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(Excerpt)
Translated by Charles Abraham Elton
BEYOND the Pyrenean’s lofty bound, | |
| Through blackening forests shagged with pine around, | |
| The Carthaginian passed; and, fierce, explored | |
| The Volcan champaign with his wasting sword. | |
| Then trod the threatening banks with hastening force, | 5 |
| Where Rhone high-swelling rolls its sweeping course. | |
| From Alpine heights, and steep rocks, capped with snow, | |
| Gushes the Rhone, where Gaul is stretched below. | |
| Cleaves with a mighty surge the foaming plain, | |
| And with broad torrent rushes in the main. | 10 |
| Swollen Arar mingles slow its lingering tide, | |
| That, silent gliding, scarcely seems to glide: | |
| Caught in the headlong whirlpool, breaks away, | |
| Snatched through the plains, and starting from delay; | |
| Plunged in the deep the hurried stream is tost, | 15 |
| And in the greater flood its name is lost. | |
| Alert the troops the bridgeless current brave, | |
| With head and neck upraised above the wave, | |
| Secure their steely swords; or firm divide, | |
| With sinewy arms, the strong and boisterous tide. | 20 |
| The war-steed, bound on rafts, the river treads; | |
| Nor the vast elephant retarding dreads | |
| To tempt the ford; while scattered earth they strow | |
| O’er the hid planks that hide the stream below. | |
| Loosed from the banks the gradual cord extends, | 25 |
| And on the flood the unconscious beast descends. | |
| As the trooped quadrupeds, down-sliding slow, | |
| Launched on the stream that, quivering, dashed below; | |
| Beneath the incumbent weight, with starting tide, | |
| The rapid Rhone poured back on every side: | 30 |
| Tossed its white eddies on the frothy strand, | |
| And, sullen, murmured on its chafing sand. | |
| Now stretched the onward host their long array | |
| Through the Tricastine plains; and wound their way | |
| O’er smooth ascents, and where Vocontia yields | 35 |
| The level champaign of her verdant fields. | |
| Athwart their easy march Druentia spread | |
| The devastation of its torrent bed: | |
| Turbid with stones and trunks of trees, descends | |
| The Alpine stream; the ashen forests rends; | 40 |
| Rolls mountain fragments, crumbling to the shock, | |
| And beats with raving surge the channelled rock. | |
| Of nameless depth its ever-changing bed | |
| Betrays the fording warrior’s faithless tread; | |
| The broad and flat pontoon is launched in vain, | 45 |
| High swells the flood with deluges of rain; | |
| Snatched with his arms the staggering soldier slides, | |
| And mangled bodies toss in gulfy tides. | |
| But now, the o’erhanging Alps, in prospect near, | |
| Efface remembered toils in future fear. | 50 |
| While with eternal frost, with hailstones piled, | |
| The ice of ages grasps those summits wild. | |
| Stiffening with snow the mountain soars in air, | |
| And fronts the rising sun, unmelted by the glare. | |
| As the Tartarean gulf, beneath the ground, | 55 |
| Yawns to the gloomy lake in hell’s profound; | |
| So high earth’s heaving mass the air invades, | |
| And shrouds the heaven with intercepting shades. | |
| No Spring, no Summer, strews its glories here; | |
| Lone Winter dwells upon these summits drear, | 60 |
| And guards his mansion round the endless year, | |
| Mustering from far around his grisly form | |
| Black rains, and hailstone showers, and clouds of storm. | |
| Here in their wrathful kingdom whirlwinds roam, | |
| And the blasts struggle in their Alpine home. | 65 |
| The upward sight a swimming darkness shrouds, | |
| And the high crags recede into the clouds. * * * * * | |
| But no rude Alp, no terror of the scene, | |
| Moved Hannibal, undaunted and serene: | |
| Indignant sadness only changed his brow; | 70 |
| As with exhorting words he quickened now | |
| Their languid hopes and hearts: “What shame were ours, | |
| Tired with the favor of the heavenly Powers; | |
| Sick of our long success, those glorious bays | |
| That crowned the labor of our well-fought days: | 75 |
| To turn our recreant backs on mountain snows, | |
| And slothful yield, where only rocks are foes! | |
| O, now my friends, e’en now, believe, ye climb | |
| Despotic Rome’s proud walls, and tread, sublime, | |
| The Capitol of Jove! thus, thus we gain | 80 |
| The prize of toil, and Tiber owns our chain.” | |
| He spoke; nor they delayed: the troops he drew | |
| Up the steep hills, their promised spoil in view: | |
| Transgressed the Herculean road, and first made known | |
| Tracks yet untrodden and a path their own: | 85 |
| Where inaccessible the desert rose, | |
| He burst a passage through forbidden snows; | |
| He, first, the opposing ridge ascending tried, | |
| And bade the unconquerable cliff subside; | |
| Cheered on the lingering troops; and, beckoning high, | 90 |
| Stood on the crag, and shouted from the sky. | |
| Oft, where the slippery path belied the tread, | |
| And concrete frost the whitening cliff bespread; | |
| Through the reluctant ice his arm explored | |
| The upward track, that opened to his sword. | 95 |
| Oft the thawed surface from the footstep shrank; | |
| Sucked in the absorbing gulf the warriors sank; | |
| Or from high ridge the mass of rushing snow | |
| In humid ruin whelmed the ranks below. | |
| On dusky wings the west-wind swept the heaven; | 100 |
| Full in their face the snowy whirls were driven; | |
| Now from their empty grasp the arms are torn, | |
| And sudden on the howling whirlwind borne; | |
| Snatched on the blast, the wrested weapons fly, | |
| And wheel in airy eddies round the sky. | 105 |
| When, striving o’er the ascent, the height they gain | |
| With planted foot, increasing toils remain: | |
| Yet other heights their upward view surprise, | |
| And opening mountains upon mountains rise. * * * * * | |
| O’er jagged heights, and icy fragments rude, | 110 |
| Thus climb they, midst the mountain solitude; | |
| And from the rocky summits, haggard, show | |
| Their half-wild visage, clotted thick with snow. | |
| Continual drizzlings of the drifting air | |
| Scar their rough cheeks, and stiffen in their hair. | 115 |
| Now poured from craggy dens, a headlong force, | |
| The Alpine hordes hang threatening on their course; | |
| Track the known thickets, beat the mountain snow, | |
| Bound o’er the steeps, and hovering hem the foe. | |
| Here changed the scene; the snows were crimsoned o’er, | 120 |
| The hard ice trickled to the tepid gore. | |
| With pawing hoof the courser delved the ground, | |
| And rigid frost his clinging fetlock bound: | |
| Nor yet his slippery fall the peril ends; | |
| The fracturing ice the bony socket rends. | 125 |
| Twelve times they measured the long light of day, | |
| And night’s bleak gloom, and urged through wounds their way; | |
| Till on the topmost ridge their camp was flung, | |
| High o’er the steepy crags, in airy distance, hung. | |
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