The Good Book (33 page)

To this place, while I tended my myrtles’ new shoots,

My he-goat, the lord of the flock, had strayed; and I caught sight of Daphnis.

When he saw me he called, ‘Quick! come here, Meliboeus; your goat and kids are safe, and if you can idle awhile,

Rest beneath this shade with me.

Your steers will come by themselves over the meadows to drink;

Here the stream fringes its green banks with waving reeds,

And the old oak swarms with humming bees.

Come, and hear Corydon and Thyrsis vie

Who shall sing the sweetest.’

What could I do? My new-weaned lambs were safe penned at home;

And the match – Corydon against Thyrsis – was a mighty one:

I counted their sport above my work.

So in alternate verses the pair competed:

These Corydon, those Thyrsis sang in turn.

Corydon:

You mossy springs, and lawns softer than sleep,

And the green arbutus that shields you with scanty shade,

Ward the noontide heat from my flock.

Now comes the summer’s parching,

Now the buds swell on the pliant tendril.

Thyrsis:

With me you will find a hearth and pitchy brands;

With me a good fire blazing and doorposts black with soot.

Here we care as little for the freezing blasts of winter

As the wolf for the number of sheep

Or rushing torrents their banks.

Corydon:

Here stand junipers and shaggy chestnuts;

Strewn beneath each tree lies its native fruit;

Now all nature smiles; but if fair Alexis should quit these hills

The rivers would run dry.

Thyrsis:

The field is parched; the grass is athirst, dying in the tainted air;

The vines grudge their shade to the hills;

But at the coming of my Phyllis all the woodland

Springs to green life,

And rain descends in glad showers.

Corydon:

Dearest is the poplar to the shepherd,

The vine to the reveller,

The myrtle to the lover,

The laurel to the poet.

Phyllis loves hazels, and while Phyllis loves them,

Neither myrtle nor the poet’s laurel shall outdo them.

Thyrsis:

Fairest is the ash in the woodlands, the pine in the gardens,

The poplar by rivers, the fir on mountaintops;

But if you come often to me, the ash in the woodlands

And the pine in the gardens will yield to you.

So much I remember:

How Thyrsis strove in vain against defeat;

From that day Corydon is our only Corydon.

73

He delays: for the third time

The wick of the lamp droops and fades.

Would the flame in my breast sink with the lamp,

And not burn so strongly with sleepless desire.

Ah how often he promised to come in the evening,

But he does not scruple to break my heart

As easily as his vow.

74

Slender Melite, though now not young,

Has not lost the graces of youth.

Still her cheeks are rosy, and her eyes

Have not forgotten their brightness

Or how to charm.

Yet her decades are not few.

Her attractiveness seems to teach us

That time cannot subdue nature.

Alas:

At last that cannot be true.

75

I had lovable Juliana all night with me,

And all night she complained piteously:

From the hour when the evening star began to mount,

She blamed it for heralding the morrow’s dawn.

Nothing is just as we would have it:

The servants of love require endless nights.

76

Curious to find out if lovely Ereutho was fond of me,

I tested her heart by a subtle falsehood.

I said, ‘I am going abroad; but please remain, my dearest,

Faithful and ever mindful of my love.’

Whereupon she gave a great cry, and leapt up,

And beat her breasts with her hands,

And tore the clusters of her braided hair,

Begging me not to go.

Then, as if reluctantly complying, I consented.

I am happy in my love:

What I anyway wished to do, I granted as a favour.

77

Eluding her mother’s apprehensive eyes,

The charming girl gave me a pair of apples.

I think she had set fire to those red apples

With the torch of love: for I burn:

I burn: I burn:

Yet instead of two breasts

My luckless hands fondle two apples.

78

Melissias denies she is in love,

But her demeanour proclaims otherwise.

Unsteady is her step and she takes her breath in snatches;

Under her eyes are dark purple hollows.

Oh love! turn your flames on this rebellious maid

Till she cries aloud, ‘I am afire!’

79

I, a fisherman, having reached trembling old age,

Give the sea these gifts of all I have:

My pliant rods, my oar, my rudder and keel,

My curved and pointed hooks,

My net weighted with lead,

The floats that mark where the fish run,

These well-woven creels,

This flint to strike fire at evening,

My anchor, stay of my unstable boat,

Now lying in the seaweed:

And myself, whom the waves did not once before engulf,

But now may cradle my final sleep.

80

I, a shepherd, in my shaky old age,

Lay aside my heavy crook,

But still have my pipe, and play;

For in my wizened body the voice remains.

But let no herdsman tell the wolves

Ravening on the mountain

How feeble I have grown in my old years.

81

Where will you find rest?

I think at the bend in the river

Where an old man wearing a straw hat and cape

Sits in his lonely boat and fishes.

It pleases us to see

Green willows, still water,

The sun in the east and the rain in the west,

Half bright, half cloudy,

Where the river bends.

That is where you may find rest.

82

The storm has ended. Now the eaves drip,

And the cicadas begin once more, tentatively,

One here, one there.

We sit in silence in the bower,

Holding hands wet with tears.

We cannot speak, thinking of the distance

You must go: a thousand miles,

Never to return.

When lovers endure forced partings

It is like the end of autumn, and deep frost.

Where will I wake tomorrow, knowing

That I will not sleep again unless drunk?

The morning breeze, the pale and empty moon,

Tell us that our love’s tender words

Have all been said.

83

Around the red pavilion,

Down the door-posts and the panels,

The dawn light runs like silver rain.

We were glad to meet,

We were sad to part.

The moon is always full when lovers part:

We see the sharp black shadow become two shadows,

Moving away from each other in the night garden.

I have not slept, but waited hoping for your return,

Sitting at the door while the night waned

And now the silver rain of dawn light shows

The empty garden, the presence of your absence.

84

I recall the time of heroes,

When he married his bride

With his fan and crimson scarf,

His gaily knotted cloak fluttering in the wind,

His laughter when the speech-makers told

How he burned the enemy ships to ash on the beach,

And collected the weapons of their dead as trophies.

You may laugh too at my obsessions and memories,

But I recall the time of heroes,

Before great deeds were buried under a mountain of days.

85

The whole world grows darker at the end of night.

The line of hills, the hedges and copses,

The rooftops and the wisps of smoke from their chimneys,

All grow darker at the end of night.

It is like the departure of youth and love:

Away go the shadowy shapes of the dead past,

Away the still-sharp memories and illusions:

All these things on which our nature leaned,

From which our hearts learned to learn.

What was bright and insistent and for ever

Has become impermanent and dim,

Turning darker at the end of night.

86

How well I remember the first time!

And said, if this is love, how hard it is to bear!

How badly it has led and governed me,

To what hard ground and briars, what thorns;

How laden with sorrows and sore lamentations,

How unresting, sleepless and sad.

Why were these sufferings blended with such hope,

Such sweet hope and tender desire?

Behind closed eyes exhausted by ever-waking

The bright image of the beloved still burns.

87

Beautiful beloved, who inspired everything I am,

Say what innocence, what remoteness, formed you?

In what cool shade born, by what murmurous stream

Raised and taught your arts?

I see the darting hummingbird in the garden you kept,

The golden firebird and the silver-quilled eagle

Waving in their plumes the light of tranquil afternoons

When you rested, your cheek on the moss pillow

And your hand on the book of sonnets written for you.

No one is like you, or has been;

In no valley where the beekeeper tends his hives.

On no plain where the farmer ploughs,

No upland meadow where the shepherd pipes,

No orchard or field of vines where the husbandman toils,

Has there ever been the like of you.

Beautiful beloved: the tune of the willow warbler

Marks your waking from slumber,

And the afternoon sun restrains his beams where they kiss your brow.

88

Under the sculptor’s hammer

The figure increases as the marble decreases.

That is a lesson.

Art arrives when there is nothing left to take away:

The artist trembles; in the mass of stone

There is a slender figure seeking escape,

Lost before it was found:

One blow, and it is gone, shattered, like a dream

Unremembered.

89

How can the statue last longer than its maker?

Hard stone outlasts even hard hearts.

There is a live image in the cold stone,

And the chisel cuts it free and gives it life.

Its maker becomes ashes after the years have bent him down;

Nature is thus defeated by art, though nature struck art