* * * * *

     “I am not—­am not what I seem to sight: 
       What Roland was, is dead and under ground,
     Slain by that most ungrateful lady’s spite,
       Whose faithlessness inflicted such a wound. 
     Divided from the flesh, I am his sprite,
       Which in this hell, tormented, walks its round,
     To be, but in its shadow left above,
     A warning to all such as trust in love.”

     All night about the forest roved the count,
       And, at the break of daily light, was brought
     By his unhappy fortune to the fount,
       Where his inscription young Medoro wrought. 
     To see his wrongs inscribed upon that mount
       Inflamed his fury so, in him was naught
     But turned to hatred, frenzy, rage, and spite;
     Nor paused he more, but bared his falchion bright,

     Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,
       Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped. 
     Woe worth each sapling and that caverned rock
       Where Medore and Angelica were read! 
     So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
       Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed. 
     And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
     From such tempestous wrath was ill secure.

* * * * *

     So fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew,
       That all obscured remained the warrior’s sprite;
     Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew,
       Or wondrous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight;
     But neither this, nor bill, nor axe to hew,
       Was needed by Orlando’s peerless might. 
     He of his prowess gave high proofs and full,
     Who a tall pine uprooted at a pull.

     He many others, with as little let
      As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill uptore;
     And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset,
      And beech and mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar. 
     He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net,
      Does, to prepare the champaign for his lore,
     By stubble, rush, and nettle stalk; and broke,
     Like these, old sturdy trees and stems of oak.

     The shepherd swains, who hear the tumult nigh,
      Leaving their flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
     Some here, some there, across the forest hie,
      And hurry thither, all, the cause to see. 
     But I have reached such point, my history,
      If I o’erpass this bound, may irksome be. 
     And I my story will delay to end
     Rather than by my tediousness offend.

ARISTOPHANES

(B.C. 448-380?)

BY PAUL SHOREY

The birth-year of Aristophanes is placed about 448 B.C., on the ground that he is said to have been almost a boy when his first comedy was presented in 427.  His last play, the ‘Plutus,’ was produced in 388, and there is no evidence that he long survived this date.  Little is known of his life beyond the allusions, in the Parabases of the ‘Acharnians,’ ‘Knights,’ and ‘Wasps,’ to his prosecution by Cleon, to his own or his father’s estate at Aegina, and to his premature baldness.  He left three sons who also wrote comedies.