortune lords it o'er the world?
                             Do. 470.
 

8

 
          Mortal as I am
  In virtue I exceed thee, though a god
  Of mighty pow'r; for I have not betray'd
  The sons of Hercules: well did'st thou know
  To come by stealth unto my couch, t' invade
  A bed not thine, nor leave obtain'd; to save
  Thy friends thou dost not know; thou art a god
  In wisdom or in justice little vers'd.
                             Euripides: Hercules 385.
 

9

 
  I deem not of the gods, as having form'd
  Connubial ties to which no law assents,
  Nor as oppressed with chains: disgraceful this
  I hold, nor ever will believe that one
  Lords it o'er others: of no foreign aid
  The god, who is indeed a god, hath need:
  These are the wretched fables of the bards.
                             Euripides: Hercules 1444.
 

10

 
  O Jove, who rulest the rolling of the earth,
  And o'er it hast thy throne, whoe'er thou art,
  The ruling mind, or the necessity
  Of nature, I adore thee: dark thy ways,
  And silent are thy steps; to mortal man
  Yet thou with justice all things dost ordain.
                             Euripides: Daughters of Troy 955.
 

11

 
    Was this then human, or divine?
    Did it a middle nature share?
      What mortal shall declare?
    Who shall the secret bounds define?
    When the gods work we see their pow'r;
    We see on their high bidding wait
    The prosperous gales, the storms of fate:
  But who their awful councils shall explore?
                             Euripides: Helena 1235.
 

12

 
  And those, the Ever-Virgin ones, I call,
  Erinnyes dread that see all human deeds,
  Swift-footed, that they mark how I am slain
  By you Atreidae; may they seize on them.
  Doers of evil, with all evil plagues
  And uttermost destruction.
                             Sophocles: Ajax 937 [Plumptre].
Passing bits of Nature-Painting
 

13

 
  Thou firmament of God, and swift-wing'd winds,
  Ye springs of rivers, and of ocean waves
  That smile innumerous! Mother of us all,
  O Earth, and Sun's all-seeing eye, behold,
  I pray, what I a God from Gods endure.
                             Aeschylus: Prometheus 88 [Plumptre].
 

14

 
A Sacred Spot
  This spot is holy, one may clearly tell,
  Full as it is of laurel, olive, vine.
  And many a nightingale within sings sweetly.
  Rest my limbs here upon this rough-hewn rock.
                             Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus 16.
 

15

 
A Grove of the Furies
                Rush not on
      Through voiceless, grass-grown grove,
  Where blends with rivulet of honey'd stream
      The cup of water clear.
                             Do. 156.
 

16

 
A Meadow of Artemis
  Thee, goddess, to adorn I bring this crown
  Inwoven with the various flowers that deck
  The unshorn mead, where never shepherd dared
  To feed his flock, and the scythe never came,
  But o'er its vernal sweets unshorn the bee
  Ranges at will, and hush'd in reverence glides
  Th' irriguous streamlet: garish art hath there
  No place; of these the modest still may cull
  At pleasure, interdicted to th' impure.
                             Euripides: Hippolytus 81.
 

17

 
The Nile
  These are the streams of Nile, the joy of nymphs,
  Glowing with beauty's radiance; he his floods
  Swell'd with the melted snow o'er Egypt's plain
  Irriguous pours, to fertilize her fields,
  Th' ethereal rain supplying.
                             Euripides: Helena 1.
 

18

 
The Nightingale
  On thee, high-nested in the museful shade
      By close-inwoven branches made,
      Thee, sweetest bird, most musical
  Of all that warble their melodious song
          The charmed woods among,
      Thee, tearful nightingale, I call:
      O come, and from thy dark-plumed throat
  Swell sadly-sweet thy melancholy note.
                             Euripides: Helena 1191.
 

19

 
Flight of Cranes
      O might we through the liquid sky
      Wing'd like the birds of Lybia fly;
      Birds, which the change of seasons know,
      And, left the wintry storms and snow,
      Their leader's well-known call obey.
  O'er many a desert dry and cultured plain
      He guides the marshall'd train,
      And cheers with jocund notes their way.
      Ye birds that through th' aerial height
      Your course with clouds light-sailing share,
      Your flight amidst the Pleiads hold,
  And where Orion nightly flames in gold;
      Then on Eurota's banks alight,
      And this glad message bear:
  "Your king from Troy shall reach once more,
  With conquest crown'd, his native shore."
                             Euripides: Helena 1603.
 

20

 
A Storm
      So is it as a wave
      Of ocean's billowing surge
      (Where Thrakian storm-winds rave,
  And floods of darkness from the depths emerge,)
  Rolls the black sand from out the lowest deep,
  And shores re-echoing wail, as rough blasts o'er them sweep.
                             Sophocles: Antigone 586 [Plumptre].
 

21

 
  Steering their rough course o'er this boisterous main,
      Form'd in a ring beneath whose waves
      The Nereid train in high-arch'd caves
  Weave the light dance, and raise the sprightly song,
      Whilst whisp'ring in their swelling sails
      Soft Zephyrs breathe, or southern gales
      Piping amidst their tackling play,
      As their bark ploughs its wat'ry way
  Those hoary cliffs, the haunts of birds, among,
      To that wild strand, the rapid race
      Where once Achilles deigned to grace.
                             Euripides: Iphigenia among the Tauri 492.
(Specimens of Gnomic Verses)
 

22

 
Amongst barbarians all are slaves, save one. Helena 311.
 

23

 
He is no lover who not always loves. Daughters of Troy 1148.
 

24

 
  What our necessities demand, becomes
  Of greater moment than to conquer Troy.
                             Andromache 427.
 

25

 
  'Tis not the counsel, but the speaker's worth,
  That gives persuasion to his eloquence.
                             Hecuba 266.
 

26

 
          Skilful leech
  Mutters no spell o'er sore that needs the knife.
                             Ajax 581.
 

27

 
It is through God that man or laughs or mourns. Ajax 385.
 

28

 
            No mortal man
  May therefore be call'd happy, till you see
  The last of all his days, and how, that pass'd,
  He to the realms of Pluto shall descend.
                             Andromache 114.
 

29

 
            All human things
  A day lays low, a day lifts up again;
  But still the gods love those of order'd soul.
                             Ajax 130.