'Never again such hopes shall a youth of the lineage of Troy
Rouse in his great forefathers of Latium! Never a boy
Nobler pride shall inspire in the ancient Romulus land!
Ah, for his filial love! for his old-world faith! for his hand
Matchless in battle! Unharmed what foemen had offered to stand
Forth in his path, when charging on foot for the enemy's ranks
Or when plunging the spur in his foam-flecked courser's flanks!
Child of a nation's sorrow! if thou canst baffle the Fates'
Bitter decrees, and break for a while their barrier gates,
Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee bring me anon
Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son,
Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least,
Doing the dead, though vainly, the last sad service.'
He ceased.
'Thine to become Marcellus' has hardly the simple pathos of 'Tu Marcellus
eris,' but 'Child of a nation's sorrow' is a graceful rendering of 'Heu,
miserande puer.' Indeed, there is a great deal of feeling in the whole
translation, and the tendency of the metre to run into couplets, of which
we have spoken before, is corrected to a certain degree in the passage
quoted above from the Eclogues by the occasional use of the triplet, as,
elsewhere, by the introduction of alternate, not successive, rhymes.
Sir Charles Bowen is to be congratulated on the success of his version.
It has both style and fidelity to recommend it. The metre he has chosen
seems to us more suited to the sustained majesty of the AEneid than it is
to the pastoral note of the Eclogues. It can bring us something of the
strength of the lyre but has hardly caught the sweetness of the pipe.
Still, it is in many points a very charming translation, and we gladly
welcome it as a most valuable addition to the literature of echoes.
Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and AEneid I.-VI. By the Right Hon.
Sir Charles Bowen, one of Her Majesty's Lords Justices of Appeal. (John
Murray.)
LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--II
(Woman's World, December 1887.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account