"As certain also of your own poets have said"—
CLEON the poet, (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea,
And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!
They give thy letter to me, even now: I read and seem as if I heard thee speak. The master of thy galley still unlades Gift after gift; they block my court at last And pile themselves along its portico Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee: And one white she-slave from the group dispersed Of black and white slaves, (like the chequer-work Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift, Now covered with this settle-down of doves) One lyric woman, in her crocus vest
Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands Commends to me the strainer and the cup Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.
Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence! For so shall men remark, in such an act Of love for him whose song gives life its joy, Thy recognition of the use of life;
Nor call thy spirit barely adequate
To help on life in straight ways, broad enough For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. Thou, in the daily building of thy tower, Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil, Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth, Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect, Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake- Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope Of some eventual rest a-top of it,
Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed, Thou first of men mightst look out to the East: The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun. For this, I promise on thy festival
To pour libation, looking o'er the sea, Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak Thy great words, and describe thy royal face- Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most, Within the eventual element of calm,
Thy letter's first requirement meets me here. It is as thou hast heard: in one short life I, Cleon, have effected all those things Thou wonderingly dost enumerate. That epos on thy hundred plates of gold Is mine,—and also mine the little chant, So sure to rise from every fishing-bark When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net. The image of the sun-god on the phare, Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine; The Pocile, o'er-storied its whole length, As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too. I know the true proportions of a man And woman also, not observed before; And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto,
And putting us to ignorance again.
For music,-why, I have combined the moods, Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine; Thus much the people know and recognise, Throughout our seventeen islands. Marvel not. We of these latter days, with greater mind Than our forerunners, since more composite, Look not so great, beside their simple way, To a judge who only sees one way at once, One mind-point and no other at a time,- Compares the small part of a man of us With some whole man of the heroic age, Great in his way-not ours, nor meant for ours. And ours is greater, had we skill to know: For, what we call this life of men on earth, This sequence of the soul's achievements here, Being, as I find much reason to conceive, Intended to be viewed eventually
As a great whole, not analysed to parts, But each part having reference to all,— How shall a certain part, pronounced complete, Endure effacement by another part?
Was the thing done?-then, what's to do again? See, in the chequered pavement opposite, Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb, And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid- He did not overlay them, superimpose The new upon the old and blot it out, But laid them on at level in his work, Making at last a picture; there it lies. So first the perfect separate forms were made, The portions of mankind; and after, so, Occurred the combination of the same. For where had been a progress, otherwise? Mankind, made up of all the single men,- In such a synthesis the labour ends.
Now mark me! those divine men of old time
Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point The outside verge that rounds our faculty;
And where they reached, who can do more than reach?
It takes but little water just to touch
At some one point the inside of a sphere,
And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest
In due succession: but the finer air
Which not so palpably nor obviously, Though no less universally, can touch
The whole circumference of that emptied sphere, Fills it more fully than the water did; Holds thrice the weight of water in itself
Resolved into a subtler element.
And yet the vulgar call the sphere first full Up to the visible height-and after, void; Not knowing air's more hidden properties. And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus To vindicate his purpose in our life: Why stay we on the earth unless to grow? Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out, That he or other god descended here And, once for all, showed simultaneously What, in its nature, never can be shown Piecemeal or in succession:-showed, I say, The worth both absolute and relative Of all his children from the birth of time, His instruments for all appointed work. I now go on to image,-might we hear
The judgment which should give the due to each, Show where the labour lay and where the ease, And prove Zeus' self, the latent everywhere! This is a dream:-but no dream, let us hope, That years and days, the summers and the springs, Follow each other with unwaning powers. The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far, Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock; The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe;
The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet;
The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers; That young and tender crescent moon, thy slave, Sleeping upon her robe as if on clouds, Refines upon the women of my youth. What, and the soul alone deteriorates? I have not chanted verse like Homer, no- Nor swept string like Terpander, no-nor carved And painted men like Phidias and his friend: I am not great as they are, point by point. But I have entered into sympathy
With these four, running these into one soul, Who, separate, ignored each others' arts. Say, is it nothing that I know them all? The wild flower was the larger; I have dashed Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, And show a better flower if not so large: I stand myself. Refer this to the gods Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext That such a gift by chance lay in my hand, Discourse of lightly or depreciate?
It might have fallen to another's hand: what then? I pass too surely: let at least truth stay!
And next, of what thou followest on to ask. This being with me as I declare, O king, My works, in all these varicoloured kinds, So done by me, accepted so by men- Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men's hearts) I must not be accounted to attain
The very crown and proper end of life? Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up, I face death with success in my right hand: Whether I fear death less than dost thyself
« 上一頁繼續 » |