"With great howls
Rolling weights forward by main force of chest."
"These from the sepulchre shall rise again
With the fist closed, and these with tresses
shorn."
"What first, O Clio, shall adorn thy page,
The expiring prophet, or Aetolian's rage?
Say, wilt thou sing how, grim with hostile blood,
Hippomedon repelled the rushing flood,
Lament the Arcadian youth's untimely fate,
Or Jove, opposed by Capaneus, relate?"
Skelton, Elegy on the Earl of NorthumberLand:--
"Of hevenly poems, O Clyo calde by name
In the college of musis goddess hystoriale."
"The love of good, remiss
In what it should have done, is here restored ;
Here plied again the ill-belated oar."
With his droppings of warm tears ;
And his touchings of things common,
Till they rose to touch the spheres."
But why does Dante make no mention here of "Aeschyles the thunderous" and "Sophocles the royal"?
Antiphon was a tragic and epic poet of Attica, who was put to death by Dionysius because he would not praise the tyrant's writings. Some editions read Anacreon for Antiphon.
Agatho was an Athenian dramatist, of whom nothing remains but the name and a few passages quoted in other writers.
The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew,
The phoenix Truth did on it rest
And built his perfumed nest,
That right Porphyrian tree which did true
Logic show ;
Each leaf did learned notions give
And the app]es were demonstrative ;
So clear their colour and divine
The very shade they cast did other lights out
shine."
This tree of Temptation, however, is hardly the tree of Knowledge, though sprung from it, as Dante says of the next, in Canto XXIV. 117. It is meant only to increase the torment of the starving souls beneath it, by holding its fresh and dewy fruit beyond their reach.
"The golden age was first ; when man, yet
new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere ;
Needless was written law, where none opprest :
The law of man was written in his breast :
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard :
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the seas
Ere sails were spread, new oceans to explore ;
And happy mortals, unconcerned for more,
Confined their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet : nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:
Nor swords were forged ; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow :
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed ;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnished out a feast.
The flowers unsown in fields and meadows reigned ;
And western winds immortal spring maintained.
In following years, the bearded corn ensued
From earth unasked, nor was that earth renewed.
.
From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke,
And honey sweating through the pores of oak."
Also Boethius, Book II. Met. 5, and the Ode in Tasso's Amita, Leigh Hunt's Tr., beginning :--
"0 lovely age of gold!
Not that the rivers rolled
With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;
Not that the ready ground
Produced without a wound,
Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew ;
Not that a cloudless blue
For ever was in sight,
Or that the heaven which burns,
And now is cold by turns,
Looked out in glad and everlasting light ;
No, nor that even the insolent ships from far
Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse
than war :
'But solely that that vain
And breath-invented pail
That idol of mistake, that worshipped cheat,
That Honour,--since so called
By vulgar minds appalled,--
Played not the tyrant with our nature yet.
It had not come to fret
The sweet and happy fold
Of gentle human-kind ;
Nor did its hard law bind
Souls nursed in freedom ; but that law of gold
,
That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
Which Nature's own hand wrote,--
What pleases, is permitted."
Also Don Quixote's address to the goatherds, Don Quix., Book II. Ch. 3, Jarvis's Tr.:--
"After Don Quixote had satisfied his unger, he took up an handful of acorns, md, looking on them attentively, gave utterance to expressions like these .
"'Happy times, and happy ages ! those to which the ancients gave the name of golden, not because gold (which, in this our iron age, is so much esteemed) was to be had, in that fortunate period, without toil and labour ; but because they who then lived were ignorant of these two words Meum and Tuum. In that age of innocence, all things were in common ; no one needed to take any other pains for his ordinary sustenance, than to lift up his hand and take it from the sturdy oaks, which stood inviting him liberally to taste of their sweet and relishing fruit. The limpid fountains, and running streams, offered them, in magnificent abundance, their delicious and transparent waters. In the clefts of rocks, and in the hollow of trees, did the industrious and provident bees form their commonwealths, offering to every hand, without usury, the fertile produce of their most delicious toil. The stout cork trees, without any other inducement than that of their own courtesy, divested themselves of their light and expanded bark, with which men began to cover their houses, supported by rough poles, only for a defence against the inclemency of the seasons. All then was peace, all amity, all concord. As yet the heavy coulter of the crooked plough had not dared to force open, and search into, the tender bowels of our first mother, who unconstrained offered, from every part of her fertile and spacious bosom, whatever might feed, sustain, and delight those her children, who then had her in possession. Then did the simple and beauteous young shepherdesses trip it from dale to dale, and from hill to hill, their tresses sometimes plaited, sometimes loosely flowing, with no more clothing than was necessary modestly to cover what modesty has always required to be concealed ; nor were there ornaments like those now-a-days in fashion, to which the Tyrian purple and the so-many-ways martyred silk give a value; but composed of green dock-leaves and ivy interwoven ; with which, perhaps, they went as splendidly and elegantly decked as our court-ladies do now, with all those rare and foreign inventions which idle curiosity hath taught them. Then were the amorous conceptions of the soul clothed in simple and sincere expressions, in the same way and manner they were conceived, without seeking artificial phrases to set them off. Nor as yet were fraud, deceit, and malice intermixed with truth and plain-dealing. Justice kept within her proper bounds ; favour and interest, which now so much depreciate, confound, and persecute her, not daring then to disturb or offend her. As yet the judge did not make his own will the measure of justice ; for then there was neither cause nor person to be judged."