"His longing eyes lack her:-to him "All loveliness beside is dim.
"Then sorrow's phantom-train appears, "An empty joy that leads to tears.
"The dream, with Fancy's colouring warm,
Departs, an unsubstantial form,
"Glides through the arms that fain would clasp, "And mocks the lover's eager grasp; "Then spreads aloft its airy wings, "That wait on slumber's wanderings."
The literal translation is this: "The grace of the fair statues is hateful to him, and in poverty of eyes all beauty is departed." This is of course ambiguous; and it is hard to say which interpretation is the most poetical; but the one adopted in the text is perhaps the best borne out by the phrase in the original. If the poverty of eyes be referred to Menelaus, the expression must be understood as meaning that they were deprived of their greatest treasure, and the idea is illustrated by the lines of Byron:
For his eyes followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects."
If the statues in which Menelaus is represented as taking no pleasure are supposed to be those of Helen, the poverty of eyes must be understood of the absence of living lustre; and our own application of the epithet "rich" to eyes throws light on the passage. And we may remember that it is the appearance of the eye in the supposed statue of Hermione which peculiarly strikes her husband:
Le. "The fixture of her eye has motion in't,
As we were mocked with art-"
"I'll draw the curtain
My Lord's almost so far transported, that
He'll think anon it moves."
Such domestic sorrows met
Round the Spartan monarch's hearth :
Such as these, or darker yet,
Brood on other spots of earth,
By their guilty bridal sent:
All their martial aid who lent,
Greece, to thy proud armament,
Left, in halls with grief opprest,
Tearful eye, and aching breast,
Love, that, o'er the absent yearning,
Waits in vain their glad returning;
For, instead of heroes, home4
Vases, ashes only come.
(4) The whole of the context is well illustrated by the following speech in Sophocles. It is that of Electra, on receiving the urn, supposed to contain the ashes of Orestes:
ὦ φιλτάτου μνημεῖον ἀνθρώπων ἐμοὶ,
ψυχῆς Ὀρέστου λοιπὸν, ὥς σ ̓ ἀπ ̓ ἐλπίδων,
οὐχ ὧνπερ ἐξέπεμπον, εἰσεδεξάμην.
νῦν μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ὄντα βαστάζω χεροῖν·
δόμων δὲ σ ̓, ὦ παῖ, λαμπρὸν ἐξέπεμψ ̓ ἐγώ.
ὡς ὤφελον πάροιθεν ἐκλιπεῖν βίον,
πρὶν ἐς ξένην σε γαῖαν ἐκπέμψαι, χεροῖν
κλέψασα ταῖνδε, κἀνασώσασθαι φόνου,
ὅπως θανὼν ἔκεισο τῇ τόθ' ἡμέρᾳ,
τύμβου πατρῴου κοινὸν εἰληχὼς μέρος.
νῦν δ ̓ ἐκτὸς οἴκων, κἀπὶ γῆς ἄλλης, φυγάς,
κακῶς ἀπώλου, σῆς κασιγνήτης δίχα
κοὔτ ̓ ἐν φίλῃσι χερσὶν ἡ τάλαιν' ἐγὼ
λουτροῖς ἐκόσμησ', οὔτε παμφλέκτου πυρὸς
ἀνειλόμην, ὡς εἰκὸς, ἄθλιον βάρος.
ἀλλ ̓ ἐν ξένῃσι χερσὶ κηδευθεὶς τάλας,
σμικρὸς προσήκεις ὄγκος ἐν σμικρῷ κύτει.
οἴ μοι τάλαινα τῆς ἐμῆς πάλαι τροφῆς
And Mars, who traffics with the slain,
Whose hands the doubtful scale sustain,
ἀνωφελήτου, τὴν ἐγὼ θάμ ̓ ἀμφὶ σοὶ
πύνῳ γλυκεῖ παρέσχον οὔτε γάρ ποτε
μητρὸς σύ γ' ἦσθα μᾶλλον ἢ κἀμοῦ φίλος·
οὔθ ̓ οἱ κατ ̓ οἶκον ἦσαν, ἀλλ ̓ ἐγὼ τροφός
ἐγὼ δ ̓ ἀδελφὴ σοὶ προσηυδώμην ἀεί.
νῦν δ ̓ ἐκλέλοιπε ταῦτ ̓ ἐν ἡμέρα μια
θανόντα σὺν σοί. πάντα γὰρ ξυναρπάσας,
θύελλ ̓ ὅπως, βέβηκας· οἴχεται πατήρ
τέθνηκ ̓ ἐγώ σοι. φροῦδος αὐτὸς εἶ θανών.
γελῶσι δ ̓ ἐχθροί· μαίνεται δ ̓ ὑφ ̓ ἡδονῆς
μήτηρ ἀμήτωρ, ἧς ἐμοὶ σὺ πολλάκις
φήμας λάθρα προὔπεμπες, ὡς φανούμενος
τιμωρὸς αὐτός. ἀλλὰ ταῦθ ̓ ὁ δυστυχὴς
δαίμων ὁ σός τε κἀμὸς ἐξαφείλετο,
ὅς σ ̓ ὧδέ μοι προἔπεμψεν, ἀντὶ φιλτάτης
μορφῆς, σποδόν τε καὶ σκιὰν ἀνωφελῆ.
O sole memorial that my love retains,
My doting love, a brother's dear remains !
How fade the hopes with which I saw thee part,
And fondly whispered comfort to my heart!
Then light and joy about thy pathway shone ;
'Tis nothing now round which my arms are thrown.
Oh! had I slept in death, before my hand
Snatched thee from fate and sent to foreign strand!
Thine in that hour had been a gentler doom,
Thine, sacred slumber in thy father's tomb.
But now from home afar 'twas thine to die,
And heave in banishment thy latest sigh.
No sister sought thine anguish to beguile,
Decked thy pale corpse, nor, from the expiring pile,
A mournful load, thy funeral vase conveyed :
By foreign hands the wonted rites were paid,
By strangers borne, I see thy dust return,
A little burden in a little urn.
Was it for this I watched thine infant charms,
And blessed thee, while thy weight fatigued mine arms?
When spears are met in fight,
When funeral flames have ceased to burn,
With air-light ashes fills the urn,
Sole relics left of might.
The bitter tears that weep the dead,
In anguish o'er that dust are shed
From many a kinsman's eye;
And one they praise, as "skilled in strife,"
And one, that "reckless of his life,
"He, for another's faithless wife,
"Died fighting gallantly."
Not all declared, nor all concealed,
Half is the bosom's thought revealed,
And murmurs are in secret spread,
That light on the Atride's head.
For ne'er thy mother's love exceeded mine,
Nor I to menials would my charge resign.
Oft to mine ear the welcome accents came,
When thy fond lips invoked thy sister's name:
Now in one fatal moment all is flown,
And even memory's pleasures with thee gone;
Thy fate, like tempest, o'er my spirit past,
And all my joys were swept before the blast.
My sire is gone; and thou hast ceased to be;
And I, though living deemed, expire in thee.
My foes deride; in exultation wild,
My mother triumphs o'er her slaughtered child;
No mother she!-How oft from thee I heard
Promise of vengeance, all too long deferred:
Our evil Genius stayed thy bright career,
And now in mockery sends thy relics here,
Relics that ill my brother's place supply,
While airy ashes meet my longing eye.
For not beneath their native sky
May Græcia's comely warriors lie;
Where erst the Trojan ramparts frowned,
Her mighty sleep in hostile ground.
At home, sedition's voice is known
By sullen, discontented tone,
Whose muttered threatenings record
A people's curse against their Lord.
Waits my soul in racking fear,
That which night conceals to hear.
For those, by whom are many slain,
The Gods all-seeing mark:
In time the Furies dark
Turn them from Fortune's height again,
Since not by virtue's aid they gained the steep,
In lone obscurity to weep,
For aye amid the ruined left,
Of aid alike and hope bereft.
Ask not for too bright a name,
Crave not too surpassing fame,
For on the proud descends the bolt of heaven, And, launched against their eyes, Jove's thunderbolt
Ne'er fixed on me be envy's gaze,
Not mine a city's walls to raze,
To sway, a conqueror, or, a captive, pine; A gentler lot than these, life's happy mean, be mine.
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