FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION. TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.1 3 YE Dorian woods and waves lament aloud,-2 Let every tender herb and plant and flower, Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth, 1 This fragment is written upon the same paper with the concluding portion of the Essay on Christianity, found among the papers of Leigh Hunt, and placed at my disposal by Mr. S. R. Townshend Mayer. Seeing that Hunt also made a translation of this idyll, published in Foliage in 1818, it would not be a great stretch of imagination to regard this fragment as another record of those days of friendly emulation represented by the Nile sonnets of Shelley, Keats and Hunt. If such a view were correct, the date would be fixed as early in 1818 or late in 1817; and both the style and penmanship of these beautiful lines seem to me later than the date usually assigned to the Essay on Christianity (1815). I am not aware that the lines have ever appeared in print till now. I have had to supply punctuation. 2 Cancelled reading Weep, Dorian woods, weep. PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR. TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.1 PAN loved his neighbour Echo-but that child The bright3 nymph Lyda,—and so three went weeping As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr, The Satyr Lyda-and so love consumed them.And thus to each-which was a woeful matter"— 1 Mrs. Shelley first published this version of the Sixth Idyll of Moschus in the Posthumous Poems, headed simply Translation from Moschus. In most of the collected editions, it appears with another translation from the same poet under the single title Sonnets from the Greek of Moschus. The other is a sonnet,-the one published by Shelley in the Alastor volume, and given in Vol. I (p. 58) of this edition. This, however, is not a sonnet, but three quatrains. On the back of the MS. translation from Bion, printed at pp. 232 to 234, is a draft of this poem from Moschus, in an advanced state,—indeed quite complete; but some of its readings are so manifestly inferior to those of the printed text, that we must assume the existence of a later copy from which that text was given. It is, however, a most interesting MS., as shewing the fastidiousness of Shelley's taste in this matter of translation,-and it yields some minute emendations. This line stands quite differently in the draft,-a good deal altered, but with no trace of the initial words The Satyr. At first it opened with Who horned loved; but the latest intention of this copy seems to be Who loved, with wasting madness wandering wild, a very much less excellent line than that of the text. 3 The word bright is also a happy innovation on the draft, which gives fair. So in the MS.; but the three in the collected editions, from 1839 onward. There ought not, however, to have been any need of the MS. to set the matter right, as the correct reading is in the Posthumous Poems. In the printed editions, thus; but so in the MS.; and I think the change to thus would not be Shelley's, because thus clashes more with thus in the next line than so does with the so of line 4. 6 Mr. Rossetti prints this line thus— And thus-to each which was a woful 66 matter pointing out in a note that the words to each "have no true meaning nor syntactical standing," and adding my punctuation yields (though with a rather peculiar inversion) the sense 'which thing was to each a woful matter' and that must certainly, I apprehend, have been what Shelley meant." I confess that my conviction is quite the reverse of this: irregular as the punctuation of the text is, I believe it is according to Shelley's intention, and that the inversion Mr. Rossetti introduces would have been far more repuguant to his artistic sense than the lack of syntactical standing." In the extant MS. the bold dash is distinctly placed after To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them; Each loving, so was hated.-Ye that love not ness of the old reading; but I cannot affirm that the MS. bears me out, though Mrs. Shelley's editions do. In regard to Mr. Rossetti's suggestion that in so much would be better still, it is to be noted that Shelley made a false start for the line with those very words, and struck them out. At the end of this line the MS. reads both loving and lover. The draft gives four readings for this line (1) Be not unkind to those who love ye over (4) The moral of this song in thought turn over The final reading of the text is, I think, a conclusive proof of further work upon the poem. FRAGMENT OF THE TENTH ECLOGUE.1 [v. 1-26.] TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN OF VIRGIL. MELODIOUS Arethusa, o'er my verse Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream : Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew! We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew Young Naiads, .. in what far woodlands wild Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled, The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim. 5 10 15 20 What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart's care 1 Transcribed by Mr. Garnett from one of the Boscombe MSS., and first 25 published in Mr. Rossetti's edition (1870). THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE CONVITO. TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.1 I. YE who intelligent the third heaven move, Which cannot be declared, it seems so new; The Heaven whose course follows your power and art, 5 10 II. A sweet thought, which was once the life within Went up before our Father's feet, and there So that I said, Thither I too will fare. Which tyrannizes me with such fierce stress, 1 This translation is from Relics of Shelley. The notes are Mr. Garnett's ; and he assigns the translation to the year 1820. 2 Beatrice. 3 Philosophy. 15 20 |