Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Hymen O Hymenaeus, O Hymen come Hymenaeus.

YOUTHS.

Look as a lone lorn vine in a bare field sorrily growing,

Never an arm uplifts, no grape to maturity ripens,

Only with headlong weight her tender body declining,

Bows, till topmost spray and roots meet feebly together;

Her no peasant swain, nor bullock tendeth her ever;

Yet to the bachelor elm if marriage-fortune unite her,

Many a peasant tills and bullocks many about her;

Such is a maid untoy'd with as yet, in loneliness aging;

Wins she a bridegroom meet, in time's warm fulness arriving,

So to the man more dear, and less unlovely to parents.

O then, clasp thy love, nor fight, fair maiden, against him.

Sin 'twere surely to fight; thy father gave to his arms thee,

Father's self and mother; obey nor wrongly defy them.

. . . . . . . . . .

Virgin's crown thou claim'st not alone, but partly the parents,

Father's one whole part, one goes to the mother allotted,

Rests one only to thee; O fight not with them alone thou,

Both to a son their rights and both their dowry deliver.

Hymen O Hymenaeus, O Hymen come Hymenaeus.

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In a swift ship Attis hasting over ocean a mariner

When he gained the wood, the Phrygian, with a foot of agility,

When he near'd the leafy forest, dark sanctuary divine;

By unearthly fury frenzied, a bewildered agony,

With a flint of edge he shatter'd to the ground his humanity.

Then aghast to see the lost limbs, the deform'd inutility,

While still the gory dabble did anew the soil pollute,

With a snowy palm the woman took affrayed a taborine.

Taborine, the trump that hails thee, Cybele, thy initiant.

Then a dainty finger heaving to the tremulous hide o' the bull,

He began this invocation to the company, spirit-awed.

"To the groves, ye sexless eunuchs, in assembly to Cybele,

Lost sheep that err rebellious to the lady Dindymene;

Ye, who all awing for exile in a country of aliens,

My unearthly rule obeying to be with me, my retinue,

Could aby the surly salt seas' mid inexorability,

Could in utter hate to lewdness your sex dishabilitate;

Let a gong clash glad emotion, set a giddy fury to roam,

All slow delay be banish'd, thither his ye thither away

To the Phrygian home, the wild wood, to the sanctuary divine;

Where rings the noisy cymbal, taborines are in echoing,

On a curved oat the Phrygian deep pipeth a melody,

With a fury toss the Maenads clad in ivies a frolic head,

To a barbarous ululation the religious orgy wakes,

Where fleets across the silence Cybele's holy family;

Thither his we, so beseems us; to a mazy measure away."

Thus as Attis, a woman, Attis, not a woman, urg'd the rest,

On a sudden yell'd in huddling agitation every tongue,

Taborines give airy murmur, give a clangorous echo gongs,

With a rush the brotherhood hastens to the woods, the bosom of Ide.

Then in agony, breathless, errant, flush'd wearily, cometh on

Taborine behind him, Attis, thoro' leafy glooms a guide,

As a restive heifer yields not to the cumbrous onerous yoke.

Thither his the votaress eunuchs with an emulous alacrity.

Now faintly sickly plodding to the goddess's holy shrine,

They took the rest which easeth long toil, nor ate withal.

Slow sleep descends on eyelids ready drowsily to decline,

In a soft repose departeth the devout spirit-agony.

When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orient

Scann'd lustrous air, the rude seas, earth's massy solidity,

When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime,

Then arous'd was Attis; o'er him sleep hastily fled away

To Pasithea's arms immortal with a tremulous hovering.

But awaked from his reposing, the delirious anguish o'er,

When as Attis' heart recalled him to the past solitarily,

Saw clearly where he stood, what, an annihilate apathy,

With a soul that heaved within him, to the water he fled again.

Then as o'er the waste of ocean with a rainy eye he gazed

To the land of home he murmur'd miserable a soliloquy.

"Mother-home of all affection, dear home, my nativity,

Whom in anguish I deserting, as in hatred a runaway

From a master, hither have hurried to the lonely woods of Ide,

To be with the snows, the wild beasts, in a wintery domicile,

To be near each savage houser that a surly fury provokes,

What horizon, O beloved, may attain to thee anywhere?

Yet an eyeless orb is yearning ineffectually to thee.

For a little ere returneth the delirious hour again.

Shall a homeless Attis hie him to the groves uninhabited?

Shall he leave a country, wealth, friends? bid a sire, a mother, adieu?

The palaestra lost, the forum, the gymnasium, the course?

O unhappy, fall a-weeping, thou unhappy soul, for aye.

For is honour of any semblance, any beauty but of it I?

Who, a woman here, in order was a man, a youth, a boy,

To the sinewy ring a fam'd flower, the gymnasium's applause.

With a throng about the portal, with a populace in the gate,

With a flowery coronal hanging upon every column of home,

When anew my chamber open'd, as awoke the sunny morn.

O am I to live the god's slave? feodary be to Cybele?

Or a Maenad I, an eunuch? or a part of a body slain?

Or am I to range the green tracts upon Ida snowy-chill?

Be beneath the stately caverns colonnaded of Asia?

Be with hind that haunts the covert, or in hursts that house the boar?

Woe, woe the deed accomplish'd! woe, woe, the shame to me!"

From rosy lips ascending when approached the gusty cry

To celestial ears recording such a message inly borne,

Cybele, the thong relaxing from a lion-haled yoke,

Said, aleft the goad addressing to the foe that awes the flocks—

"Come, a service; haste, my brave one; let a fury the madman arm,

Let a fury, a frenzy prick him to return to the wood again,

This is he my hest declineth, the unheedy, the runaway.

From an angry tail refuse not to abide the sinewy stroke,

To a roar let all the regions echo answer everywhere,

On a nervy neck be tossing that uneasy tawny mane."

So in ire she spake, adjusting disunitedly then her yoke

At his own rebuke the lion doth his heart to a fury spur,

With a step, a roar, a bursting unarrested of any brake.

But anear the foamy places when he came, to the frothy beach,

When he saw the sexless Attis by the seas' level opaline,

Then he rushed upon him; affrighted to the wintery wood he flew,

Cybele's for aye, for all years, in her order a votaress.

Holy deity, great Cybele, holy lady Dindymene,

Be to me afar for ever that inordinate agony.

O another hound to madness, O another hurry to rage!

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Born on Pelion height, so legend hoary relateth,

Pines once floated adrift on Neptune billowy streaming

On to the Phasis flood, to the borders Æætean.

Then did a chosen array, rare bloom of valorous Argos,

Fain from Colchian earth her fleece of glory to ravish,

Dare with a keel of swiftness adown salt seas to be fleeting,

Swept with fir-blades oary the fair level azure of Ocean.

Then that deity bright, who keeps in cities her high ward,

Made to delight them a car, to the light breeze airily scudding,

Texture of upright pine with a keel's curved rondure uniting.

That first sailer of all burst ever on Amphitrite.

Scarcely the forward snout tore up that wintery water,

Scarcely the wave foamed white to the reckless harrow of oarsmen,