SPECIMENS OF TRANSLATION

FROM MEDEA.

Σκαιους δε λεγων, κουδέν τι σοφους
Τους προσθε βροτους ουκ αν αμάρτοις.

Medea, v. 194. p. 33. Glang. edit.

TELL me, ye bards, whose skill sublime
First charm'd the ear of youthful Time,
With numbers wrapt in heavenly fire,
Who bade delighted echo swell
The trembling transports of the lyre,
The murmur of the shell-
Why to the burst of Joy alone
Accords sweet Music's soothing tone?
Why can no bard, with magic strain,
In slumbers steep the heart of pain?
While varied tones obey your sweep,
The mild, the plaintive, and the deep,
Bends not despairing Grief to hear
Your golden lute, with ravish'd ear?

100

TRANSLATIONS FROM MEDEA.

Oh! has your sweetest shell no power to bind
The fiercer pangs that shake the mind,
And lull the wrath at whose command
Murder bares her gory hand?

When flush'd with joy, the rosy throng
Weave the light dance, ye swell the song!
Cease, ye vain warblers! cease to charm
The breast with other raptures warm!
Cease! till your hand with magic strain
In slumbers steep the heart of pain!

SPEECH OF THE CHORUS

IN THE SAME TRAGEDY,

To dissuade Medea from her purpose of putting her children to death, and flying for protection to Athens.

O HAGGARD queen! to Athens dost thou guide
Thy glowing chariot, steep'd in kindred gore;
Or seek to hide thy damned parricide

Where Peace and Mercy dwell for evermore?

The land where Truth, pure, precious, and sublime,

Woos the deep silence of sequester'd bowers, And warriors, matchless since the first of time, Rear their bright banners o'er unconquer'd towers!

Where joyous youth, to Music's mellow strain, Twines in the dance with nymphs for ever fair, While Spring eternal on the lilied plain,

Waves amber radiance through the fields of air!

The tuneful Nine (so sacred legends tell)

First waked their heavenly lyre these scenes among;

Still in your greenwood bowers they love to dwell; Still in your vales they swell the choral song!

But there the tuneful, chaste, Pierian fair,

The guardian nymphs of green Parnassus, now Sprung from Harmonia, while her graceful hair Waved in bright auburn o'er her polish'd brow!

ANTISTROPHE 1.

Where silent vales, and giades of green array, The murmuring wreaths of cool Cephisus lave, There, as the muse hath sung, at noon of day,

The Queen of Beauty bow'd to taste the wave;

And blest the stream, and breathed across the land The soft sweet gale that fans yon summer bowers; And there the sister Loves, a smiling band,

Crown'd with the fragrant wreaths of rosy flowers!

"And go," she cries, "in yonder valleys rove, With Beauty's torch the solemn scenes illume; Wake in each eye the radiant light of Love,

Breathe on each cheek young Passion's tender bloom!

"Intwine, with myrtle chains, your soft control, To sway the hearts of Freedoin's darling kind! With glowing charms enrapture Wisdom's soul, And mould to grace ethereal Virtue's mind."

STROPHE II.

The land where Heaven's own hallow'd waters

play,

Where friendship binds the generous and the good,

Say, shall it hail thee from thy frantic way,

Unholy woman! with thy hands imbrued

In thine own children's gore? Oh! ere they bleed, Let Nature's voice thy ruthless heart appal! Pause at the bold, irrevocable deed

The mother strikes-the guiltless babes shall fall!

Think what remorse thy maddening thoughts shall sting,

When dying pangs their gentle bosoms tear! Where shalt thou sink, when lingering echoes ring The screams of horror in thy tortured earî

No! let thy bosom melt to Pity's cry,

In dust we kneel-by sacred Heaven implore— O! stop thy lifted arm, ere yet they die, Nor dip thy horrid hands in infant gore!

ANTISTROPHE II.

Say, how shalt thou that barbarous soul assume, Undamp'd by horror at the daring plan?

Hast thou a heart to work thy children's doom? Or hands to finish what thy wrath began?