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(From Pharsalia, Book X)
Translated by Nicholas Rowe
KNOW then, to all those stars, by nature driven | |
| In opposition to revolving heaven, | |
| Some one peculiar influence was given. | |
| The sun the seasons of the year supplies, | |
| And bids the evening and the morning rise; | 5 |
| Commands the planets with superior force, | |
| And keeps each wandering light to his appointed course. | |
| The silver moon o’er briny seas presides, | |
| And heaves huge ocean with alternate tides. | |
| Saturn’s cold rays in icy climes prevail; | 10 |
| Mars rules the winds, the storm, and rattling hail; | |
| Where Jove ascends, the skies are still serene; | |
| And fruitful Venus is the genial queen; | |
| While every limpid spring and falling stream | |
| Submits to radiant Hermes’ reigning beam. | 15 |
| When in the Crab the humid ruler shines, | |
| And to the sultry Lion near inclines, | |
| There fixed immediate o’er Nile’s latent source, | |
| He strikes the watery stores with ponderous force; | |
| Nor can the flood bright Maia’s son withstand, | 20 |
| But heaves, like ocean at the moon’s command; | |
| His waves ascend, obedient as the seas, | |
| And reach their destined height by just degrees. | |
| Nor to its bank returns the enormous tide, | |
| Till Libra’s equal scales the days and nights divide. | 25 |
| Antiquity, unknowing and deceived, | |
| In dreams of Ethiopian snows believed: | |
| From hills they taught, how melting currents ran, | |
| When the first swelling of the flood began. | |
| But ah, how vain the thought! no Boreas there | 30 |
| In icy bonds constrains the wintry year, | |
| But sultry southern winds eternal rain, | |
| And scorching suns the swarthy natives stain. | |
| Yet more, whatever flood the frost congeals, | |
| Melts as the genial spring’s return he feels; | 35 |
| While Nile’s redundant waters never rise, | |
| Till the hot Dog inflames the summer skies; | |
| Nor to his banks his shrinking stream confines, | |
| Till high in heaven the autumnal balance shines. | |
| Unlike his watery brethren he presides, | 40 |
| And by new laws his liquid empire guides. | |
| From dropping seasons no increase he knows, | |
| Nor feels the fleecy showers of melting snows. | |
| His river swells not idly, ere the land | |
| The timely office of his waves demand; | 45 |
| But knows his lot, by providence assigned, | |
| To cool the season, and refresh mankind, | |
| Whene’er the Lion sheds his fires around, | |
| And Cancer burns Syene’s parching ground; | |
| Then, at the prayer of nations, comes the Nile, | 50 |
| And kindly tempers up the mouldering soil. | |
| Nor from the plains the covering God retreats, | |
| Till the rude fervor of the skies abates; | |
| Till Phœbus into milder autumn fades, | |
| And Meroë projects her lengthening shades. | 55 |
| Nor let inquiring sceptics ask the cause, | |
| ’T is Jove’s command, and these are nature’s laws. | |
| Others of old, as vainly too, have thought | |
| By western winds the spreading deluge brought; | |
| While at fixed times, for many a day, they last, | 60 |
| Possess the skies, and drive a constant blast; | |
| Collected clouds united zephyrs bring, | |
| And shed huge rains from many a dropping wing, | |
| To heave the flood, and swell the abounding spring. | |
| Or when the airy brethren’s steadfast force | 65 |
| Resists the rushing current’s downward course, | |
| Backward he rolls indignant, to his head: | |
| While o’er the plains his heapy waves are spread. | |
| Some have believed, that spacious channels go | |
| Through the dark entrails of the earth below; | 70 |
| Through these, by turns, revolving rivers pass, | |
| And secretly pervade the mighty mass; | |
| Through these the sun, when from the north he flies, | |
| And cuts the glowing Ethiopic skies, | |
| From distant streams attracts their liquid stores, | 75 |
| And through Nile’s spring the assembled waters pours: | |
| Till Nile, o’erburdened, disembogues the load, | |
| And spews the foamy deluge all abroad. | |
| Sages there have been, too, who long maintained | |
| That ocean’s waves through porous earth are drained; | 80 |
| ’T is thence their saltness they no longer keep, | |
| By slow degrees still freshening as they creep; | |
| Till at a period Nile receives them all, | |
| And pours them loosely spreading, as they fall. | |
| The stars, and sun himself, as some have said, | 85 |
| By exhalations from the deep are fed; | |
| And when the golden ruler of the day | |
| Through Cancer’s fiery sign pursues his way, | |
| His beams attract too largely from the sea; | |
| The refuse of his draughts the nights return, | 90 |
| And more than fill the Nile’s capacious urn. | |
| Were I the dictates of my soul to tell, | |
| And speak the reasons of the watery swell, | |
| To Providence the task I should assign, | |
| And find the cause in workmanship divine. | 95 |
| Less streams we trace, unerring, to their birth, | |
| And know the parent earth which brought them forth: | |
| While this, as early as the world begun, | |
| Ran thus and must continue thus to run; | |
| And still unfathomed by our search, shall own | 100 |
| No cause, but Jove’s commanding will alone. | |
| Nor, Cæsar, is thy search of knowledge strange: | |
| Well may thy boundless soul desire to range, | |
| Well may she strive Nile’s fountain to explore; | |
| Since mighty kings have sought the same before; | 105 |
| Each for the first discoverer would be known, | |
| And hand, to future times, the secret down; | |
| But still their powers were exercised in vain, | |
| While latent Nature mocked their fruitless pain. | |
| Philip’s great son, whom Memphis still records, | 110 |
| The chief of her illustrious sceptred lords, | |
| Sent, of his own, a chosen number forth, | |
| To trace the wondrous stream’s mysterious birth. | |
| Through Ethiopia’s plains they journeyed on, | |
| Till the hot sun opposed the burning zone: | 115 |
| There, by the God’s resistless beams repelled, | |
| An unbeginning stream they still beheld. | |
| Fierce came Sesostris from the eastern dawn, | |
| On his proud car by captive monarchs drawn; | |
| His lawless will, impatient of a bound, | 120 |
| Commanded Nile’s hid fountain to be found: | |
| But sooner much the tyrant might have known | |
| Thy famed Hesperian Po, or Gallic Rhone. | |
| Cambyses, too, his daring Persians led, | |
| Where hoary age makes white the Ethiop’s head; | 125 |
| Till sore distressed and destitute of food, | |
| He stained his hungry jaws with human blood; | |
| Till half his host the other half devoured, | |
| And left the Nile behind them unexplored. | |
| Of thy forbidden head, thou sacred stream, | 130 |
| Nor fiction dares to speak, nor poets dream. | |
| Through various nations roll thy waters down, | |
| By many seen, though still by all unknown; | |
| No land presumes to claim thee for her own. | |
| For me, my humble tale no more shall tell, | 135 |
| Than what our just records demonstrate well; | |
| Than God, who bade thee thus mysterious flow, | |
| Permits the narrow mind of man to know. | |
| Far in the south the daring waters rise, | |
| As in disdain of Cancer’s burning skies; | 140 |
| Thence with a downward course, they seek the main, | |
| Direct against the lazy northern wain; | |
| Unless when, partially, thy winding tide | |
| Turns to the Libyan or Arabian side. | |
| The distant Seres first behold thee flow; | 145 |
| Nor yet thy spring the distant Seres know. | |
| Midst sooty Ethiops next, thy current roams; | |
| The sooty Ethiops wonder whence it comes: | |
| Nature conceals thy infant stream with care, | |
| Nor lets thee, but in majesty, appear. | 150 |
| Upon thy banks astonished nations stand, | |
| Nor dare assign thy rise to one peculiar land. | |
| Exempt from vulgar laws thy waters run, | |
| Nor take their various seasons from the sun; | |
| Though high in heaven the fiery solstice stand, | 155 |
| Obedient winter comes, at thy command. | |
| From pole to pole thy boundless waves extend; | |
| One never knows thy rise, nor one thy end. | |
| By Meroë thy stream divided roves, | |
| And winds encircling round her ebon groves; | 160 |
| Of sable hue the costly timbers stand, | |
| Dark as the swarthy natives of the land: | |
| Yet, though tall woods in wide abundance spread, | |
| Their leafy tops afford no friendly shade; | |
| So vertically shine the solar rays, | 165 |
| And from the Lion dart the downward blaze. | |
| From thence, through deserts dry, thou journey’st on, | |
| Nor shrink’st, diminished by the torrid zone, | |
| Strong in thyself, collected, full, and one. | |
| Anon, thy streams are parcelled o’er the plain, | 170 |
| Anon the scattered currents meet again; | |
| Jointly they flow, where Philæ’s gates divide | |
| Our fertile Egypt from Arabia’s side; | |
| Thence, with a peaceful, soft descent, they creep, | |
| And seek, insensibly, the distant deep; | 175 |
| Till through seven mouths the famous flood is lost, | |
| On the last limits of our Pharian coast; | |
| Where Gaza’s isthmus rises, to restrain | |
| The Erythræan from the midland main. | |
| Who that beholds thee, Nile! thus gently flow, | 180 |
| With scarce a wrinkle on thy glassy brow, | |
| Can guess thy rage, when rocks resist thy force, | |
| And hurl thee headlong in thy downward course; | |
| When spouting cararacts thy torrents pour, | |
| And nations tremble at the deafening roar; | 185 |
| When thy proud waves with indignation rise, | |
| And dash their foamy fury to the skies? | |
| These wonders reedy Abatos can tell, | |
| And the tall cliffs that first declare thy swell; | |
| The cliffs with ignorance of old believed | 190 |
| Thy parent veins, and for thy spring received. | |
| From thence huge mountains Nature’s hand provides, | |
| To bank thy too luxurious river’s sides; | |
| As in a vale thy current she restrains, | |
| Nor suffers thee to spread the Libyan plains: | 195 |
| At Memphis, first, free liberty she yields, | |
| And lets thee loose to float the thirsty fields. | |
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