—’Aen’., iv., 460.
(From it she thought she clearly heard
a voice, even the accents of her husband calling
her when night was wrapping the earth with darkness;
and on the roof the lonely owl in funereal strains
kept oft complaining, drawing out into a wail its
protracted notes.)
Similar passages, though not so striking, would be
the picture of Pindar’s Elysium in ‘Tiresias’,
the sentiment pervading ’The Lotos Eaters’
transferred so faithfully from the Greek poets, the
scenery in ‘’none’ so crowded with
details from Homer, Theocritus and Callimachus.
Sometimes we find similes suggested by the classical
poets, but enriched by touches from original observation,
as here in ’The Princess’:—
As one that climbs a peak to gaze O’er
land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag
inward from the deeps, a wall of night Blot out
the slope of sea from verge to shore. ...
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge
the world,
which was plainly suggested by Homer, iv., 275:—
[Greek: hos d’ hot apo skopiaes
eide nephos aipolos anaer erchomenon kata ponton
hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t’ aneuthen eonti,
melanteron aeute pissa, phainet ion kata ponton,
agei de te lailapa pollaen.]
(As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak
sees a cloud coming across the deep with the blast
of the west wind behind it; and to him, being as
he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it
goes along the deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind.)
Bare as a wild wave in the wide North
Sea,
is at least modelled on the simile in ‘Iliad’,
xv., 381-4, with reminiscences of the same similes
in ‘Iliad’, xv., 624, and ‘Iliad’,
iv., 42-56. The simile in the first section of
the ‘Princess’,
As when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,
reminds us of Homer’s
[Greek: hos d’ ote kinaesae
Zephyros Bathulaeion, elthon labros,
epaigixon, epi t’ aemuei astachuessin]
(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield
rushing down with
furious blast, and it bows with all its
ears.)
Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation
as the following—
Ever fail’d to draw
The quiet night into her blood,
from Virgil, ’Aen’., iv., 530:—
Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos oculisve
aut pectore noctem
Accipit.
(And she never relaxes into sleep, or
receives the night in eyes or
bosom),
or than the following (in ‘Enid’) from
Theocritus:—
Arms on which the standing muscle sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o’er a little
stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it.
[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin
akron hyp’ omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylindon
cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais.]
