IN QUANTITY.

ON TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER.

Hexameters and Pentameters.

HESE lame hexameters the strong

wing'd music of Homer!

No-but a most burlesque barba

MILTON.

Alcaics.

MIGHTY-MOUTH'D inventor of

harmonies,

O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England,

Milton, a name to resound for ages;

Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,

Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset-

Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,

Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,

And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods

Whisper in odorous heights of even.

Hendecasyllabics.

YOU chorus of indolent reviewers,

Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,

Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem

All composed in a metre of Catullus,

All in quantity, careful of my motion,

Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,

Lest I fall unawares before the people,

Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.

Should I flounder awhile without a tumble

Thro' this metrification of Catullus,

They should speak to me not without a welcome,

All that chorus of indolent reviewers.

Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,

So fantastical is the dainty metre.

Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.

O blatant Magazines, regard me rather-
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment-
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half coquette-like

Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.

SPECIMEN OF A TRANSLATION OF

THE ILIAD IN BLANK VERSE.

O Hector spake; the Trojans roar'd applause ;

Then loosed their sweating horses

from the yoke,

And each beside his chariot bound his own;

And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep

In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine And bread from out the houses brought, and heap'd

Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain

Roll'd the rich vapour far into the heaven.

And these all night upon the bridge1 of war

Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed:

1 Or, ridge.

As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart :
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;

And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.

Iliad VIII. 542-561.