'A second time,' the frantic sire pursues, 'Did Amarantha meet my aching sight; Then, like an eastern concubine attir'd, Her head was blazon'd with barbaric gems; With golden gloss her wanton garment wav'd; With her despoiler hand in hand she walk'd, Disclaim'd her father, and her father's gods. Oh, then I wish'd her on the waves again,
To parch in winds, or sate some vulture's beak!' '
The appearance of the spirit of the deified Leonidas, with his attendant heroes, to the poet Eschylus (one of the prominent characters) is thus described:
He bade farewell, and hail'd th' ascending stars In music long continued: till the stream With drowsy murmur won his eye to sleep, But left his fancy waking. In a dream The god of day, with full meridian blaze, Seem'd to assume his function o'er the skies; When, lo! the earth divided: through the cleft A gush of radiance dimm'd the noon-tide sun. In structure all of diamond, self-pois'd, Amid redundant light a chariot hung Triumphal. Twelve transparent horses breath'd Beams from their nostrils, dancing beams of day Shook from their manes. In lineaments of man, Chang'd to immortal, there the mighty soul Of Sparta's king apparent shone.
Of triumph too arrang'd, the stately forms Of those whom virtue led to share his doom, And consecrate Thermopyla to fame.
Broad like Minerva's ægis: from their helms
An empyreal brightness stream'd abroad:
Ineffable felicity their eyes,
Their fronts the majesty of gods display'd."
The following, from the second book, is a highly wrought picture of a classical kind of beauty:
"Lo! the gate is thrown
Abroad; the priestess, lovely in her shape.
As virgin Thetis to the nuptial arms
Of Peleus led, more blooming than the flow'rs Beneath her decent step, descends the slope: A matron staid, behind her, solemn treads; Close to her side, in radiant arms, a youth, Who like a brother of the Graces moves. His head, uncas'd, discovers auburn locks Curl'd thick, not flowing; his sustaining hand She, rosy-finger'd, to her own admits. He seem'd Apollo, not with martial fires Such as on Titan's race he darted keen, But with th' enamour'd aspect which he wore When Clymene he won, or Daphne woo'd: She Cynthia, not a huntress, when the chase Of rugged boars hath flush'd her eager cheek, But gently stooping from an argent cloud, Illumining mount Latmus, while she view'd Her lov'd Endymion, by her magic pow'r Entranc'd to slumber."
The opening of the fourth book, which describes the march of the multitudes of the army of Xerxes, is executed with a considerable degree of barbaric magnificence.
"Now trumpets, clarions, timbrels, mix their sounds; Harsh dissonance of accents, in the shouts
Of nations gather'd from a hundred realms, Distract the sky, The king his march renews In all his state, collected to descend Precipitate on Athens; like the bird
Of Jove, who, rising to the utmost soar Of his strong pinions, on the prey beneath
Directs his pond'rous fall. Five thousand horse, Caparison'd in streak'd or spotted skins Of tigers, pards, and panthers, form'd the van; In quilted vests of cotton, azure dyed, With silver spangles deck'd, the tawny youth Of Indus rode; white quivers loosely cross'd Their shoulders; not ungraceful in their hands Were bows of glist'ning cane; the ostrich lent His snowy plumage to the tissued gold Which bound their temples.
In order next the Magi solemn trod. Pre-eminent was Mirzes; snowy white
Their vestments flow'd, majestically pure, Rejecting splendour; hymning as they mov'd, They sung of Cyrus, glorious in his rule O'er Sardis rich, and Babylon the proud; Cambyses, victor of Egyptian Nile; Darius, fortune-thron'd; but flatt'ry tun'd Their swelling voice to magnify his son, The living monarch, whose stupendous piles Combin'd the Orient and Hesperian worlds, Who pierc'd mount Athos, and o'erpower'd in fight Leonidas of Sparta. Then succeed
Ten coursers whiter than their native snows On wintry Media's fields; Nicæan breed, In shape to want no trappings, none they wore To veil their beauty; docile they by cords Of silk were led, the consecrated steeds Of Horomazes.
Now th' imperial standard wav'd;
Of sanders wood the pedestal, inscrib'd With characters of magic, which the charms Of Indian wizards wrought in orient pearl, Vain talisman of safety, was upheld
By twelve illustrious youths of Persian blood. Then came the king; in majesty of form, In beauty, first of men, as first in pow'r, Contemplating the glory from his throne Diffus'd to millions round, himself he deem'd Not less than Mithra who illumes the world."
By the aid of a laborious enumeration of circumstances, most of them historically true, our author has succeeded in presenting to the mind, an animated description of the splendid scene, which clothed the shores of the straits of Salamis, immediately before the battle. It opens the sixth book :
"Bright pow'r, whose presence wakens on the face
Of nature all her beauties, gilds the floods,
The crags and forests, vine-clad hills and fields,
O sun! thou, o'er Athenian tow'rs,
The citadel and fanes in ruin huge, Dost, rising now, illuminate a scene
More new, more wondrous, to thy piercing eye,
Than ever time disclos'd. Phaleron's wave Presents three thousand barks in pendants rich; Spectators, clust'ring like Hymettian bees, Hang on the burden'd shrouds, the bending yards, The reeling masts; the whole Cecropian strand, Far as Eleusis, seat of mystic rites,
Is throng'd with millions, male and female race Of Asia and of Libya, rank'd on foot, On horses, camels, cars. Egaleos tall, Half down his long declivity, where spreads A mossy level, on a throne of gold Displays the king, environ'd by his court In oriental pomp; the hill behind,
By warriors cover'd, like some trophy huge, Ascends in varied arms and banners clad; Below the monarch's feet th' immortal guard, Line under line, erect their gaudy spears;
Th' arrangement, shelving downward to the beach, Is edg'd by chosen horse. With blazing steel Of Attic arms encircled, from the deep Psyttalia lifts her surface to the sight, Like Ariadne's heav'n-bespangling crown, A wreath of stars; beyond, in dread array, The Grecian fleet, four hundred gallies, fill The Salaminian straits; barbarian prows In two divisions point to either mouth Six hundred brazen beaks of tow'r-like ships, Unwieldy bulks; the gently-swelling soil Of Salamis, rich island, bounds the view. Along her silver-sanded verge array'd, The men at arms exalt their naval spears Of length terrific. All the tender sex, Rank'd by Timothea, from a green ascent Look down in beauteous order on their sires, Their husbands, lovers, brothers, sons, prepar'd To mount the rolling deck. The younger dames In bridal robes are clad; the matrons sage In solemn raiment, worn on sacred days; But white in vesture like their maiden breasts, Where Zephyr plays, uplifting with his breath The loosely-waving folds, a chosen line Of Attic graces in the front is plac'd; From each fair head the tresses fall, entwin'd With newly-gather'd flowrets; chaplets gay The snowy hand sustains; the native curls,
O'ershading half, augment their pow'rful charms; While Venus, temper'd by Minerva, fills Their eyes with ardour, pointing ev'ry glance To animate, not soften. From on high Her large controlling orbs Timothea rolls, Surpassing all in stature, not unlike In majesty of shape the wife of Jove, Presiding o'er the empyreal fair."
One of the chief faults of Glover, in the Athenaid, is the general carelessness with which he leaves half-wrought images to shift for themselves.-For the most part, the poem reads like a huge and overgrown argument to an epic-or appears like a receptacle for hints and memoranda of passages and scenes, interwoven with the chronicle of the events, which the poet afterwards intended to work up. If we could conceive Glover so familiar with the use of blank verse, as to write it with as much facility as prose, we should have no hesitation in concluding that the work, which now purports to be an epic poem, was nothing more than a mass of materials, compiled in the course of some years, for subsequent use. Independent of the harsh imitation of a classical construction of his language, the versification commonly "loiters into prose," and is totally divested of that measured sonorousness which we find in the Leonidas. Sometimes, indeed, we have finished passages, where the metre is melodious, and the images brought out, as if they were already finished for the future poem, which we have supposed the author to have been contemplating-of these, we shall give some specimens, premising that we consider them as, perhaps, the most beautiful parts of the work.
"A pleasing stillness on the water sleeps ; The land is hush'd; from either host proceeds No sound, no murmur. With his precious charge Embark'd, Sicinus gently steers along;
The dip of oars in unison awake
Without alarming silence; while the Moon,
From her descending, horizontal car,
Shoots lambent silver on the humid blades
Which leave the curling flood. On carpets soft Sandauce's babes devoid of sorrow lie,
In sweet oblivious innocence compos'd
To smiling slumber. But the mother's breast. Admits no consolation."
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