Studies in Song | Page 9

Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of
Orestes.
32. The Last of Ulysses.
33. Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt.
35. Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos.
36. The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.
37. Pericles and Aspasia.
38. The Pentameron.
39. Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
40. Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio Æmilianus, Polybius, and
Panætius.

41. Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of
the Senate.
42. The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff.
43. Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti.
44. Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy:
Five Scenes (Beatrice Cenci).
45. Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (Imaginary Conversations)
Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge
Wolfgang and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (_The
Last Fruit off an Old Tree_): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry
VIII. and Anne Boleyn.
46. Essex and Spenser (Imaginary Conversations): Essex and Bacon:
Antony and Octavius (Scenes for the Study).
47. Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus.
48, 49. Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha.
'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or half our
obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible genius of the great man
whose life and whose labour lasted even from the generation of our
fathers' fathers to our own? Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so
deeply as I feel the inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect
gratitude to the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but 'such
as I had have I given him.'
GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS
FROM
ARISTOPHANES
Attempted in English verse after the original metre.

I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a
fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration
by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable
genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized
with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous
metrical invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly
reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of
anapæstic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all
dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it
happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is
as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical
context, as it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two
metrical points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of
the original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as
necessary makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate
language; and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible
and undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line
overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed
spondees: and this for the obvious reason that even if such a
line--which I doubt--could be exactly represented, foot by foot and
pause for pause, in English, this English line would no more be a verse
in any proper sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this
moment. And my main intention, or at least my main desire, in the
undertaking of this brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for
English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which
goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who
'dance as 'twere to the music
Their own hoofs make.'
I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation:
but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at once
and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes.
THE BIRDS.
(685-723.)
Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves'

generations,
That are little of might, that are moulded of mire,
unenduring and
shadowlike nations,
Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals,
as visions of creatures
fast fleeing,
Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless
the date of
our being:
Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose
thoughts
are eternal;
That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all
things aright as to
matters supernal,
Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of
streams, and the
dark beyond reaching,
Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid
Prodicus pack with his preaching.
It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and
hell's broad border,
Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in
depths of the womb of the
dark without order
First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night
was a wind-egg hatched
in her bosom,
Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet
Love burst out as a
blossom,
Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds
gustily turning. He, after his wedlock with