The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems.

by (AKA: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch).

TO MAURICE HEWLETT

HEWLETT! as ship to ship 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' shimmering 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 authorship, 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 shift 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,

Gutta praeceps...o...b.. parvo sustinet casus suos.

En, pudorem florulentae prodiderunt purpurae: Umor ille quern serenis astra rorant noctibus 20 Mane virgineas papillas solvit umenti peplo.

Ipsa jussit mane ut udas virgines nubant rosae; Fusa Paphies de cruore deque Amoris osculis Deque gemmis deque flammis deque solis purpuris, Cras ruborem qui latebat veste tectus ignea 25 Unico marita nodo non pudebit solvere.

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet_.

Mis...o...b..ing and clinging and trembling--"Now, now must I fall? Is it now?"

Star-fleck'd on the stem of the brier as it gathers and falters and flows, Lo! its trail runs a ripple of fire on the nipple it bids be a rose, 20 Yet englobes it diaphanous, veil upon veil in a tiffany drawn To bedrape the small virginal b.r.e.a.s.t.s yet unripe for the spousal of dawn; Till the vein'd very vermeil of Venus, till Cupid's incarnadine kiss, Till the ray of the ruby, the sunrise, ensanguine the bath of her bliss; Till the wimple her bosom uncover, a tissue of fire to the view, 25 And the zone o'er the wrists of the lover slip down as they reach to undo.

_Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew_!

Ipsa nymphas diva luco jussit ire myrteo: It puer comes puellis. Nee tamen credi potest Esse Amorem feriatum, si sagittas vexerit. 30 Ite, nymphae, posuit arma, feriatus est Amor; Jussus est inermis ire, nudus ire jussus est, Neu quid arcu, neu sagitta, neu quid igne Iaederet; Sed tamen nymphse cavete, quod Cupido pulcher est; Est in armis totus idem quando nudus est Amor! 35

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit eras amet_.

Conpari Venus pudore mitt.i.t ad te virgines:

"Go, maidens," Our Lady commands, "while the myrtle is green in the groves, Take the Boy to your escort." "But ah!" cry the maidens, "what trust is in Love's Keeping holiday too, while he weareth his archery, tools of his trade?" 30 "Go! he lays them aside, an apprentice released; ye may wend unafraid.

See, I bid him disarm, he disarms; mother-naked I bid him to go, And he goes mother-naked. What flame can he shoot without arrow or bow?"

Yet beware ye of Cupid, ye maidens! Beware most of all when he charms As a child: for the more he runs naked, the more he's a strong man-at-arms. 35

_Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew!

"Lady Dian"--Behold how demurely the damsels approach her and sue--

Una res est quam rogamus: cede, virgo Delia, Ut nemus sit incruentum de ferinis stragibus.

Ipsa vellet ut venires, si deceret virginem: 40 Jam tribus choros videres feriatos noctibus Congreges inter catervas ire per saltus tuos, Floreas inter coronas, myrteas inter casas: Nee Ceres nee Bacchus absunt, nee poetarum Deus; De tenente tota nox est pervigilia canticis: 45 Regnet in silvis Dione; tu recede, Delia.

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet_.

Hear Venus her only pet.i.tion! Dear maiden of Delos, depart!

Let the forest be bloodless to-day, unmolested the roe and the hart!

Holy huntress, thyself she would bid be her guest, 40 could thy chast.i.ty stoop To approve of our revels, our dances--three nights that we weave in a troop Arm-in-arm thro' thy sanctu'ries whirling, till faint and dispersed in the grove We lie with thy lilies for chaplets, thy myrtles for arbours of love: And Apollo, with Ceres and Bacchus to chorus-- song, harvest, and wine-- Hymns thee dispossess'd, "'Tis Dione who reigns! 45 Let Diana resign!"

O, the wonderful nights of Dione! dark bough, with her star shining thro'!

_Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew!_

Jussit Hyblaeis tribunal stare diva floribus; Praeses ipsa jura dicit, adsederunt Gratiae.

Hybla, totos funde floras quidquid annus adtulit; 50 Hybla, florum rumpe vestem quantus aetnae campus est.

Ruris hic erunt puellae, vel puellae montium, Quaeque silvas, quaeque lucos, quaeque fontes incolunt:

Jussit omnes adsidere mater alitis dei, Jussit et nudo puellas nil Amori credere. 55

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet._ She has set up her court, has Our Lady, in Hybla, and deckt it with blooms:-- With the Graces at hand for a.s.sessors Dione dispenses her dooms.

Now burgeon, O Hybla! put forth and abound, till 50 Proserpina's field, To the foison thy lap overflowing its laurel of Sicily yield.

Call, a.s.semble the nymphs--hamadryad and dryad-- the echoes who court From the rock, who the rushes inhabit, in ripples who swim and disport.

"I admonish you maids--I, his mother, who suckled the scamp ere he flew-- An ye trust to the Boy flying naked, some pestilent 55 prank ye shall rue."