CLAUDIUS CLAUDIANUS

THE BEREAVEMENT OF CERES

From the Rape of Proserpine

LL in terror, in hope no more, as the mother of nestlings

A Fears for her tender young, in the rowan sapling deserted,

Fears while she seeks their food, and wearies again to be with them;

Trembling lest the wind may have smitten the nest from the bough, or

Cruel man have slain, or the fang of the ravening serpent,—
So she came again to her lonesome dwelling unguarded.
Wide on their idle hinges yawned the doors, and, beholding
All the silent space of the empty hall, in her anguish,

Rent she her robes, and tore the bearded wheat from her tresses.
Never a tear nor a word had she, for the breath of her nostrils
Barely went and came, and she shivered in every member.
Then upon quaking feet, and closing the portal behind her,
Passed within, and on through the lorn and sorrowful chambers,
Found the loom with its trailing web and intricate skein, and
Read with a failing heart the woven story unfinished.
Vain that gracious labor now! and the insolent spider
Busily spinning among the threads his texture unholy!
Never a tear nor a moan; but she fell with kisses unnumbered
Upon the woven stuff, and the sob of her gathering passion
Choked with the useless thread: then pressed to her bosom
maternal,

As it had been the maid herself, the delicate shuttle

Smooth from her hand, and the fallen wool, and the virginal trifles Of her delight; surveyed the seats where she loved to linger, Leaned o'er the spotless couch, and touched the pillow forsaken. Translation of H. W. P.

INVOCATION TO VICTORY

From the Consulate of Stilicho

AT shouts of our nobles, in jubilant chorus
Went up to the hero, while over his head,

WHAT

Inviolate Victory, bodied before us

Wide, wide in the ether, her pinions outspread!

O guardian Goddess of Rome in her splendor!

O radiant Palm-bearer in trophies arrayed,
Who only the spirit undaunted canst render,

XXI-774

Who healest the wounds that our foemen had made!

I know not thy rank in the heavenly legion,—
If thou shinest a star in the Dictæan crown,
Or art girt by the fires of the Leonine region,

Or bearest Ione's sceptre, or winnest renown
From the shield of Minerva, or soothest in slumber
The War-god, aweary when battles are o'er;
But come, all the prayers of thy chosen to number,
Oh, welcome to Latium! Leave us no more!

Translation of H. W. P.

R

CLAUDIUS RUTILIUS NUMATIANUS

PROLOGUE TO THE ITINERARIUM'

EADER, marvelest thou at one who early departing,

Missed the unspeakable boon granted the children of Rome?
Know there is time no more to the dwellers in Rome the
beloved,

Early and late no more, under her infinite charm!
Happy beyond compute the sons of mortals appointed
Unto that marvelous prize, birth on the consecrate soil!
Who to the rich estate of the heirs of Roman patricians
Add thy illustrious fame-City without a peer!
Happiest these, but following close in the order of blessing,
They who have come from afar, seeking a Latian home.
Wide to their pilgrim feet the Senate opens its portal,—

"Come all ye who are fit! Come and be aliens no more!"
So they sit with the mighty and share in the honors of Empire.
Share in their worship too, kneeling where all do adore,
Thrill with the State's great life, as aye the State and its æther,
Unto the uttermost Pole, thrills with the being of Jove.

Translation of H. W. P.

ANICIUS SEVERINUS BOËTHIUS
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD
From the Consolation of Philosophy'

FRAMER of the jeweled sphere,

Who, firm on thy eternal throne,
Dost urge the swift-revolving year

The stars compel thy laws to own;-
The stars that hide their lesser light

When Luna with her horns full-grown

Reflects her brother's glories bright,

Paling-she too - when he draws nigh,
In his great fires extinguished quite;
As Hesper up the evening sky
Leads the cold planets, but to fling
Their wonted leash aside, and fly
At Phoebus's bright awakening;-

Thou who dost veil in vapors chill
The season of the leaf-dropping

With its brief days, rekindling still The fires of summer, making fleet

The lessening nights;-all do thy will;

The year obeys thee on thy seat;

The leaves that Boreas bore amain Return once more with Zephyr sweet; Arcturus tills the unsown grain, And Sirius burns the waving gold;

The task thy ancient laws ordain

All do, the allotted station hold.

Man's work alone dost thou despise,
Nor deign his weakness to enfold

In changeless law. Else wherefore flies
Sleek Fortune's wheel so madly round?
The good man bears the penalties
Of yon bold sinner, who is found

Enthroned, exultant, apt to grind
His blameless victim to the ground!
Virtue is fain in caverns blind

Her light to hide; and just men know
The scourgings meet for baser kind.
Mendacious Fraud reserves no blow

For men like these, nor Perjury;
But when they will their might to show,
Then conquer they, with ease and glee,
The kings unnumbered tribes obey.

O Judge unknown, we cry to thee!

To our sad planet, turn, we pray!

Are we we men- the meanest side

Of all thy great creation? Nay!

Though but the drift of Fortune's tide Compel her wasteful floods to pause!

And, ruling heaven, rule beside

O'er quiet lands, by steadfast laws.

Translation of L. P. D.

THE HYMN OF PHILOSOPHY

From the Consolation of Philosophy'

NDYING Soul of this material ball,

UN

Heaven-and-Earth-Maker!

Thou who first didst call

Time into being, and by thy behest
Movest all things, thyself alone at rest,
No outward power impelled thee thus to mold
In shape the fluid atoms manifold,
Only the immortal image, born within

Of perfect beauty! Wherefore thou hast been
Thine own fair model, and the things of sense
The image bear of thy magnificence!
Parts perfect in themselves, by Thy control,
Are newly wrought into a perfect whole;
The yoked elements obey thy hand:

Frost works with fire, water with barren sand,
So the dense continents are fast maintained,
And heaven's ethereal fire to earth restrained.
Thou dost the life of threefold nature tame,
To serve the parts of one harmonious frame,-
That soul of things constrained eternally
To trace thy image on the starry sky,
The greater and the lesser deeps to round,
And on thyself return. Thou too hast found
For us, thy lesser creatures of a day,
Wherewith thou sowest earth,- forms of a clay
So kindly-fragile naught can stay our flight
Backward, unto the source of all our light!
Grant, Father, yet, the undethroned mind!
A way unto the fount of truth to find,
And, sought so long, the Vision of thy Face!
Lighten our flesh! Terrestrial vapors chase,
And shine in all thy splendor! For thou art
The final Rest of every faithful heart,
The First, the Last! of the expatriate soul
Lord, Leader, Pathway, and Eternal Goal!

Translation of H. W. P.

PIERRE RONSARD

(1524-1585)

BY KATHARINE HILLARD

HERE is no more picturesque moment in the whole history of France than that at which Pierre Ronsard was born. The first quarter of the sixteenth century had just struck, and Europe was waking to the new day of the Renaissance. Luther had burned the Pope's bull at Wittenberg, and had introduced the reformed worship there. Henry VIII. and Francis I. had met on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; Michael Angelo had finished his masterpieces in the Sistine Chapel; Raphael, having painted the greatest of all Madonnas, had been dead five years; Titian was still holding the world breathless with the triumphs of his brush; Rabelais had just emerged from his monastic prison to begin life at the age of forty; Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Earl of Surrey, and their co-mates, were preparing the way in England for the full choir of the next half-century; and France, stimulated on all sides by the advance of her neighbors in literature and art, had set herself to rival them. Since the appearance of the 'Roman de la Rose' in 1310, there had been little of note in French literature. The feeble singers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose voices could scarcely be heard through the constant din of war, made that poem their great example; and it is hard to say whether the poverty of their invention, or the religious allegory concealed beneath its sentimental platitudes, had had the greater power in preserving it so long. Charles d'Orléans, François Villon, and Clément Marot, had already sung the first chansons worthy of note since the 'Roman de la Rose' began to reign; and the "gentil maistre Clément » was even now sharing the captivity of his royal master at Pavia.

PIERRE RONSARD

Besides the usual causes that impede the production of great poems, we must take into account the transitions and imperfect condition of the French language at this time; the patronage of zealous