Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/343

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SILVAE, V. iii. 9–34

the ivy-leaves, and the trembling bay—ah! horror!—wither and die. Yet surely I am he who, loftily inspired, essayed to extol the deeds of great-hearted kings, and to raise my song to the height of Mars himself. Who has doomed my spirit to decay? Who has drawn a cold shroud of mist about my blighted heart, and drowned my inspiration? The goddesses stand dismayed around the bard, and with neither voice nor finger make sweet melody. Their queen herself sinks her head upon her silent lyre, as when after Orpheus’ loss she halted by thy stream, O Hebrus, and gazed at the troops of beasts that listened no more, and the woods that moved not since the strains were gone.

But thou, whether freed from the body thou soarest to the heights and reviewest the glittering realms and the elements of things, learning what is God, whence cometh fire, what orbit guides the sun, what cause makes Phoebe wane and has power to restore her hidden light, and dost continue the music of renowned Aratus[1]; or whether in the secluded grassy meads of Lethe, among gatherings of heroes and spirits of the blest, thou dost attend the Maeonian and Ascraean sages,[2] thyself no feebler shade, and makest music in thy turn and minglest thy song with theirs: O grant a voice and inspiration, father, to my great grief. For thrice[3] has the moon journeyed o’er the heaven, and thrice displayed her countenance, and still beholds me sluggish, and my sadness unconsoled by any draught of Helicon; ever since thy pyre shed its red light upon my face, and with streaming eyes I gazed upon thy ashes, I have held cheap my poet’s art. Scarce do I for the first time free my mind for tasks like this, and (e’en now

  1. ↑ Author of an astronomical treatise called Phaenomena.
  2. ↑ Homer and Hesiod.
  3. ↑ This perhaps is not to be literally taken, i.e. that the poem was written three months after his father’s death; still in any case he must have kept it by him for a long while before publishing it—if indeed the publication was not posthumous.

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