The woman, sadly caught by guileful words,
145 Is bidden yield her fruit with struggle hard,
And bear her husband's yoke with patient zeal. [1273]
"But thou, to whom the sentence [1274] of the wife
(Who, vanquished, to the dragon pitiless
Yielded) seemed true, shalt through long times deplore
150 Thy labour sad; for thou shalt see, instead
Of wheaten harvest's seed, the thistle rise,
And the thorn plenteously with pointed spines:
So that, with weary heart and mournful breast,
Full many sighs shall furnish anxious food; [1275]
155 Till, in the setting hour of coming death,
To level earth, whence thou thy body draw'st,
Thou be restored." This done, the Lord bestows
Upon the trembling pair a tedious life;
And from the sacred gardens far removes
160 Them downcast, and locates them opposite,
And from the threshold bars them by mid fire,
Wherein from out the swift heat is evolved
A cherubim, [1276] while fierce the hot point glows,
And rolls enfolding flames. And lest their limbs
165 With sluggish cold should be benumbed, the Lord
Hides flayed from cattle's flesh together sews,
With vestures warm their bare limbs covering.
When, therefore, Adam--now believing--felt
(By wedlock taught) his manhood, he confers
170 On his loved wife the mother's name; and, made
Successively by scions twain a sire,
Gives names to stocks [1277] diverse: Caïn the first
Hath for his name, to whom is Abel joined.
The latter's care tended the harmless sheep;
175 The other turned the earth with curved plough.
These, when in course of time [1278] they brought their gifts
To Him who thunders, offered--as their sense
Prompted them--fruits unlike. The elder one
Offered the first-fruits [1279] of the fertile glebes:
180 The other pays his vows with gentle lamb,
Bearing in hand the entrails pure, and fat
Snow-white; and to the Lord, who pious vows
Beholds, is instantly acceptable.
Wherefore with anger cold did Cain glow; [1280]
185 With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins:
"Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern
Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass thine age
Pure from contracted guilt? Cease to essay
With gnawing sense thy brother's ruin, who,
190 Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield."
Not e'en thus softened, he unto the fields
Conducts his brother; whom when overta'en
In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms
Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out.
195 Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven,
Straitly demands "where Abel is on earth? "
He says "he will not as his brother's guard
Be set." Then God outspeaks to him again:
"Doth not the sound of his blood's voice, sent up
200 To Me, ascend unto heaven's lofty pole?
Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom
Shall wait thee. Earth, which with thy kinsman's blood
Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand
Refuse to render back the cursed seeds
205 Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs,
Produce her fruit: that, torpid, thou shalt dash
Thy limbs against each other with much fear."......
------------------------
[1242] Terram.
[1243] Tellus.
[1244] Immensus. See note on the word in the fragment "Concerning the Cursing of the Heathen's Gods."
[1245] Cardine.
[1246] Mundo.
[1247] "Errantia;" so called, probably, either because they appear to move as ships pass them, or because they may be said to "wander" by reason of the constant change which they undergo from the action of the sea, and because of the shifting nature of their sands.
[1248] Terrarum.
[1249] "God called the dry land Earth:" Gen. i. 10.
[1250] i.e., "together with;" it begets both sun and moon.
[1251] i.e., "the fourth day."
[1252] Mundo.
[1253] Or, "lucid"--liquentia.
[1254] i.e., "Power Divine."
[1255] So Milton and Shakespeare.
[1256] As (see above, l. 31) He had all other things.
[1257] See Gen. iii. 20, with the LXX., and the marg. in the Eng. ver.
[1258] Terræ.
[1259] The "gladsome court"--"læta aula"--seems to mean Eden, in which the garden is said to have been planted. See Gen. ii. 8.
[1260] i.e., eastward. See the last reference.
[1261] Ædibus in mediis.
[1262] Terit. So Job (xiv. 19), "The waters wear the stones."
[1263] "Onyx," Eng. ver. See the following piece, l. 277.
[1264] "Bdellium," Eng. Ver.; anthrax, LXX.
[1265] Comp. Ps. xxix. 3, especially in "Great Bible" (xxviii. 3 in LXX.)
[1266] Malum.
[1267] Mali.
[1268] "Numquid poma Deus non omnia nota sacravit?"
[1269] Mundus.
[1270] The writer, supposing it to be night (see 88, 89), seems to mean that the serpent hinted that the fruit would instantly dispel night and restore day. Compare the ensuing lines.
[1271] Mundo.
[1272] Virorum.
[1273] "Servitiumque sui studio perferre mariti;" or, perhaps, "and drudge in patience at her husband's beck."
[1274] "Sententia:" her sentence, or opinion, as to the fruit and its effects.
[1275] Or, "That with heart-weariness and mournful breast Full many sighs may furnish anxious food."
[1276] The writer makes "cherubim"--or "cherubin"--singular. I have therefore retained his mistake. What the "hot point"--"calidus apex"--is, is not clear. It may be an allusion to the "flaming sword" (see Gen. iii. 24); or it may mean the top of the flame.
[1277] Or, "origins"--"orsis"--because Cain and Abel were original types, as it were, of two separate classes of men.
[1278] "Perpetuo;" "in process of time," Eng. ver.; meth' hemeras, LXX. in Gen. iv. 3.
[1279] Quæ prosata fuerant. But, as Wordsworth remarks on Gen. iv., we do not read that Cain's offerings were first-fruits even.
[1280] Quod propter gelida Cain incanduit ira. If this, which is Oehler's and Migne's reading, be correct, the words gelida and incanduit seem to be intentionally contrasted, unless incandescere be used here in a supposed sense of "growing white," "turning pale." Urere is used in Latin of heat and cold indifferently. Calida would, of course, be a ready emendation; but gelida has the advantage of being far more startling.
4. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord.
(Author Uncertain.) [1281]
Who will for me in fitting strain adapt
Field-haunting muses? and with flowers will grace
The spring-tide's rosy gales? And who will give
The summer harvest's heavy stalks mature?
5 And to the autumn's vines their swollen grapes?
Or who in winter's honour will commend
The olives, ever-peaceful? and will ope
Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads?
And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers?
10 Forthwith the breezes of celestial light
I will attune. Now be it granted me
To meet the lightsome [1282] muses! to disclose
The secret rivers on the fluvial top
Of Helicon, [1283] and gladsome woods that grow
15 'Neath other star. [1284] And simultaneously
I will attune in song the eternal flames;
Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense:
What power [1285] moves the solid lands to quake;
And whence the golden light first shot its rays
20 On the new world; or who from gladsome clay
Could man have moulded; whence in empty world [1286]
Our race could have upgrown; and what the greed
Of living which each people so inspires;
What things for ill created are; or what
25 Death's propagation; whence have rosy wreaths
Sweet smell and ruddy hue; what makes the vine
Ferment in gladsome grapes away; and makes
Full granaries by fruit of slender stalks
distended be; or makes the tree grow ripe
30 'Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds
Their increments of vigour various;
And with her young's soft shadowings protects
The mother. Good it is all things to know
Which wondrous are in nature, that it may
35 Be granted us to recognise through all
The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared,
And decked with varied star the new-made world; [1287]
And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth;
And gave the ocean's waters to be stocked
40 With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands,
With living creatures fertilized. Such strains
With stately [1288] muses will I spin, and waves
Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose:
And may this strain of mine the gladsome shower
45 Catch, which from placid clouds doth come, and flows
Deeply and all unsought into men's souls,
And guide it into our new-fumed lands
In copious rills. [1289]
Now come: if any one
Still ignorant of God, and knowing naught
50 Of life to come, [1290] would fain attain to touch
The care-effacing living nymph, and through
The swift waves' virtue his lost life repair,
And 'scape the penalties of flame eterne, [1291]
And rather win the guerdons of the life
55 To come, let such remember God is One,
Alone the object of our prayers; who 'neath
His threshold hath the whole world poised; Himself
Eternally abiding, and to be
Alway for aye; holding the ages [1292] all;
60 Alone, before all ages; [1293] unbegotten,
Limitless God; who holds alone His seat
Supernal; supereminent alone
Above high heavens; omnipotent alone;
Whom all things do obey; who for Himself
65 Formed, when it pleased Him, man for aye; and gave
Him to be pastor of beasts tame, and lord
Of wild; who by a word [1294] could stretch forth heaven;
And with a word could solid earth suspend;
And quicklier than word [1295] had the seas wave
70 Disjoined; [1296] and man's dear form with His own hands
Did love to mould; and furthermore did will
His own fair likeness [1297] to exist in him;
And by His Spirit on his countenance
The breath [1298] of life did breathe.
Unmindful he
75 Of God, such guilt rashly t' incur! Beyond
The warning's range he was not ought to touch. [1299]
One fruit illicit, whence he was to know
Forthwith how to discriminate alike
Evil and equity, God him forbade
80 To touch. What functions of the world [1300] did God
Permit to man, and sealed the sweet sweet pledge
Of His own love! and jurisdiction gave
O'er birds, and granted him both deep and soil
To tame, and mandates useful did impart
85 Of dear salvation! 'Neath his sway He gave
The lands, the souls of flying things, the race
Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild,
Of beasts, and the sea's race, and monsterforms
Shapeless of swimming things. But since so soon
90 The primal man by primal crime transgressed
The law, and left the mandates of the Lord
(Led by a wife who counselled all the ills),
By death he 'gan to perish. Woman 'twas
Who sin's first ill committed, and (the law
95 Transgressed) deceived her husband. Eve, induced
By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved
To her own self, with her whole race as well,
A procreatrix of funereal woes.
Hence unanticipated wickedness,
100 Hence death, like seed, for aye, is scattered. Then
More frequent grew atrocious deed; and toil
More savage set the corrupt orb astir:
(This lure the crafty serpent spread, inspired
By envy's self:) then peoples more invent
105 Practices of ill deeds; and by ill deeds
Gave birth to seeds of wickedness.
And so
The only Lord, whose is the power supreme.
Who o'er the heights the summits holds of heaven
Supreme, and in exalted regions dwells
110 In lofty light for ages, mindful too
Of present time, and of futurity
Prescient beforehand, keeps the progeny
Of ill-desert, and all the souls which move
By reason's force much-erring man--nor less
115 Their tardy bodies governs He--against
The age decreed, so soon as, stretched in death,
Men lay aside their ponderous limbs, and light
As air, shall go, their earthly bonds undone,
And take in diverse parts their proper spheres
120 (But some He bids be forthwith by glad gales
Recalled to life, and be in secret kept
To wait the decreed law's awards, until
Their bodies with resuscitated limbs
Revive. [1301] ) Then shall men 'gin to weigh the awards
125 Of their first life, and on their crime and faults
To think, and keep them for their penalties
Which will be far from death; and mindful grow
Of pious duties, by God's judgments taught;
To wait expectant for their penalty
130 And their descendants', fruit of their own crime;
Or else to live wholly the life of sheep, [1302]
Without a name; and in God's ear, now deaf,
Pour unavailing weeping. Shall not God
Almighty, 'neath whose law are all things ruled,
135 Be able after death life to restore?
Or is there ought which the creation's Lord
Unable seems to do? If, darkness chased,
He could outstretch the light, and could compound
All the world's mass by a word suddenly,
140 And raise by potent voice all things from nought,
Why out of somewhat [1303] could He not compound
The well-known shape which erst had been, which He
Had moulded formerly; and bid the form
Arise assimilated to Himself
145 Again? Since God's are all things, earth the more
Gives Him all back; for she will, when He bids,
Unweave whate'er she woven had before.
If one, perhaps, laid on sepulchral pyre,
The flame consumed; or one in its blind waves
150 The ocean have dismembered; if of one
The entrails have, in hunger, satisfied
The fishes; or on any's limbs wild beasts