The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume IICrashaw, Richard
General
The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II
Crashaw, Richard
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700
Et strepit, et tinnit, crescitque superbius, et se
Multiplicat religens, plenoque choreumate plaudit.[36]
It will be noted by the student that such word-painting as in these
lines belongs to Crashaw, not Strada:
'and streightway she
_Carves out her dainty voyce as readily_.
. . . . .
Through the sleeke passage of her open throat
_A clear unwrinckled song_;
. . . . .
closes the sweet quarrell, rowsing all,
_Hoarce, shrill at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of Death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands_:'
. . . . .
staggers in a warbling doubt
_Of dallying sweetnesse_, hovers o'er her skill,
_And folds in wav'd notes with a trembling bill_
. . . . .
a tide
Of streaming sweetnesse, _which in state doth ride
On the wav'd backe of every swelling straine,
Rising and falling in a pompous traine_.
. . . . .
Thus high, thus low, _as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voyce of War's hoarce bird_.
... his hands sprightly as fire, he flings
And with _a quavering coynesse tasts the strings_.
The sweet-lip't sisters, musically frighted,
Singing their feares, are fearefully delighted,
_Trembling as when Appolo's golden haires
Are fan'd and frizled, in the wanton ayres
Of his own breath: which marryed to his lyre_
Doth tune the spheares.
. . . . .
with nectar drop,
_Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup_.
. . . . .
_The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heav'd on the surges of swolne rapsodyes,_
. . . . .
_Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone_.'
In the words of Willmott (as before), 'We shall seek in vain in the
Latin text for the vigour, the fancy, and the grandeur of these lines.
These remain with Crashaw, of whose obligations to Strada we may say, as
Hayley [stupidly, if picturesquely] remarked of Pope's debt to Crashaw,
that if he borrowed anything from him in this article, it was only as
the sun borrows from the earth, when, drawing from thence a mere vapour,
he makes it the delight of every eye, by giving it all the tender and
gorgeous colouring of heaven' (vol. i. p. 323). The richness and fulness
of our Poet as a Translator becomes the more clear when we place beside
his interpretation of Strada the 'translations' of others, as given in
the places (vol. i. pp. 203-6). A third (anonymous) version we
discovered among the Lansdowne MSS. 3910, pt. lxvi., from which we take
a specimen:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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