Discourse upon the Essence and Form of Poetry
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine, Pythagoras, and Redfield, Nayán Louise
S’obstinait à poursuive un Héros magnanime?
Tant de haine entre-t-elle au cœur des Immortels!
Arms and the man I sing, who first,
By fate of Ilium realm amerced,
To fair Italia onward bore,
And landed on Lavinium’s shore:—
Long tossing earth and ocean o’er,
By violence of heaven, to sate
Fell Juno’s unforgetting hate:
Much laboured too in battle-field,
Striving his city’s walls to build,
And give his Gods a home:
Thence come the hardy Latin brood,
The ancient sires of Alba’s blood,
And lofty-rampired Rome.
Say, Muse, for godhead how disdained,
Or wherefore worth, Heaven’s queen constrained
That soul of piety so long
To turn the wheel, to cope with wrong.
Can heavenly natures nourish hate
So fierce, so blindly passionate?
Conington.
Arma virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit
Litora, multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
Vi superûm, sævæ memorem Junonis ob iram,
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio: genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres atque altæ mœnia Romæ.
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine læso,
Quidve dolens, regina deûm tot volvere casus
Insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores
Impulerit. Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ?
It can be observed that Vergil, although he places himself foremost and although he says, I sing, begins nevertheless in a manner much less animated, much less sure than the Greek poet, who, transported beyond himself, seems to impose upon his Muse the subject of his songs, interrogates her, and then inspired by her, responds. The Latin poet finishes, like his model, with a sentence; but it is easy to feel that this apostrophe,
Can heavenly natures nourish hate
So fierce, so blindly passionate?
although very beautiful, contains less depth, less feeling, and holds less intimately to the subject than this sublime reflection:
... and the men were perishing!
Someone has said that Vergil had imitated in his exposition the commencement of the Odyssey of Homer; this is a mistake. One finds always in the exposition of the Odyssey the real character of a first inspiration blended with the invocation, although more calm and less alluring than in the Iliad. Here is the translation:
Du plus sage Héros, Muse, dis les traverses