Fairest of things, and singly for herself
Hath girdled with a wall her seven heights.
Ere, too, the sway of the Dictaan king,
And ere that banquetted a godless race
On butchered steers, this life upon the earth
The golden Saturn led. Nor had they, too,
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs,
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers,
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold."
Milton, Par. Reg. b. iv. Line 743. So Milton describes mankind after the Flood, P. L. b. xii. :
"With some regard to what is just and right
Shall lead their lives, and multiply apace,
Labouring the soil, and reaping plenteous crop,
Corn, wine, and oil; and, from the herd or flock,
Oft sacrificing bullock, lamb, or kid,
With large wine-offerings pour'd, and sacred feast,
Shall spend their days in joy unblamed."
And Thomson, of the reign of Peace; Britannia, 113, &c.:
"Pure is thy reign, when, unaccursed by blood,
Nought save the sweetness of indulgent showers
Trickling distils into the vernant glebe,
Instead of mangled carcases, sad-seen,
When the blithe sheaves lie scattered o'er the field;
When only shares, the crooked knife,
And hooks imprint the vegetable wound;
When the land blushes with the rose alone,
The falling fruitage, and the bleeding vine."
Yet heard the trumpets blasted, nor as yet,
Placed on the hardy stithies, falcions clang.
But we a surface [of] unmeasured [bound]
Have in our course accomplished, and 'tis now
Time to unyoke our coursers' smoking necks.
Line 747. Spenser employs the same metaphor to denote the necessity for a close ; F. Q. iii. 12, 47:
"But now my teme begins to faint and fayle,
All woxen weary of their iournall toyle;
Therefore I will their sweatie yokes assoyle,
At this same furrowes end, till a new day."
THEE too, great Pales, and thee will we chant,
Fame-worthy shepherd from Amphrysus; you,
Woods and floods of Lyceus. Other [themes],
Which might in song have captived idle minds,
All now are trite. Who or Eurystheus stern,
Or altars of unpraised Busiris, knoweth not?
By whom has the youth Hylas not been sung,
And the Latonian Delos, and Hippodame,
And Pelops, with an ivory shoulder badged,
Keen on his steeds? A path must be essayed,
Whereby myself too I can lift from earth,
And flit triumphant through the mouths of men.
I first unto my native land with me,
(Let only life remain,) on my return
From th' Aon peak will lead the Muses down;
I first, O Mantua, will bring to thee
The palms of Edom, and on th' emerald plain
A fane of marble nigh the water rear,
Line 15. Gray thus finely alludes to the decay of poetry in Greece, and its translation to Rome; Progress of Poesy:
"Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath'd around;
Ev'ry shade and hallow'd fountain
Murmur'd deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains."
Where with slow windings mighty Mincius strays,
And fringes with the tender reed his banks.
For me shall Cæsar in the centre stand,
And keep the fane. For him a conqueror I,
And in Tyre's purple the observed of all,
A hundred chariots with four steeds will drive
Along the floods. All Grecia shall for me,
The Alpheus leaving and Molorchus' groves,
In races and the cestus raw contend.
I will myself, bedight upon my head
With leafage of shorn olive, bring my gifts.
E'en now the grave processions to the shrines
It joys to lead, and view the butchered steers;
Or how the scene with shifted fronts withdraws,
And how the intertissued Britons raise
The purple curtains. On the folding-doors
The fight of the Gangarida will I
Mould out of gold and massive ivory,
And conquering Quirinus' arms; and here,
Waving with war, and flushing huge, the Nile,
And pillars towering up with naval bronze.
I Asia's humbled cities will subjoin,
And foiled Niphates, and the Parthian,
Trusting in flight and rear-directed shafts;
Twain trophies, too, from widely-severed foes
By prowess reft, and, triumphed over twice,
Line 19. So Milton, in Lycidas:
"O fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds."
23. Ophelia, mourning over Hamlet's insanity, speaks of him as
"The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers."
Nations on either shore. And there shall stand
Marbles of Paros, images that breathe,
The offspring of Assarac, and the names
Of the Jove-issued strain, both father Tros,
And Troja's Cynthian founder. Envy curst
Shall dread the Furies, and the rigorous tide
Of Cocyt, and Ixion's writhed snakes
And monstrous wheel, and the unconquerable stone.
Meanwhile the Dryads' woods and glades untouched
Let us pursue, Mæcenas, thy no easy hests.
Without thee nothing high my soul doth found.
Lo! come, burst slow delays; with loud halloo
Calls us Citharon, and Taygetus' hounds,
And Epidaurus, breaker-in of steeds:
The cry, too, doubled by the lawns' approof,
Comes booming back. Natheless ere long shall I
Be girt to celebrate the burning fights
Of Cæsar, and his name in fame to waft
Throughout as many years as Cæsar stands
In distance from Tithonus' earliest source.
If either any, marvelling at the meeds
Of the Olympic palm, doth horses feed,
Or any, sturdy bullocks for the plough ;
"Some carve the trunks, and breathing shapes bestow,
Giving the trees more life than when they grow."
"The fairest, softest, sweetest frame beneath,
Now made to seem, and more than seem, to breathe."
"And breathing forms from the rude marble start.”
"Heroes in animated marble frown,
And legislators seem to think in stone."
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