| |
(From The Lusiad, Book III)
Translated by William Julius Mickle
WHILE glory thus Alonzo’s name adorned, | |
| To Lisboa’s shores the happy chief returned, | |
| In glorious peace and well-deserved repose | |
| His course of fame and honored age to close. | |
| When now, O king, a damsel’s fate severe, | 5 |
| A fate which ever claims the woful tear, | |
| Disgraced his honors. On the nymph’s lorn head | |
| Relentless rage its bitterest rancor shed; | |
| Yet such the zeal her princely lover bore, | |
| Her breathless corse the crown of Lisboa wore. | 10 |
| ’T was thou, O Love, whose dreaded shafts control | |
| The hind’s rude heart, and tear the hero’s soul; | |
| Thou ruthless power, with bloodshed never cloyed, | |
| ’T was thou thy lovely votary destroyed. | |
| Thy thirst still burning for a deeper woe, | 15 |
| In vain to thee the tears of beauty flow; | |
| The breast, that feels thy purest flames divine, | |
| With spouting gore must bathe thy cruel shrine. | |
| Such thy dire triumphs!—Thou, O Nymph, the while, | |
| Prophetic of the god’s unpitying guile, | 20 |
| In tender scenes by lovesick fancy wrought, | |
| By fear oft shifted as by fancy brought, | |
| In sweet Mondego’s ever-verdant bowers, | |
| Languished away the slow and lonely hours: | |
| While now, as terror waked thy boding fears, | 25 |
| The conscious stream received thy pearly tears; | |
| And now, as hope revived the brighter flame, | |
| Each echo sighed thy princely lover’s name. | |
| Nor less could absence from thy prince remove | |
| The dear remembrance of his distant love: | 30 |
| Thy looks, thy smiles, before him ever glow, | |
| And o’er his melting heart endearing flow: | |
| By night his slumbers bring thee to his arms, | |
| By day his thoughts still wander o’er thy charms, | |
| By night, by day, each thought thy loves employ, | 35 |
| Each thought the memory or the hope of joy. | |
| Though fairest princely dames invoked his love, | |
| No princely dame his constant faith could move; | |
| For thee alone his constant passion burned, | |
| For thee the proffered royal maids he scorned. | 40 |
| Ah, hope of bliss too high!—the princely dames | |
| Refused, dread rage the father’s breast inflames: | |
| He, with an old man’s wintry eye, surveys | |
| The youth’s fond love, and coldly with it weighs | |
| The people’s murmurs of his son’s delay | 45 |
| To bless the nation with his nuptial day; | |
| (Alas! the nuptial day was passed unknown, | |
| Which but when crowned the prince could dare to own;) | |
| And with the fair one’s blood the vengeful sire | |
| Resolves to quench his Pedro’s faithful fire. | 50 |
| O thou dread sword, oft stained with heroes’ gore, | |
| Thou awful terror of the prostrate Moor, | |
| What rage could aim thee at a female breast, | |
| Unarmed, by softness and by love possessed? | |
| |
| Dragged from her bower by murderous, ruffian hands, | 55 |
| Before the frowning king fair Ignez stands; | |
| Her tears of artless innocence, her air | |
| So mild, so lovely, and her face so fair, | |
| Moved the stern monarch; when with eager zeal | |
| Her fierce destroyers urged the public weal: | 60 |
| Dread rage again the tyrant’s soul possessed, | |
| And his dark brow his cruel thoughts confessed. | |
| O’er her fair face a sudden paleness spread; | |
| Her throbbing heart with generous anguish bled, | |
| Anguish to view her lover’s hopeless woes; | 65 |
| And all the mother in her bosom rose. | |
| Her beauteous eyes, in trembling tear-drops drowned, | |
| To heaven she lifted, but her hands were bound; | |
| Then on her infants turned the piteous glance, | |
| The look of bleeding woe: the babes advance, | 70 |
| Smiling in innocence of infant age, | |
| Unawed, unconscious of their grandsire’s rage; | |
| To whom, as bursting sorrow gave the flow, | |
| The native, heart-sprung eloquence of woe, | |
| The lovely captive thus: “O monarch, hear, | 75 |
| If e’er to thee the name of man was dear,— | |
| If prowling tigers, or the wolfs wild brood, | |
| Inspired by nature with the lust of blood, | |
| Have yet been moved the weeping babe to spare, | |
| Nor left, but tended with a nurse’s care, | 80 |
| As Rome’s great founders to the world were given; | |
| Shalt thou, who wear’st the sacred stamp of Heaven, | |
| The human form divine,—shalt thou deny | |
| That aid, that pity, which e’en beasts supply? | |
| O that thy heart were, as thy looks declare, | 85 |
| Of human mould! superfluous were my prayer; | |
| Thou couldst not then a helpless damsel slay, | |
| Whose sole offence in fond affection lay, | |
| In faith to him who first his love confessed, | |
| Who first to love allured her virgin breast. | 90 |
| In these my babes shalt thou thine image see, | |
| And still tremendous hurl thy rage on me? | |
| Me, for their sakes, if yet thou wilt not spare, | |
| O, let these infants prove thy pious care! | |
| Yet pity’s lenient current ever flows | 95 |
| From that brave breast where genuine valor glows; | |
| That thou art brave let vanquished Afric tell, | |
| Then let thy pity o’er mine anguish swell; | |
| Ah! let my woes, unconscious of a crime, | |
| Procure mine exile to some barbarous clime; | 100 |
| Give me to wander o’er the burning plains | |
| Of Lybia’s deserts, or the wild domains | |
| Of Scythia’s snow-clad rocks and frozen shore; | |
| There let me, hopeless of return, deplore. | |
| Where ghastly horror fills the dreary vale, | 105 |
| Where shrieks and howlings die on every gale, | |
| The lion’s roaring, and the tiger’s yell, | |
| There with mine infant race consigned to dwell, | |
| There let me try that piety to find, | |
| In vain by me implored from human-kind: | 110 |
| There in some dreary cavern’s rocky womb, | |
| Amid the horrors of sepulchral gloom, | |
| For him whose love I mourn, my love shall glow, | |
| The sigh shall murmur, and the tear shall flow: | |
| All my fond wish, and all my hope, to rear | 115 |
| These infant pledges of a love so dear,— | |
| Amidst my griefs a soothing, glad employ, | |
| Amidst my fears a woful, hopeless joy.” | |
| |
| In tears she uttered. As the frozen snow, | |
| Touched by the spring’s mild ray, begins to flow, | 120 |
| So just began to melt his stubborn soul, | |
| As mild-rayed pity o’er the tyrant stole: | |
| But destiny forbade. With eager zeal, | |
| Again pretended for the public weal, | |
| Her fierce accusers urged her speedy doom; | 125 |
| Again dark rage diffused its horrid gloom | |
| O’er stern Alonzo’s brow: swift at the sign, | |
| Their swords unsheathed around her brandished shine. | |
| O foul disgrace, of knighthood lasting stain, | |
| By men of arms an helpless lady slain! | 130 |
| |
| Thus Pyrrhus, burning with unmanly ire, | |
| Fulfilled the mandate of his furious sire: | |
| Disdainful of the frantic matron’s prayer, | |
| On fair Polyxena, her last fond care, | |
| He rushed, his blade yet warm with Priam’s gore, | 135 |
| And dashed the daughter on the sacred floor; | |
| While mildly she her raving mother eyed, | |
| Resigned her bosom to the sword, and died. | |
| Thus Ignez, while her eyes to Heaven appeal, | |
| Resigns her bosom to the murdering steel: | 140 |
| That snowy neck, whose matchless form sustained | |
| The loveliest face, where all the Graces reigned, | |
| Whose charms so long the gallant prince inflamed, | |
| That her pale corse was Lisboa’s queen proclaimed,— | |
| That snowy neck was stained with spouting gore; | 145 |
| Another sword her lovely bosom tore. | |
| The flowers, that glistened with her tears bedewed, | |
| Now shrunk and languished with her blood imbrued. | |
| As when a rose, erewhile of bloom so gay, | |
| Thrown from the careless virgin’s breast away, | 150 |
| Lies faded on the plain, the living red, | |
| The snowy white, and all its fragrance fled; | |
| So from her cheeks the roses died away, | |
| And pale in death the beauteous Ignez lay. | |
| With dreadful smiles, and crimsoned with her blood, | 155 |
| Round the wan victim the stern murderers stood, | |
| Unmindful of the sure, though future hour, | |
| Sacred to vengeance and her lover’s power. | |
| |
| O sun, couldst thou so foul a crime behold, | |
| Nor veil thine head in darkness,—as of old | 160 |
| A sudden night unwonted horror cast | |
| O’er that dire banquet, where the sire’s repast | |
| The son’s torn limbs supplied? Yet you, ye vales, | |
| Ye distant forests, and ye flowery dales, | |
| When, pale and sinking to the dreadful fall, | 165 |
| You heard her quivering lips on Pedro call; | |
| Your faithful echoes caught the parting sound, | |
| And “Pedro! Pedro!” mournful, sighed around. | |
| Nor less the wood-nymphs of Mondego’s groves | |
| Bewailed the memory of her hapless loves: | 170 |
| Her griefs they wept, and to a plaintive rill | |
| Transformed their tears, which weeps and murmurs still: | |
| To give immortal pity to her woe, | |
| They taught the rivulet through her bowers to flow; | |
| And still through violet beds the fountain pours | 175 |
| Its plaintive wailing, and is named Amours. | |
| Nor long her blood for vengeance cried in vain: | |
| Her gallant lord begins his awful reign. | |
| In vain her murderers for refuge fly; | |
| Spain’s wildest hills no place of rest supply. | 180 |
| The injured lover’s and the monarch’s ire, | |
| And stern-browed justice, in their doom conspire; | |
| In hissing flames they die, and yield their souls in fire. | |
| |
