The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 12

THE LATTER PART OF THE FOURTH BOOK OF LUCRETIUS; CONCERNING THE NATURE OF LOVE

BEGINNING AT THIS LINE:

Sic igitur Veneris qui telis accipit ictum, &c

 
Thus, therefore, he, who feels the fiery dart
Of strong desire transfix his amorous heart,
Whether some beauteous boy's alluring face,
Or lovelier maid, with unresisting grace,
From her each part the winged arrow sends,
From whence he first was struck he thither tends;
Restless he roams, impatient to be freed,
And eager to inject the sprightly seed;
For fierce desire does all his mind employ,
And ardent love assures approaching joy.
Such is the nature of that pleasing smart,
Whose burning drops distil upon the heart,
The fever of the soul shot from the fair,
And the cold ague of succeeding care.
If absent, her idea still appears,
And her sweet name is chiming in your ears.
But strive those pleasing phantoms to remove,
And shun the aërial images of love,
That feed the flame: when one molests thy mind,
Discharge thy loins on all the leaky kind;
For that's a wiser way, than to restrain
Within thy swelling nerves that hoard of pain.
For every hour some deadlier symptom shews,
And by delay the gathering venom grows,
When kindly applications are not used;
The scorpion, love, must on the wound be bruised.
On that one object 'tis not safe to stay,
But force the tide of thought some other way;
The squandered spirits prodigally throw,
And in the common glebe of nature sow.
Nor wants he all the bliss that lovers feign,
Who takes the pleasure, and avoids the pain;
For purer joys in purer health abound,
And less affect the sickly than the sound.
When love its utmost vigour does employ,
Even then 'tis but a restless wandering joy;
Nor knows the lover in that wild excess,
With hands or eyes, what first he would possess;
But strains at all, and, fastening where he strains,
Too closely presses with his frantic pains;
With biting kisses hurts the twining fair,
Which shews his joys imperfect, insincere:
For, stung with inward rage, he flings around,
And strives to avenge the smart on that which gave the wound.
But love those eager bitings does restrain,
And mingling pleasure mollifies the pain.
For ardent hope still flatters anxious grief,
And sends him to his foe to seek relief:
Which yet the nature of the thing denies;
For love, and love alone of all our joys,
By full possession does but fan the fire;
The more we still enjoy, the more we still desire.
Nature for meat and drink provides a space,
And, when received, they fill their certain place;
Hence thirst and hunger may be satisfied,
But this repletion is to love denied:
Form, feature, colour, whatsoe'er delight
Provokes the lover's endless appetite,
These fill no space, nor can we thence remove
With lips, or hands, or all our instruments of love:
In our deluded grasp we nothing find,
But thin aërial shapes, that fleet before the mind.
As he, who in a dream with drought is curst,
And finds no real drink to quench his thirst,
Runs to imagined lakes his heat to steep,
And vainly swills and labours in his sleep;
So love with phantoms cheats our longing eyes,
Which hourly seeing never satisfies:
Our hands pull nothing from the parts they strain,
But wander o'er the lovely limbs in vain.
Nor when the youthful pair more closely join,
When hands in hands they lock, and thighs in thighs they twine,
Just in the raging foam of full desire,
When both press on, both murmur, both expire,
They gripe, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart,
As each would force their way to t'other's heart:
In vain; they only cruize about the coast;
For bodies cannot pierce, nor be in bodies lost,
As sure they strive to be, when both engage
In that tumultuous momentary rage;
So tangled in the nets of love they lie,
Till man dissolves in that excess of joy.
Then, when the gathered bag has burst its way,
And ebbing tides the slackened nerves betray,
A pause ensues; and nature nods awhile,
Till with recruited rage new spirits boil;
And then the same vain violence returns,
With flames renewed the erected furnace burns;
Again they in each other would be lost,
But still by adamantine bars are crost.
All ways they try, successless all they prove,
To cure the secret sore of lingering love.
Besides —
They waste their strength in the venereal strife,
And to a woman's will enslave their life;
The estate runs out, and mortgages are made, }
All offices of friendship are decayed, }
Their fortune ruined, and their fame betrayed. }
Assyrian ointment from their temples flows,
And diamond buckles sparkle in their shoes;
The cheerful emerald twinkles on their hands,
With all the luxury of foreign lands;
And the blue coat, that with embroidery shines,
Is drunk with sweat of their o'er-laboured loins.
Their frugal father's gains they misemploy,
And turn to point, and pearl, and every female toy.
French fashions, costly treats are their delight;
The park by day, and plays and balls by night.
In vain; —
For in the fountain, where their sweets are sought,
Some bitter bubbles up, and poisons all the draught.
First, guilty conscience does the mirror bring,
Then sharp remorse shoots out her angry sting;
And anxious thoughts, within themselves at strife,
Upbraid the long mispent, luxurious life.
Perhaps, the fickle fair-one proves unkind, }
Or drops a doubtful word, that pains his mind, }
And leaves a rankling jealousy behind. }
Perhaps, he watches close her amorous eyes,
And in the act of ogling does surprise,
And thinks he sees upon her cheeks the while }
The dimpled tracks of some foregoing smile; }
His raging pulse beats thick, and his pent spirits boil. }
This is the product e'en of prosperous love;
Think then what pangs disastrous passions prove;
Innumerable ills; disdain, despair,
With all the meagre family of care.
Thus, as I said, 'tis better to prevent,
Than flatter the disease, and late repent;
Because to shun the allurement is not hard
To minds resolved, forewarned, and well prepared;
But wonderous difficult, when once beset,
To struggle through the straits, and break the involving net.
Yet, thus ensnared, thy freedom thou may'st gain,
If, like a fool, thou dost not hug thy chain;
If not to ruin obstinately blind, }
And wilfully endeavouring not to find }
Her plain defects of body and of mind. }
For thus the Bedlam train of lovers use
To enhance the value, and the faults excuse;
And therefore 'tis no wonder if we see
They doat on dowdies and deformity.
Even what they cannot praise, they will not blame,
But veil with some extenuating name.
The sallow skin is for the swarthy put,
And love can make a slattern of a slut;
If cat-eyed, then a Pallas is their love;
If freckled, she's a party-coloured dove;
If little, then she's life and soul all o'er;
An Amazon, the large two-handed whore.
She stammers; oh what grace in lisping lies!
If she says nothing, to be sure she's wise.
If shrill, and with a voice to drown a quire,
Sharp-witted she must be, and full of fire;
The lean, consumptive wench, with coughs decayed,
Is called a pretty, tight, and slender maid;
The o'er-grown, a goodly Ceres is exprest,
A bedfellow for Bacchus at the least;
Flat-nose the name of Satyr never misses,
And hanging blobber lips but pout for kisses.
The task were endless all the rest to trace;
Yet grant she were a Venus for her face
And shape, yet others equal beauty share,
And time was you could live without the fair;
She does no more, in that for which you woo,
Than homelier women full as well can do.
Besides, she daubs, and stinks so much of paint,
Her own attendants cannot bear the scent,
But laugh behind, and bite their lips to hold.
Meantime, excluded, and exposed to cold,
The whining lover stands before the gates,
And there with humble adoration waits;
Crowning with flowers the threshold and the floor,
And printing kisses on the obdurate door;
Who, if admitted in that nick of time,
If some unsavoury whiff betray the crime,
Invents a quarrel straight, if there be none,
Or makes some faint excuses to be gone;
And calls himself a doating fool to serve,
Ascribing more than woman can deserve.
Which well they understand, like cunning queans,
And hide their nastiness behind the scenes,
From him they have allured, and would retain;
But to a piercing eye 'tis all in vain:
For common sense brings all their cheats to view,
And the false light discovers by the true;
Which a wise harlot owns, and hopes to find
A pardon for defects, that run through all the kind.
Nor always do they feign the sweets of love,
When round the panting youth their pliant limbs they move.
And cling, and heave and moisten every kiss;
They often share, and more than share the bliss:
From every part, even to their inmost soul,
They feel the trickling joys, and run with vigour to the goal.
Stirred with the same impetuous desire,
Birds, beasts, and herds, and mares, their males require;
Because the throbbing nature in their veins
Provokes them to assuage their kindly pains.
The lusty leap the expecting female stands,
By mutual heat compelled to mutual bands.
Thus dogs with lolling tongues by love are tied,
Nor shouting boys nor blows their union can divide;
At either end they strive the link to loose,
In vain, for stronger Venus holds the noose;
Which never would those wretched lovers do, }
But that the common heats of love they know; }
The pleasure therefore must be shared in common too: }
And when the woman's more prevailing juice
Sucks in the man's, the mixture will produce
The mother's likeness; when the man prevails,
His own resemblance in the seed he seals.
But when we see the new-begotten race
Reflect the features of each parent's face,
Then of the father's and the mother's blood
The justly tempered seed is understood;
When both conspire, with equal ardour bent,
From every limb the due proportion sent,
When neither party foils, when neither foiled,
This gives the splendid features of the child.
Sometimes the boy the grandsire's image bears;
Sometimes the more remote progenitor he shares;
Because the genial atoms of the seed
Lie long concealed ere they exert the breed;
And, after sundry ages past, produce
The tardy likeness of the latent juice.
Hence, families such different figures take,
And represent their ancestors in face, and hair, and make;
Because of the same seed, the voice, and hair, }
And shape, and face, and other members are, }
And the same antique mould the likeness does prepare. }
Thus, oft the father's likeness does prevail
In females, and the mother's in the male;
For, since the seed is of a double kind,
From that, where we the most resemblance find,
We may conclude the strongest tincture sent,
And that was in conception prevalent.
Nor can the vain decrees of powers above
Deny production to the act of love,
Or hinder fathers of that happy name,
Or with a barren womb the matron shame;
As many think, who stain with victims blood
The mournful altars, and with incense load,
To bless the showery seed with future life,
And to impregnate the well-laboured wife.
In vain they weary heaven with prayer, or fly
To oracles, or magic numbers try;
For barrenness of sexes will proceed
Either from too condensed, or watery, seed:
The watery juice too soon dissolves away,
And in the parts projected will not stay;
The too condensed, unsouled, unwieldy mass,
Drops short, nor carries to the destined place;
Nor pierces to the parts, nor, though injected home,
Will mingle with the kindly moisture of the womb.
For nuptials are unlike in their success;
Some men with fruitful seed some women bless,
And from some men some women fruitful are,
Just as their constitutions join or jar:
And many seeming barren wives have been,
Who after, matched with more prolific men,
Have filled a family with prattling boys;
And many, not supplied at home with joys,
Have found a friend abroad to ease their smart,
And to perform the sapless husband's part.
So much it does import, that seed with seed
Should of the kindly mixture make the breed;
And thick with thin, and thin with thick should join,
So to produce and propagate the line.
Of such concernment too is drink and food,
To incrassate, or attenuate the blood.
Of like importance is the posture too,
In which the genial feat of love we do;
For, as the females of the four-foot kind
Receive the leapings of their males behind,
So the good wives, with loins uplifted high,
And leaning on their hands, the fruitful stroke may try:
For in that posture will they best conceive;
Not when, supinely laid, they frisk and heave;
For active motions only break the blow, }
And more of strumpets than the wives they show, }
When, answering stroke with stroke, the mingled liquors flow. }
Endearments eager, and too brisk a bound,
Throw off the plow-share from the furrowed ground;
But common harlots in conjunction heave,
Because 'tis less their business to conceive,
Than to delight, and to provoke the deed;
A trick which honest wives but little need.
Nor is it from the gods, or Cupid's dart,
That many a homely woman takes the heart,
But wives well-humoured, dutiful, and chaste, }
And clean, will hold their wandering husbands fast; }
Such are the links of love, and such a love will last. }
For what remains, long habitude, and use,
Will kindness in domestic bands produce;
For custom will a strong impression leave.
Hard bodies, which the lightest stroke receive,
In length of time will moulder and decay,
And stones with drops of rain are washed away.
 

FROM THE FIFTH BOOK OF LUCRETIUS

Tum porrò puer, &c

 
Thus, like a sailor by a tempest hurled
Ashore, the babe is shipwrecked on the world.
Naked he lies, and ready to expire,
Helpless of all that human wants require;
Exposed upon unhospitable earth,
From the first moment of his hapless birth.
Straight with foreboding cries he fills the room,
Too true presages of his future doom.
But flocks and herds, and every savage beast,
By more indulgent nature are increased:
They want no rattles for their froward mood,
Nor nurse to reconcile them to their food,
With broken words; nor winter blasts they fear,
Nor change their habits with the changing year;
Nor, for their safety, citadels prepare,
Nor forge the wicked instruments of war;
Unlaboured earth her bounteous treasure grants,
And Nature's lavish hand supplies their common wants.
 

TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE

THE THIRD ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE. INSCRIBED TO THE EARL OF ROSCOMMON, ON HIS INTENDED VOYAGE TO IRELAND. ⁶³

 
So may the auspicious queen of love,
And the twin stars, the seed of Jove,
And he who rules the raging wind,
To thee, O sacred ship, be kind;
And gentle breezes fill thy sails,
Supplying soft Etesian gales;
As thou, to whom the Muse commends
The best of poets and of friends,
Dost thy committed pledge restore,
And land him safely on the shore;
And save the better part of me,
From perishing with him at sea.
Sure he, who first the passage tried,}
In hardened oak his heart did hide, }
And ribs of iron armed his side; }
Or his at least, in hollow wood,
Who tempted first the briny flood;
Nor feared the winds' contending roar,
Nor billows beating on the shore,
Nor Hyades portending rain,
Nor all the tyrants of the main.
What form of death could him affright,
Who unconcerned, with stedfast sight,
Could view the surges mounting steep,
And monsters rolling in the deep!
Could through the ranks of ruin go,
With storms above, and rocks below!
In vain did Nature's wise command
Divide the waters from the land,
If daring ships and men prophane
Invade the inviolable main;
The eternal fences over-leap,
And pass at will the boundless deep.
No toil, no hardship, can restrain
Ambitious man, inured to pain;
The more confined, the more he tries,
And at forbidden quarry flies.
Thus bold Prometheus did aspire,
And stole from Heaven the seeds of fire:
A train of ills, a ghastly crew,
The robber's blazing track pursue;
Fierce famine with her meagre face,
And fevers of the fiery race,
In swarms the offending wretch surround,
All brooding on the blasted ground;
And limping death, lashed on by fate,
Comes up to shorten half our date.
This made not Dædalus beware,
With borrowed wings to sail in air;
To hell Alcides forced his way,
Plunged through the lake, and snatched the prey.
Nay, scarce the gods, or heavenly climes,
Are safe from our audacious crimes;
We reach at Jove's imperial crown,
And pull the unwilling thunder down.
 

THE NINTH ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE

I

 
Behold yon mountain's hoary height,
Made higher with new mounts of snow;
Again behold the winter's weight
Oppress the labouring woods below;
And streams, with icy fetters bound,
Benumbed and crampt to solid ground.
 

II

 
With well-heaped logs dissolve the cold,
And feed the genial hearth with fires;
Produce the wine, that makes us bold,
And sprightly wit and love inspires:
For what hereafter shall betide,
God, if 'tis worth his care, provide.
 

III

 
Let him alone, with what he made,
To toss and turn the world below;
At his command the storms invade,
The winds by his commission blow;
Till with a nod he bids them cease,
And then the calm returns, and all is peace.
 

IV

 
To-morrow and her works defy,
Lay hold upon the present hour,
And snatch the pleasures passing by,
To put them out of fortune's power:
Nor love, nor love's delights, disdain;
Whate'er thou get'st to-day, is gain.
 

V

 
Secure those golden early joys,
That youth unsoured with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys,
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest, }
This is the time to be possest; }
The best is but in season best. }
 

VI

 
The appointed hour of promised bliss,
The pleasing whisper in the dark,
The half unwilling willing kiss,
The laugh that guides thee to the mark;
When the kind nymph would coyness feign, }
And hides but to be found again; }
These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain. }
 

THE TWENTY-NINTH ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE. PARAPHRASED IN PINDARIC VERSE, AND INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. LAURENCE, EARL OF ROCHESTER

I

 
Descended of an ancient line,
That long the Tuscan sceptre swayed,
Make haste to meet the generous wine,
Whose piercing is for thee delayed:
The rosy wreath is ready made,
And artful hands prepare
The fragrant Syrian oil, that shall perfume thy hair.
 

II

 
When the wine sparkles from afar,
And the well-natured friend cries, "Come away!"
Make haste, and leave thy business and thy care,
No mortal interest can be worth thy stay.
 

III

 
Leave for a while thy costly country seat,
And, to be great indeed, forget
The nauseous pleasures of the great:
Make haste and come;
Come, and forsake thy cloying store;
Thy turret, that surveys, from high,
The smoke, and wealth, and noise of Rome,
And all the busy pageantry
That wise men scorn, and fools adore;
Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.
 

IV

 
Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try
A short vicissitude, and fit of poverty:
A savoury dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet, or the Tyrian loom,
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.
 

V

 
The sun is in the Lion mounted high;
The Syrian star
Barks from afar,
And with his sultry breath infects the sky;
The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry:
The shepherd drives his fainting flock
Beneath the covert of a rock,
And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh:
The Sylvans to their shades retire,
Those very shades and streams new shades and streams require,
And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.
 

VI

 
Thou, what befits the new Lord Mayor,⁶⁴
And what the city factions dare,
And what the Gallic arms will do,
And what the quiver-bearing foe,
Art anxiously inquisitive to know:
But God has, wisely, hid from human sight
The dark decrees of future fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night;
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state,
When mortals search too soon, and fear too late.
 

VII

 
Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of fortune's power;
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high, and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb, or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed;
Anon it lifts aloft the head,
And bears down all before it with impetuous force:
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown;
Both house and homested into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.
 

VIII

 
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine;
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
 

IX

 
Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless:
Still various, and unconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings, and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away:
The little or the much she gave, is quietly resigned;
Content with poverty my soul I arm,
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
 

X

 
What is't to me,
Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise, and clouds grow black,
If the mast split, and threaten wreck?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain;
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar;
And running with a merry gale,
With friendly stars my safety seek,
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.