Silvae II.7 (Mozley): An Ode to Polla in Honour of Lucan’s Birthday

Come to Lucan’s birthday-feast, all ye who on the hills of Isthmian Dione, with hearts fired by poetic frenzy, drink of the spring that the flying hoof struck forth. Ye who have the privilege of song in your keeping, Arcadian discoverer of the vocal lyre, and thou, Euhan, whirler of thy Bassarids, and Paean and the Hyantian Sisters, joyfully deck yourselves anew with purple fillets, make your tresses trim and let fresh ivy enwreathe your shining raiment. Flow more abundantly, poetic streams, and be more brightly green, ye woodlands of Aonia, and if anywhere your shade hath opened and taken in the sunlight, let soft garlands fill the room. Let a hundred fragrant altars stand in the Thespian groves, and a hundred victims that Dirce laves and Cithaeron pastures: ’tis of Lucan we sing, keep holy silence; this is your day, ye Muses, keep silence, while he who made you glorious in two arts, in the measures of fettered speech and free, is honoured as the high priest of the Roman choir.

Happy land—too happy alas!—and blest, that on the verge of Ocean’s waves beholdest Hyperion slope downward to his setting, and hearest the hiss of plunging wheels; even thou, Baetica, whose dripping olive-presses vie with Athens, that is fertile for Tritonis: thou canst account mankind in debt to thee for Lucan! This is more than to have given Seneca to the world, or to have borne the sweet-tongued Gallio. Let Baetis, more renowned than Grecian Meles, flow backward and be exalted to the stars; Mantua, dare not to challenge Baetis!

Straightway, while yet a new-born babe he crawled and with earliest accents sweetly whimpered, Calliope took him to her loving bosom. Then first did she lay aside her grief and cease her long lament for Orpheus, and said: “O boy, consecrate to poesy, soon destined to outmatch the bards of old, thou shalt move no rivers or wild herds or Thracian ash-trees with thy music, but with eloquent song shalt draw after thee the seven hills and Martian Tiber and the learned knights and purple Senate. Let others follow the tracks that poets’ wheels have worn, the night of Phrygia’s overthrow, Ulysses’ slow returning path, Minerva’s daring vessel: thou, dear to Latium and mindful of thy race, more boldly dost unsheathe a Roman epic. And first, while in tender youth, thou shalt practise thy pen on Hector and the chariots of Thessaly and king Priam’s suppliant gold, and shalt unlock the abodes of hell; ungrateful Nero and my own Orpheus shall be set forth by thee to favouring theatres. Thou shalt tell how the impious fires of the guilty monarch ranged the heights of Remus. Then by a charming address thou shalt bestow fame and glory upon chaste Polla. Thereafter more generous in ripened manhood thou shalt thunderously rehearse Philippi, white with Italian bones, and Pharsalian wars, and Cato, grave champion of Freedom, blasted amidst the arms of the divine chief, and Magnus, favourite of the people. Thou shalt shed reverent tears for the crime of Pelusian Canopus, and raise to Pompey a memorial loftier than blood-stained Pharos. These lays shalt thou sing as a youth in early prime, before the age at which Virgil wrote his Gnat. The untutored Muse of bold Ennius shall give way to thine, and the towering frenzy of learned Lucretius, he too who led the Argonauts through the narrow seas, and he who changes bodies from their former shapes. What greater praise can I give? the Aeneid itself, as thou singest to Roman folk, shall do thee homage. Nor will I give thee splendour of song alone, but with the torches of wedlock will bestow on thee a poetess suited to thy genius, for beauty, simplicity, graciousness, wealth, lineage, charm, and loveliness worthy of kindly Venus’ or of Juno’s giving, and myself will chant before your gate the festal marriage-hymn. Alas! ye Fates, too stern and cruel! Alas! that the highest never long endure! Why are lofty things most prone to fall? Why by a cruel chance doth greatness ne’er grow old? Even so is the son of the Nasamonian Thunderer, whose lightning flashed from rising to setting sun, confined in a narrow tomb at Babylon. Even so did Thetis swoon to see Pelides fall, pierced by the hand of coward Paris. Even so did I upon the banks of murmuring Hebrus follow the head of Orpheus not mute in death. Even so on thee—ah! the impious frenzied tyrant!—bidden while singing of battles and with lofty utterance solacing the mighty dead to plunge in Lethe’s rushing stream—O crime, O most foul crime!—on thee too shall silence fall.” She spoke, and with shining quill brushed away her lightly-falling tears.

But thou, whether uplifted in the soaring chariot of fame through the whirling vault of heaven, whither rise more puissant souls, thou lookest down upon the earth and laughest at sepulchres; or whether on Elysian shores that thy deserts have won thee thou hast gained the blissful bower of peace, where the heroes of Pharsalus forgather, and as thy noble lay resounds a Pompey or a Cato bears thee company; or whether a mighty shade, inviolable and proud, thou visitest Tartarus and hearest afar the stripes of the guilty and beholdest Nero pale at the sight of his mother’s torch: be present in shining splendour, and, since Polla calls thee, gain one day, I beg, from the gods of the silent world: open is that door to husbands returning to their brides. She clothes thee not in the shape of an unreal deity, in the wantonness of lying revels, but worships thy very self and has communion with thee in her being’s inmost depths, and wins but empty solace from thy countenance which carved to thy likeness in gold shines above her couch and broods over her untroubled slumbers. Depart far hence, ye Deaths: here is the well-spring of sustaining life. Let stubborn sorrow have an end, and tears of happiness now fall, and the mourning of solemn grief be turned to adoration.