"And did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak."
"There lay a log unlighted on the hearth,
When she was labouring in the throes of birth
For th'unborn chief ; the fatal sisters came,
And raised it up, and tossed it on the flame.
Then on the rock a scanty measure place
Of vital flax, and turned the wheel apace ;
And turning sung, 'To this red brand and thee
O new-born babe, we give an equal destiny ;
So vanished out of view. The frighted dame
Sprung hasty from her bed, and quenched the
flame.
The log, in secret locked, she kept with care,
Andthat, while thus preserved, preserved her
heir."
Meleager distinguished himself in the Argonautic expedition, and afterwards in the hunt of Calydon, where he killed the famous boar, and gave the boar's head to Atalanta ; and when his uncles tried to take possession of it, he killed them also. On hearing this, and seeing the dead bodies, his mother in a rage threw the brand upon the fire again, and, as it was consumed, Meleager perished.
Mr. Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon :
CHORUS.
"When thou dravest the men
Of the chosen of Thrace,
None turned him again
Nor endured he thy face
Clothed round with the blush of the battle,
with light from a terrible place.
OENEUS.
"Thou shouldst die as he dies
For whom none sheddeth tears ;
Filling thine eyes
And fulfilling thine ears
With the brilliance of battle, the bloom and the
beauty, the splendour of spears.
CHORUS.
"In the ears of the world,
It is sung, it is told, ,
And the light thereof hurled ,
And the noise thereof rolled,
From the Acroceraunian snow to the ford of the,
fleece of gold. ,
MELEAGER
"Would God ye could carry me ,
Forth of all these : ,
Heap sand and bury me,
By the Chersonese,
Where the thundering Bosphorus,
answers the thunder of Pontic seas. ,
OENEUS.
"Dost thou mock at our praise,
And the singing begun,
And the men of strange days,
Praising my son,
In the folds of the hills of home, ,
high places of Calydon? ,
MELEAGER
"For the dead man no home is ,
Ah, better to be,
What the flower of the foam is,
In fields of the sea, ,
That the sea-waves might be as my raiment, the,
Gulf stream a garment for me. ,
Mother, I dying with unforgetful tongue,
Hail thee as holy and worship thee as just,
Who art unjust and unholy ; and with my knees,
Would worship, but thy fire and subtlety, ,
Dissundering them, devour me ; for these limbs ,
Are as light dust and crumblings from mine,
urn,
Before the fire has touched them ; and my ,
face,
As a dead leaf or dead foot's mark on snow, ,
And all this body a broken barren tree,
That was so strong, and all this flower of life,
Disbranched and desecrated miserably, ,
And minished all that god-like music and might,
And lesser than a man's : for all my veins,
Fail me, and all mine ashen life burns down." ,
This subject is also discussed in part by Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., I. Quaest. cxix., De propagatione hominis quantum ad corpus. Milton, in his Latin poem, De Idea Platonica, has touched upon a theme somewhat akin to this, but in a manner to make it seem very remote. Perhaps no two passages could better show the difference between Dante and Milton, than this canto and Plato's Archetypal Man, which in Leigh Hunt's translation runs as follows :--
"Say, guardian goddesses of woods,
Aspects, felt in solitudes ;
And Memory, at whose blessed knee
The Nine, which thy dear daughters be,
Learnt of the majestic past ;
And thou, that in some antre vast
Leaning afar off dost lie,
Otiose Eternity,
Keeping the tablets and decrees
Of Jove, and the ephemerides
Of the gods, and calendars,
Of the ever festal stars ;
Say, who was he, the sunless shade.
After whose pattern man was made ;
He first, the full of ages born
With the old pale polar morn,
Sole, yet all ; first visible thought,
After which the Deity wrought?
Twin-birth with Pallas, not remain
Doth he in Jove's o'ershadowed brain ;
But though of wide communion,
Dwells apart, like one alone ;
And fills the wondering embrace,
(Doubt it not) of size and place.
Whether, companion of the stars,
With their tenfold round he errs ;
Or inhabits with his lone
Nature in the neighbouring moon :
Or sits with body-waiting souls,
Dozing by the Lethiean pools :
Or whether, haply, placed afar
In some blank region of our star;
He stalks, an unsubstantial heap,
Humanity's giant archetype ;
Where a loftier bulk he rears
Than Atlas, grappler of the stars,
And through their shadow-touched abodes
Brings a terror to the gods.
Not the seer of him had sight,
Who found in darkness depths of light ;
His travelled eyeballs saw him not
In all his mighty gulfs of thought :
Him the farthest.footed good,
Pleiad Mercury, never showed
To any poet's wisest sight
In the silence of the night :
News of him the Assyrian priest**
Found not in his sacred list,
Though he traced back old king Nine,
And Belus, elder name divine,
And Osiris, endless famed.
Not the glory, triple-flamed,
Thrice great Hermes, though his eyes
Read the shapes of all the skies,
Left him in his sacred verse
Revealed to Nature's worshippers
O Plato ! and was this a dream
Of thine in bowery Academe?
Wert thou the golden tongue to tell
First of this high miracle,
And charm him to thy schools below?
O call thy poets back, if so,***:
Back to the state thine exiles call,
Thou greatest fabler of them all ;
Or follow through the self-same gate,
Thou, the founder of the state."
*Tiresias, who was blind. **Sanchoniathon.
***Whom Plate banished from his imaginary republic.
"Such bright blood is a ray enkindled
Of that sun, in heaven that shines,
And has been left behind entangled .
And caught in the net of the manyvines."
"But now her son had fifteen summers told,
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 25.103
Aeneid, VI. 723, Davidson's Tr.
In the first place, the spirit within nourishes the heavens, the earth, and watery plains, the moon's enlightened orb, and the Titanian stars ; and the mind, diffused through all the members, actuates the whole frame, and mingles with the vast body of the universe. Thence the race of men and beasts, the vital principles of the flying kind, and the monsters which the ocean breeds under its smooth plain. These principles have the active force of fire, and are of a heavenly original, so far as they are not clogged by noxious bodies, blunted by earth-born limbs and dying members. Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice ; and, shut up in darkness and a gloomy prison, lose sight of their native skies. Even when with the last beams of light their life is gone, yet not every ill, nor all corporeal stains, are quite removed from the unhappy beings ; and it is absolutely necessary that many imperfections which have long been joined to the soul should be in marvellous ways increased and riveted therein. Therefore are they afflicted with punishments, and pay the penalties of their former ills. Some, hung on high, are spread out to the empty winds ; in others, the guilt not done away is washed
out in a vast watery abyss, or burned away in fire. We each endure his own manes, thence are we conveyed along the spacious Elysium, and we, the happy few, possess the fields of bliss ; till length of time, after the fixed period is elapsed, hath done away the inherent stain, and hath left the pure celestial reason, and the fiery energy of the simple spirit."
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 25.121
"God of clemency supreme ;" the church hymn, sung at matins on Saturday morning, and containing a prayer for purity.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 25.128
Luke i. 34 : "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing
I know not a man?"
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 25.131
Helice, or Callisto, was a daughter of Lycaon king of Arcadia. She
was one of the attendant nymphs of Diana, who discarded her on account of
an amour with Jupiter, for which Juno turned her into a bear. Arcas was the
offspring of this amour. Jupiter changed them to the constellations of the Great
and Little Bear.
Ovid, Met. II., Addison's Tr.:--
Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold ;
When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey,
He chanced to rouse his mother where she lay.
She knew her son, and kept him in her sight,
And fondly gazed : the boy was in a fright,
And aimed a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast ;
But Jove forbad, U and snatched them through
the air
In whirlwinds up to heaven, and fixed them
there ;
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the Northern skies.
"When Juno saw the rival in her height,
Spangled with stars, and circled round with
light,
She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes,
And Tethys, both revered among the gods.
They ask what brings her there : 'Ne'er ask ,
says she,
'What brings me here ; heaven is no place for
me.
You'll see, when Night has covered all things
o'er,
Jove's starry bastard and triumphant whore
Usurp the heavens ; you'll see them proudly roll
In their new orbs, and brighten all the pole.'"