While the clouds touch the waves, and the waves all
Are mingled by the bluster of the winds
55
In whirling eddy. ’Gainst the renegade,
’Gainst Jonah, diverse frenzy joined to rave,
While one sole barque did all the struggle breed
’Twixt sky and surge. From this side and from that
Pounded she reels; ’neath each wave-breaking blow
60
The forest of her tackling trembles all; 128
As, underneath, her spinal length of keel,
Staggered by shock on shock, all palpitates;
And, from on high, her labouring mass of yard
Creaks shuddering; and the tree-like mast itself
65
Bends to the gale, misdoubting to be riven.
Meantime the rising9 clamour of the crew
Tries every chance for barque’s and dear life’s sake:
To pass from hand to hand10 the tardy coils
To tighten the girth’s noose: straitly to bind
70
The tiller’s struggles; or, with breast opposed,
T’ impel reluctant curves. Part, turn by turn,
With foremost haste outbale the reeking well
Of inward sea. The wares and cargo all
They then cast headlong, and with losses seek
75
Their perils to subdue. At every crash
Of the wild deep rise piteous cries; and out
They stretch their hands to majesties of gods,
Which gods are none; whom might of sea and sky
Fears not, nor yet the less from off their poops
80
With angry eddy sweeping sinks them down.
Unconscious of all this, the guilty one
’Neath the poop’s hollow arch was making sleep
Re-echo stertorous with nostril wide
Inflated: whom, so soon as he who guides
85
The functions of the wave-dividing prow
Saw him sleep-bound in placid peace, and proud
In his repose, he, standing o’er him, shook,
And said, “Why sing’st, with vocal nostril, dreams,
In such a crisis? In so wild a whirl,
90
Why keep’st thou only harbour? Lo! The wave
Whelms us, and our one hope is in the gods.
Thou also, whosoever is thy god,
Make vows, and, pouring prayers on bended knee,
Win o’er thy country’s Sovran!”
Then they vote
95
To learn by lot who is the culprit, who
The cause of storm; nor does the lot belie
Jonah: whom then they ask, and ask again,
“Who? whence? who in the world? From what abode,
What people, hail’st thou?” He avows himself
100
A servant, and an over-timid one,
Of God, who raised aloft the sky, who based
The earth, who corporally fused the whole:
A renegade from Him he owns himself,
And tells the reason. Rigid turned they all
105
With dread. “What grudge, then, ow’st thou us? What now
Will follow? By what deed shall we appease
The main?” For more and far more swelling grew
The savage surges. Then the seer begins
Words prompted by the Spirit of the Lord:11
110
“Lo! I your tempest am; I am the sum
Of the world’s12 madness: ’tis in me,” he says,
“That the sea rises, and the upper air
Down rushes; land in me is far, death near,
And hope in God is none! Come, headlong hurl
115
Your cause of bane: lighten your ship, and cast
This single mighty burden to the main,
A willing prey!” But they - all vainly! - strive
Homeward to turn their course; for helm refused
To suffer turning, and the yard’s stiff poise
120
Willed not to change. At last unto the Lord
They cry: “For one soul’s sake give us not o’er
Unto death’s maw, nor let us be besprent
With righteous blood, if thus Thine own right hand
Leadeth.” And from the eddy’s depth a whale
125
Outrising on the spot, scaly with shells,13
Unravelling his body’s train, ’gan urge
More near the waves, shocking the gleaming brine,
Seizing - at God’s command - the prey; which, rolled
From the poop’s summit prone, with slimy jaws
130
He sucked; and into his long belly sped
The living feast; and swallowed, with the man,
The rage of sky and main. The billowy waste
Grows level, and the ether’s gloom dissolves;
The waves on this side, and the blasts on that,
135
129 Are to their friendly mood restored; and, where
The placid keel marks out a path secure,
White traces in the emerald furrow bloom.
The sailor then does to the reverend Lord
Of death make grateful offering of his fear;14
140
Then enters friendly ports.
Jonah the seer
The while is voyaging, in other craft
Embarked, and cleaving ’neath the lowest waves
A wave: his sails the intestines of the fish,
Inspired with breath ferine; himself, shut in
145
By waters, yet untouched; in the sea’s heart,
And yet beyond its reach; ’mid wrecks of fleets
Half-eaten, and men’s carcasses dissolved
In putrid disintegrity: in life
Learning the process of his death; but still -
150
To be a sign hereafter of the Lord (Cf. Mat_12:38-41; Luk_11:29, Luk_11:30) -
A witness was he (in his very self),15
Not of destruction, but of death’s repulse.
FOOTNOTES
1 [Elucidation.]
2 These two lines, if this be their true sense, seem to refer to Lot’s wife. But the grammar and meaning of this introduction are alike obscure.
3 “Metus;” used, as in other places, of godly fear.
4 Lit. “from,” i.e., which, urgedby a heart which is that of a saint, even though on this occasion it failed, the prophet dared.
5 Libratur.
6 “Tarshish,” Eng. ver.; perhaps Tartessus in Spain. For this question, and the “trustiness” of Joppa (now Jaffa) as a port, see Pusey on Jon_1:3.
7 Ejusdem per signa Dei.
8 i.e., the cloud.
9 Genitus (Oehler); geminus. (Migne) = “twin clamour,” which is not inapt.
10 Mandare (Oehler). If this be the true reading, the rendering in the text seems to represent the meaning; for “mandare” with an accusative, in the sense of “to bid the tardy coils tighten the girth’s noose,” seems almost too gross a solecism for even so lax a Latinist as our present writer. Migne, however, reads mundare = to “clear the tardy coils,” i.e., probably from the wash and weed with which the gale was cloying them.
11 Tunc Domini vates ingesta Spiritus infit. Of course it is a gross offence against quantity to make a genitive in “us” short, as the rendering in the text does. But a writer who makes the first syllable in “clamor” and the last syllable of gerunds in do short, would scarcely be likely to hesitate about taking similar liberties with a genitive of the so-called fourth declension. It is possible, it is true, to take “vates” and “Spiritus” as in apposition, and render, “Then the seer-Spirit of the Lord begins to utter words inspired,” or, “Then the seer-Spirit begins to utter the promptings of the Lord.” But these rendering seem to accord less well with the ensuing words.
12 Mundi.
13 i.e., apparently with shells which had gathered about him as he lay in the deep.
14 This seems to be the sense of Oehler’s “Nauta at tum Domino leti venerando timorem Sacrificat grates” - “grates” being in apposition with “timorem.” But Migne reads: “Nautae tum Domino laeti venerando timorem Sacrificant grates:” -
“The sailors then do to the reverend Lord
Gladly make grateful sacrifice of fear:”
and I do not see that Oehler’s reading is much better.
15 These words are not in the original, but are inserted (I confess) to fill up the line, and avoid ending with an incomplete verse. If, however, any one is curious enough to compare the translation, with all its defects, with the Latin, he may be somewhat surprised to find how very little alteration or adaptation is necessary in turning verse into verse.
2. A Strain of Sodom.
(Author Uncertain.)
Already had Almighty God wiped off
By vengeful flood (with waters all conjoined
Which heaven discharged on earth and the sea’s plain1
Outspued) the times of the primeval age:
5
Had pledged Himself, while nether air should bring
The winters in their course, ne’er to decree,
By liquid ruin, retribution’s due;
And had assigned, to curb the rains, the bow
Of many hues, sealing the clouds with band
10
Of purple and of green, Iris its name,
The rain-clouds’ proper baldric. (See Gen_9:21, Gen_9:22, Gen_10:8-17)
But alike
With mankind’s second race impiety
Revives, and a new age of ill once more
Shoots forth; allotted now no more to showers
15
For ruin, but to fires: thus did the land
Of Sodom earn to be by glowing dews
Upburnt, and typically thus portend
The future end. (Cf. 2Pe_3:5-14) There wild voluptuousness
(Modesty’s foe) stood in the room of law;
20
Which prescient guest would shun, and sooner choose
At Scythian or Busirian altar’s foot
’Mid sacred rites to die, and, slaughtered, pour
His blood to Bebryx, or to satiate
Libyan palaestras, or assume new forms
25
By virtue of Circaean cups, than lose
His outraged sex in Sodom.
At heaven’s gate
There knocked for vengeance marriages commixt
With equal incest common ’mong a race
By nature rebels ’gainst themselves;2 and hurts
30
Done to man’s name and person equally.
But God, forewatching all things, at fix’d time
Doth judge the unjust; with patience tarrying
The hour when crime’s ripe age - not any force
Of wrath impetuous - shall have circumscribed
35
The space for waiting.3
Now at length the day
Of vengeance was at hand. Sent from the host
Angelical, two, youths in form, who both
Were ministering spirits,4 carrying
The Lord’s divine commissions, come beneath
40
The walls of Sodom. There was dwelling Lot,
A transplantation from a pious stock;
130 Wise, and a practiser of righteousness,
He was the only one to think on God:
As oft a fruitful tree is wont to lurk,
45
Guest-like, in forests wild. He, sitting then
Before the gate (for the celestials scarce
Had reached the ramparts), though he knew not them
Divine,5 accosts them unsolicited,
Invites, and with ancestral honour greets;
50
And offers them, preparing to abide
Abroad, a hospice. By repeated prayers
He wins them; and then ranges studiously
The sacred pledges6 on his board,7 and quits8
His friends with courteous offices. The night
55
Had brought repose: alternate9 dawn had chased
The night, and Sodom with her shameful law
Makes uproar at the doors. Lot, suppliantwise,
Withstands: “Young men, let not your new-fed lust
Enkindle you to violate this youth!10
60
Whither is passion’s seed inviting you?
To what vain end your lust? For such an end
No creatures wed: not such as haunt the fens;
Not stall-fed cattle; not the gaping brood
Subaqueous; nor they which, modulant
65
On pinions, hang suspended near the clouds;
Nor they which with forth-stretched body creep
Over earth’s face. To conjugal delight
Each kind its kind doth owe: but female still
To all is wife; nor is there one that has
70
A mother save a female one. Yet now,
If youthful vigour holds it right11 to waste
The flower of modesty, I have within
Two daughters of a nuptial age, in whom
Virginity is swelling in its bloom,
75
Already ripe for harvest - a desire
Worthy of men - which let your pleasure reap!
Myself their sire, I yield them; and will pay,
For my guests’ sake, the forfeit of my grief!”
Answered the mob insane: “And who art thou?
80
And what? and whence? to lord it over us,
And to expound us laws? Shall foreigner
Rule Sodom, and hurl threats? Now, then, thyself
For daughters and for guests shalt sate our greed!
One shall suffice for all!” So said, so done:
85
The frantic mob delays not. As, whene’er
A turbid torrent rolls with wintry tide,
And rushes at one speed through countless streams
Of rivers, if, just where it forks, some tree
Meets the swift waves (not long to stand, save while
90
By her root’s force she shall avail to oppose
Her tufty obstacles), when gradually
Her hold upon the undermined soil
Is failing, with her bared stem she hangs,
And, with uncertain heavings to and fro,
95
Defers her certain fall; not otherwise
Lot in the mid-whirl of the dizzy mob
Kept nodding, now almost o’ercome. But power
Divine brings succour: the angelic youths,
Snatching him from the threshold, to his roof
100
Restore him; but upon the spot they mulct
Of sight the mob insane in open day, -
Fit augury of coming penalties!
Then they unlock the just decrees of God:
That penalty condign from heaven will fall
105
On Sodom; that himself had merited
Safety upon the count of righteousness.
“Gird thee, then, up to hasten hence thy flight,
And with thee to lead out what family
Thou hast: already we are bringing on
110
Destruction o’er the city.” Lot with speed
Speaks to his sons-in-law; but their hard heart
Scorned to believe the warning, and at fear
Laughed. At what time the light attempts to climb
The darkness, and heaven’s face wears double hue
115
From night and day, the youthful visitants
Were instant to outlead from Sodoma
The race Chaldaan,12 and the righteous house
Consign to safety: “Ho! come, Lot! arise,
And take thy yokefellow and daughters twain,
120
And hence, beyond the boundaries be gone,
Preventing13 Sodom’s penalties!” And eke
With friendly hands they lead them trembling forth,
And then their final mandates give: “Save, Lot,
Thy life, lest thou perchance should will to turn
125
Thy retroverted gaze behind, or stay
The step once taken: to the mountain speed!”
131 Lot feared to creep the heights with tardy step,
Lest the celestial wrath-fires should o’ertake
And whelm him: therefore he essays to crave
130
Some other ports; a city small, to wit,
Which opposite he had espied. “Hereto,”
He said, “I speed my flight: scarce with its walls
’Tis visible; nor is it far, nor great.”
They, favouring his prayer, safety assured
135
To him and to the city; whence the spot
Is known in speech barbaric by the name
Segor.14 Lot enters Segor while the sun
Is rising,15 the last sun, which glowing bears
To Sodom conflagration; for his rays
140
He had armed all with fire: beneath him spreads
An emulous gloom, which seeks to intercept
The light; and clouds combine to interweave
Their smoky globes with the confused sky:
Down pours a novel shower: the ether seethes
145
With sulphur mixt with blazing flames:16 the air
Crackles with liquid heats exust. From hence
The fable has an echo of the truth
Amid its false, that the sun’s progeny
Would drive his father’s team; but nought availed
150
The giddy boy to curb the haughty steeds
Of fire: so blazed our orb: then lightning reft
The lawless charioteer, and bitter plaint
Transformed his sisters. Let Eridanus
See to it, if one poplar on his banks
155
Whitens, or any bird dons plumage there
Whose note old age makes mellow!17
Here they mourn
O’er miracles of metamorphosis
Of other sort. For, partner of Lot’s flight,
His wife (ah me, for woman! even then18
160
Intolerant of law!) alone turned back
At the unearthly murmurs of the sky,
Her daring eyes, but bootlessly: not doomed
To utter what she saw! and then and there
Changed into brittle salt, herself her tomb
165
She stood, herself an image of herself,
Keeping an incorporeal form: and still
In her unsheltered station ’neath the heaven
Dures she, by rains unmelted, by decay
And winds unwasted; nay, if some range hand
170
Deface her form, forthwith from her own store
Her wounds she doth repair. Still is she said
To live, and, ’mid her corporal change, discharge
With wonted blood her sex’s monthly dues.
Gone are the men of Sodom; gone the glare
175
Of their unhallowed ramparts; all the house
Inhospitable, with its lords, is gone:
The champaign is one pyre; here embers rough
And black, here ash-heaps with hear mould, mark out
The conflagration’s course: evanishèd
180
Is all that old fertility19 which Lot,
Seeing outspread before him,…
. . . .
No ploughman spends his fruitless toil on glebes
Pitchy with soot: or if some acres there,
But half consumed, still strive to emulate
185
Autumn’s glad wealth, pears, peaches, and all fruits
Promise themselves full easely20 to the eye
In fairest bloom, until the plucker’s hand
Is on them: then forthwith the seeming fruit
Crumbles to dust ’neath the bewraying touch,
190
And turns to embers vain.
Thus, therefore (sky
And earth entombed alike), not e’en the sea
Lives there: the quiet of that quiet sea
Is death!21 - a sea which no wave animates
Through its anhealant volumes; which beneath
195
132 Its native Auster sighs not anywhere;
Which cannot from its depths one scaly race,
Or with smooth skin or cork-like fence encased,
Produce, or curled shell in single valve
Or double fold enclosed. Bitumen there
200
(The sooty reek of sea exust) alone,
With its own crop, a spurious harvest yields;
Which ’neath the stagnant surface vivid heat
From seething mass of sulphur and of brine
Maturing tempers, making earth cohere
205
Into a pitch marine.22 At season due
The heated water’s fatty ooze is borne
Up to the surface; and with foamy flakes
Over the level top a tawny skin
Is woven. They whose function is to catch
210
That ware put to, tilting their smooth skin down
With balance of their sides, to teach the film,
Once o’er the gunnel, to float in: for, lo!
Raising itself spontaneous, it will swim
Up to the edge of the unmoving craft;
215
And will, when pressed,23 for guerdon large, ensure
Immunity from the defiling touch
Of weft which female monthly efflux clothes.
Behold another portent notable,
Fruit of that sea’s disaster: all things cast
220
Therein do swim: gone is its native power
For sinking bodies: if, in fine, you launch
A torch’s lightsome24 hull (where spirit serves
For fire) therein, the apex of the flame
Will act as sail; put out the flame, and ’neath
225
The waters will the light’s wreckt ruin go!
Such Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s penalties,
For ages sealed as signs before the eyes
Of unjust nations, whose obdurate hearts
God’s fear have quite forsaken;25 will them teach
230
To reverence heaven-sanctioned rights,26 and lift
Their gaze unto one only Lord of all.
FOOTNOTES
1 Maris aequor.
2 The expression, “sinners against their own souls,” in Num_16:38 - where, however, the LXX. have a very different version - may be compared with this; as likewise Pro_8:36.
3 Whether the above be the sense of this most obscure triplet I will not presume to determine. It is at least (I hope) intelligible sense. But that the reader may judge for himself whether he can offer any better, I subjoin the lines, which form a sentence alone, and therefore can be judged of without their context: -
“Tempore sed certo Deus omnia prospectulatus,
Judicat injustos, patiens ubi criminis aetas
Cessandi spatium vis nulla coëgerit irae.”
4 Cf. Heb_1:14. It may be as well here to inform the reader once for all that prosody as well as syntax is repeatedly set at defiance in these metrical fragments; and hence, of course, arise some of the chief difficulties in dealing with them.
5 “Divinos;” i.e., apparently “superhuman,” as everything heavenly is.
6 Of hospitality - bread and salt, etc.
7 “Mensa;” but perhaps “mensae” may be suggested - the sacred pledges of the board.
8 “Dispungit,” which is the only verb in the sentence, and refers both to pia pignora and to amicos. I use “quit” in the sense in which we speak of “quitting a debtor,” i.e., giving him his full due; but the two lines are very hard, and present (as in the case of those before quoted) a jumble of words without grammar: “pia pignora mensa Officiisque probis studio dispungit amicos;” which may be somewhat more literally rendered than in our text, thus: “he zealously discharges” (i.e., fulfills) “his sacred pledges” (i.e., the promised hospitality which he had offered them) “with (a generous) board, and discharges” (i.e., fulfils his obligations to) “his friends with honourable courtesies.”
9 Altera = alterna. But the statement differs from Gen_19:4.
10 “Istam juventam,” i.e., the two “juvenes” (ver. 31) within.
11 “Fas” = ὄσιον, morally right; distinct from “jus” or “licitum.”
12 i.e., Lot’s race or family, which had come from “Ur of the Chaldees.” See Gen_11:26, Gen_11:27, Gen_11:28.
13 I use “preventing” in its now unusual sense of “anticipating the arrival of.”
14 Σηγώρ in the L X X., “Zoar” in Eng. ver.
15 “Simul exoritur sol.” But both the LXX. and the Eng. ver. say the sun was risen when Lot entered the city.
16 So Oehler and Migne. But perhaps we may alter the pointing slightly, and read: -
“Down pours a novel shower, sulphur mixt
With blazing flames: the ether seethes: the air
Crackles with liquid heats exust.”
17 The story of Phaëton and his fate is told in Ov., Met., ii. 1-399, which may be compared with the present piece. His two sisters were transformed into white poplars, according to some; alders, according to others. See Virg., Aen., x. 190 sqq., Ec., vi. 62 sqq. His half-brother (Cycnus or Cygnus) was turned into a swan: and the scene of these transformations is laid by Ovid on the banks of the Eridanus (the Po). But the fable is variously told; and it has been suggested that the groundwork of it is to be found rather in the still-standing of the sun recorded in Joshua.
18 i.e., as she had been before in the case of Eve. See Gen_3:1 sqq.
19 I have hazarded the bold conjecture - which I see others (Pamelius at all events) had hazarded before me - that “feritas” is used by our author as = “fertilitas.” The word, of course, is very incorrectly formed etymologically; but etymology is not our author’s forte apparently. It will also be seen that there is seemingly a gap at this point, or else some enormous mistake, in the mss. An attempt has been made (see Migne) to correct it, but not a very satisfactory one. For the common reading, which gives two lines,
“Occidit illa prior feritas, quam prospiciens Loth
Nullus arat frustra piceas fuligine glebas,”
which are evidently entirely unconnected with one another, it is proposed to read,
“Occidit illa prior feritas, quam prospiciens Loth,
Deseruisse pii fertur commercia fratris.
Nullus arat,” etc.
This use of “fratris” in a wide sense may be justified from Gen_13:8 (to which passage, with its immediate context, there seems to be a reference, whether we adopt the proposed correction or no), and similar passages in Holy Writ. But the transition is still abrupt to the “nullus arat,” etc.; and I prefer to leave the passage as it is, without attempting to supply the hiatus.
20 This use of “easely” as a dissyllable is justifiable from Spenser.
21 This seems to be the sense, but the Latin is somewhat strange: “mors est maris illa quieti,” i.e., illa (quies) maris quieti mors est. The opening lines of “Jonah” should be compared with this passage and its context.
22 Inque picem dat terrae haerere marinam.
23 “Pressum” (Oehler); “pretium” (Migne): “it will yield a prize, namely, that,” etc.
24 Luciferam.
25 Oehler’s pointing is disregarded.
26 “De caelo jura tueri”; possibly “to look for laws from heaven.”
3. Genesis.
(Author Uncertain.)
In the beginning did the Lord create
The heaven and earth:1 for formless was the land,2
And hidden by the wave, and God immense3
O’er the vast watery plains was hovering,
5
While chaos and black darkness shrouded all:
Which darkness, when God bade be from the pole4
Disjoined, He speaks, “Let there be light;” and all
In the clearworld5 was bright. Then, when the Lord
The first day’s work had finished, He termed
10
Heaven’s axis white with nascent clouds: the deep
Immense receives its wandering6 shores, and draws
The rivers manifold with mighty trains.
The third dun light unveiled earth’s7 face, and soon
(Its name assigned8) the dry land’s story ’gins:
15
Together on the windy champaigns rise
The flowery seeds, and simultaneously
Fruit-bearing boughs put forth procurvant arms.
The fourth day, with9 the sun’s lamp generates
The moon, and moulds the stars with tremulous light
20
Radiant: these elements it10 gave as signs
To th’ underlying world,11 to teach the times
Which, through their rise and setting, were to change.
Then, on the fifth, the liquid12 streams receive
Their fish, and birds poise in the lower air
25
Their pinions many-hued. The sixth, again,
133 Supples the ice-cold snakes into their coils,
And over the whole fields diffuses herds
Of quadrupeds and mandate gave that all
Should grow with multiplying seed, and roam
30
And feed in earth’s immensity.
All these
When power divine by mere command arranged,
Observing that things mundane still would lack
A ruler, thus It13 speaks: “With utmost care,
Assimilated to our own aspèct,14
35
Make We a man to reign in the whole orb.”
And him, although He with a single word15
Could have compounded, yet Himself did deign
To shape him with His sacred own right hand,
Inspiring his dull breast from breast divine.
40
Whom when He saw formed in a likeness such
As is His own, He measures how he broods
Alone on gnawing cares. Straightway his eyes
With sleep irriguous He doth perfuse;
That from his left rib woman softlier
45
May formèd be, and that by mixture twin
His substance may add firmness to her limbs.
To her the name of “Life” - which is called “Eve”16 -
Is given: wherefore sons, as custom is,
Their parents leave, and, with a settled home,
50
Cleave to their wives.
The seventh came, when God
At His works’ end did rest, decreeing it
Sacred unto the coming ages’ joys.
Straightway - the crowds of living things deployed
Before him - Adam’s cunning skill (the gift
55
Of the good Lord) gives severally to all
The name which still is permanent. Himself,
And, joined with him, his Eve, God deigns address
“Grow, for the times to come, with manifold
Increase, that with your seed the pole and earth17
60
Be filled; and, as Mine heirs, the varied fruits
Pluck ye, which groves and champaigns render you,
From their rich turf.” Thus after He discoursed,
In gladsome court18 a paradise is strewn,
And looks towàrds the rays of th’ early sun.19
65
These joys among, a tree with deadly fruits,
Breeding, conjoined, the taste of life and death,
Arises. In the midst of the demesne20
Flows with pure tide a stream, which irrigates
Fair offsprings from its liquid waves, and cuts
70
Quadrified paths from out its bubbling fount.
Here wealthy Phison, with auriferous waves,
Swells, and with hoarse tide wears21 conspicuous gems,
This prasinus,22 that glowing carbuncle,23
By name; and laves, transparent in its shoals,
75
The margin of the land of Havilath.
Next Gihon, gliding by the Aethiops,
Enriches them. The Tigris is the third,
Adjoined to fair Euphrates, furrowing
Disjunctively with rapid flood the land
80
Of Asshur. Adam, with his faithful wife,
Placed here as guard and workman, is informed
By such the Thunderer’s24 speech: “Tremble ye not
To pluck together the permitted fruits
Which, with its leafy bough, the unshorn grove
85
Hath furnished; anxious only lest perchance
Ye cull the hurtful apple,25 which is green
With a twin juice for functions several.”
And, no less blind meantime than Night herself,
Deep night ’gan hold them, nor had e’en a robe
90
Covered their new-formed limbs.
Amid these haunts,
And on mild berries reared, a foamy snake,
Surpassing living things in sense astute,
Was creeping silently with chilly coils.
He, brooding over envious lies instinct
95
With gnawing sense, tempts the soft heart beneath
The woman’s breast: “Tell me, why shouldst thou dread
The apple’s26 happy seeds? Why, hath not God
All knows fruits hallowed?27 Whence if thou be prompt
To cull the honeyed fruits, the golden world28
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Will on its starry pole return.”29 But she
Refuses, and the boughs forbidden fears
To touch. But yet her breast ’gins be o’ercome
134 With sense infirm. Straightway, as she at length
With snowy tooth the dainty morsels bit,
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Stained with no cloud the sky serene up-lit!
Then taste, instilling lure in honeyed jaws,
To her yet uninitiated lord
Constrained her to present the gift; which he
No sooner took, than - night effaced! - their eyes
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Shone out serene in the resplendent world.30
When, then, they each their body bare espied,
And when their shameful parts they see, with leaves
Of fig they shadow them.
By chance, beneath
The sun’s now setting light, they recognise
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The sound of the Lord’s voice, and, trembling, haste
To bypaths. Then the Lord of heaven accosts
The mournful Adam: “Say, where now thou art.”
Who suppliant thus answers: “Thine address,
O Lord, O Mighty One, I tremble at,
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Beneath my fearful heart; and, being bare,
I faint with chilly dread.” Then said the Lord:
“Who hath the hurtful fruits, then, given you?”
“This woman, while she tells me how her eyes
With brilliant day promptly perfusèd were,
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And on her dawned the liquid sky serene,
And heaven’s sun and stars, o’ergave them me!”
Forthwith God’s anger frights perturbed Eve,
While the Most High inquires the authorship
Of the forbidden act. Hereon she opes
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Her tale: “The speaking serpent’s suasive words
I harboured, while the guile and bland request
Misled me: for, with venoms viperous
His words inweaving, stories told he me
Of those delights which should all fruits excel.”
135
Straightway the Omnipotent the dragon’s deeds
Condemns, and bids him be to all a sight
Unsightly, monstrous; bids him presently
With grovelling beast to crawl; and then to bite
And chew the soil; while war should to all time
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’Twixt human senses and his tottering self
Be waged, that he might creep, crestfallen, prone,
Behind the legs of men,31 - that while he glides
Close on their heels they may down-trample him.
The woman, sadly caught by guileful words,
145
Is bidden yield her fruit with struggle hard,
And bear her husband’s yoke with patient zeal.32
“But thou, to whom the sentence33 of thy wife
(Who, vanquished, to the dragon pitiless
Yielded) seemed true, shalt through long times deplore
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Thy labour sad; for thou shalt see, instead
Of wheaten harvest’s seed, the thistle rise,
And the thorn plenteously with pointed spines:
So that, with weary heart and mournful breast,
Full many sighs shall furnish anxious food;34
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Till, in the setting hour of coming death,
To level earth, whence thou thy body draw’st,
Thou be restored.” This done, the Lord bestows
Upon the trembling pair a tedious life;
And from the sacred gardens far removes
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Them downcast, and locates them opposite,
And from the threshold bars them by mid fire,
Wherein from out the swift heat is evolved
A cherubim,35 while fierce the hot point glows,
And rolls enfolding flames. And lest their limbs
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With sluggish cold should be benumbed, the Lord
Hides flayed from cattle’s flesh together sews,
With vestures warm their bare limbs covering.
When, therefore, Adam - now believing - felt
(By wedlock taught) his manhood, he confers
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On his loved wife the mother’s name; and, made
Successively by scions twain a sire,
Gives names to stocks36 diverse: Caïn the first
Hath for his name, to whom is Abel joined.
The latter’s care tended the harmless sheep;
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The other turned the earth with curvèd plough.
135 These, when in course of time37 they brought their gifts
To Him who thunders, offered - as their sense
Prompted them - fruits unlike. The elder one
Offered the first-fruits38 of the fertile glebes:
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The other pays his vows with gentle lamb,
Bearing in hand the entrails pure, and fat
Snow-white; and to the Lord, who pious vows
Beholds, is instantly accèptable.
Wherefore with anger cold did Caïn glow;39
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With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins:
“Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern
Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass thine age
Pure from contracted guilt? Cease to essay
With gnawing sense thy brother’s ruin, who,
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Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield.”
Not e’en thus softened, he unto the fields
Conducts his brother; whom when overta’en
In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms
Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out.
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Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven,
Straitly demands “where Abel is on earth?”
He says “he will not as his brother’s guard
Be set.” Then God outspeaks to him again:
“Doth not the sound of his blood’s voice, sent up
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To Me, ascend unto heaven’s lofty pole?
Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom
Shall wait thee. Earth, which with thy kinsman’s blood
Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand
Refuse to render back the cursèd seeds
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Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs,
Produce her fruit: that, torpid, thou shalt dash
Thy limbs against each other with much fear.”
FOOTNOTES
1 Terram.
2 Tellus.
3 Immensus. See note 24 on the word in the fragment “Concerning the Cursing of the Heathen’s Gods.”
4 Cardine.
5 Mundo.
6 “Errantia;” so called, probably, either because they appear to move as ships pass them, or because they may be said to “wander by reason of the constant change which they undergo from the action of the sea, and because of the shifting nature of their sands.”
7 Terrarum.
8 “God called the dry land Earth:” Gen_1:10.
9 i.e., “together with;” it begets both sun and moon.
10 i.e., “the fourth day.”
11 Mundo.
12 Or, “lucid” - liquentia.
13 i.e., “Power Divine.”
14 So Milton and Shakespeare.
15 As (see above, l. 31) He had all other things.
16 See Gen_3:20, with the LXX., and the marg. in the Eng. ver.
17 Terrae.
18 The “gladsome court” - “laeta aula” - seems to mean Eden, in which the garden is said to have been planted. See Gen_2:8.