Part 1 (1/2)
The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems.
by (AKA: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch).
TO MAURICE HEWLETT
HEWLETT! as s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p Let us the ensign dip.
There may be who despise For dross our merchandise, Our balladries, our bales Of woven tales; Yet, Hewlett, the glad gales Favonian! And what spray Our dolphins toss'd in play, Full in old Triton's beard, on Iris' s.h.i.+mmering veils!
Scant tho' the freight of gold Commercial in our hold, Paestum, Erida.n.u.s Perchance have barter'd us 'Bove chrematistic care
THE VIGIL OF VENUS
The _Pervigilium Veneris_--of unknown authors.h.i.+p, but clearly belonging to the late literature of the Roman Empire--has survived in two MSS., both preserved at Paris in the _Bibliotheque Nationale_.
Of these two MSS. the better written may be a.s.signed (at earliest) to the close of the seventh century; the other (again at earliest) to the close of the ninth. Both are corrupt; the work of two illiterate copyists who--strange to say--were both smatterers enough to betray their little knowledge by converting _Pervigilium_ into _Per Virgilium_ (_scilicet_, ”by Virgil”): thus helping us to follow the process of thought by which the Middle Ages turned Virgil into a wizard. Here and there the texts become quite silly, separately or in consent; and just where they agree in the most surprising way--_i.e._ in the arrangement of the lines--the conjectural emendator is invited to do his worst by a note at the head of the older Codex, ”Sunt vero versus xxii”--”There are rightly twenty-two lines.”
This has started much ingenious guess-work. But no really convincing rearrangement has been achieved as yet; and I have been content to take the text pretty well as it stands, with a few corrections upon which most scholars agree. With a poem of ”paratactic structure” the best of us may easily go astray by transposing lines, or blocks of lines, to correspond with _our_ sequence of thought; and I shall be content if, following the only texts to which appeal can be made,[1] my translation be generally intelligible.
It runs pretty closely, line for line, with the original; because one may love and emulate cla.s.sical terseness even while despairing to rival it. But it does not attempt to be literal; for even were it worth doing, I doubt if it be possible for anyone in our day to hit precisely the note intended by an author or heard by a reader in the eighth century.
Men change subtly as nations succeed to nations, religions to religions, philosophies to philosophies; and it is a property of immortal poetry to s.h.i.+ft its appeal. It does not live by continuing to mean the some thing.
It grows as we grow. We smile, for instance, when some interlocutor in a dialogue of Plato takes a line from the _Iliad_ and applies it seriously _au pied de la lettre_. We can hardly conceive what the great line conveyed to him; but it may mean something equally serious to us, though in a different way.
[1] Facsimiles of the two Codices can be studied in a careful edition of the _Pervigilum_ by Mr Cecil Clementi, published by Mr B.H. Blackwell of Oxford, 1911.
PERVIGILIUM VENERIS
_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet_.
Ver novum, ver jam canorurn, vere natus...o...b..s est; Vere concordant amores, vere nubunt alites, Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis imbribus.
Cras amorum copulatrix inter umbras arborum 5 Inplicat casas virentes de flagello myrteo: Cras Dione jura dicit fulta sublimi throno.
_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet_.
_To-morrow--What news of to-morrow?
Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew_!
It is Spring, it is chorussing Spring; 'tis the birthday of Earth, and for you!
It is Spring; and the Loves and the birds wing together and woo to accord Where the bough to the rain has unbraided her locks as a bride to her lord.
For she walks--she our Lady, our Mistress of Wedlock--the woodlands atween, 5 And the bride-bed she weaves them, with myrtle enlacing, with curtains of green.
Look aloft! list the law of Dione, sublime and enthroned in the blue: _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew_!
Tunc liquore de superno spumeo et ponti globo, Caerulas inter catervas, inter et bipedes equos, 10 Fecit undantem Dionen de maritis imbribus.
_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quiqiie amavit cras amet_.
Ipsa gemmis purpurantem pingit annum floribus, Ipsa surgentes papillas de Favoni spiritu Urget in toros tepentes; ipsa roris lucidi 15 Noctis aura quem relinquit, spargit umentes aquas.
Et micant lacrimae trementes de caduco pondere:
Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep, 'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dolphins as sheep. 10 Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow'd and besprent of its dew!
_Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew_!
She, she, with her gem-dripping finger enamels the wreath of the year; She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile and swelling winds--whispers anear, Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's--”So secret the bed! And thou shy?” 15 She, she, thro' the hush'd humid Midsummer night draws the dew from on high; Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dew with its weight on the bough,