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Translated by Mrs. Cockle
TO rugged Pontus, when from cloudless skies, | |
| Sulmonian Ovid, banished, weeping turned; | |
| His household gods, wife, children,—all the ties | |
| Of sacred love in parting grief he mourned. | |
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| With eye averted, on his country cast | 5 |
| No lingering look, but still in sadder strain | |
| Gave his keen feelings, as he wandering passed, | |
| To rivers, mountains, and the cheerless plain. | |
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| He marked where Nature in her glowing pride | |
| O’er earth, o’er air, and all the star-gemmed sky, | 10 |
| Bade Order’s laws around their course preside, | |
| And owned the universal harmony. | |
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| The fishes, sportive in the crystal wave, | |
| By instinct guided in their liquid way; | |
| The beasts, proceeding for their mountain cave, | 15 |
| Confess alike her great, her secret sway. | |
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| Saw murmuring streamlets from their glittering source | |
| Pursue their path in tributary pride; | |
| Saw them, obedient to their destined course, | |
| Steal in soft splendor to the sparkling tide. | 20 |
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| Himself he saw amidst the exile’s woe, | |
| The unequalled woe that cannot find relief, | |
| While o’er his verse soft tears of sorrow flow; | |
| His Muse alone companion of his grief. | |
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| Thus Fancy paints me, thus like him forlorn, | 25 |
| Condemned the hapless exile’s fate to prove; | |
| In life-consuming pain thus doomed to mourn | |
| The loss of all I prized,—of her I love. | |
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| Yet proudly turning in remembered bliss | |
| To joys by memory graven on the heart, | 30 |
| I see how transient earthly happiness, | |
| How weak is glory and how vain her art. | |
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| Reflection paints me guiltless though opprest, | |
| Increasing thus the sources of my woe; | |
| The pang unmerited that rends the breast | 35 |
| But bids a tear of keener sorrow flow. | |
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| If justly punished, then the enduring mind | |
| A chastened comfort from the cause receives, | |
| And reason may a consolation find | |
| Which undeserved affliction never gives. | 40 |
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| What time the smiling morn brings on the day, | |
| And wasting dewdrops vanish from the plain, | |
| What time the nightingale her weeping lay | |
| In sadness pours, and tunes the lovelorn strain, | |
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| Midst broken slumbers and delusion’s power | 45 |
| With tenfold force my sorrows all arise; | |
| Steal from repose the transitory hour, | |
| When others find a respite from their sighs. | |
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| No mental joys the discontented prove, | |
| When waking sense recalls the hour of care; | 50 |
| Slow o’er some hill with laboring steps I rove, | |
| And give my tortured bosom to despair. | |
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| Alas! not here my straining eye surveys | |
| The hallowed spot from whence my sorrows flow; | |
| Here naught in kind compassion meets my gaze, | 55 |
| But mountain heights, where flowers nor herbage grow. | |
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| Since my sad exile, to my cheerless view | |
| The fields no more are green, the flowerets fair; | |
| Ah! late I marked their rich luxuriant hue, | |
| But Nature sheds no more gay blossoms there. | 60 |
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| On golden Tagus’ undulating stream, | |
| Skim the light barks by gentlest wishes sped; | |
| Trace their still way midst many a rosy gleam | |
| That steals in blushes o’er its trembling bed. | |
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| I see them, gay in passing beauty, glide, | 65 |
| Some with fixed sails to woo the tardy gale; | |
| Whilst others with their oars that stream divide, | |
| To which I weeping tell the exile’s tale. | |
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| Stay, wandering waves; ye fugitives, ah, stay! | |
| Or if without me ye unpitying go, | 70 |
| At least my tears, my sighs, my vows convey, | |
| Those faithful emblems of my cherished woe. | |
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| Go then, pursue in calm translucent grace | |
| Your unrestrained, though not unenvied way, | |
| Till I like you regain that hallowed place, | 75 |
| And hail the dawn of joy’s returning day. | |
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| But ah! not soon shall that protracted hour, | |
| To bless the exile in his anguish, come; | |
| Life may fulfil its transitory power, | |
| Ere happier destiny revoke my doom. | 80 |
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