Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
Rhodopè.Never shall I forget the morning when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth fringed with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully into the corn chest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking however about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out; and I know not what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many; and some he placed in my bosom, and some in my hair. But I told him with captious pride, first that I could arrange them better, and again that I would have only the white. However, when he had selected all the white, and I had placed a few of them according to my fancy, I told him (rising in my slipper) he might crown me with the remainder. The splendour of my apparel gave me a sensation of authority. Soon as the flowers had taken their station on my head, I expressed a dignified satisfaction at the taste displayed by my father, just as if I could have seen how they appeared! But he knew that there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, and perhaps we divided the latter (alas! not both) pretty equally. He now took me into the market place, where a concourse of people was waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and looked at me; some commending, others disparaging; but all agreeing that I was slender and delicate, that I could not live long, and that I should give much trouble. Many would have bought the chlamys, but there was something less saleable in the child and flowers.
Æsop.Had thy features been coarse and thy voice rustic, they would all have patted thy cheeks and found no fault in thee.
Rhod.As it was, every one had bought exactly such another in time past, and been a loser by it. At these speeches I perceived the flowers tremble slightly on my bosom, from my father’s agitation. Although he scoffed at them, knowing my healthiness, he was troubled internally, and said many short prayers, not very unlike imprecations, turning his head aside. Proud was I, prouder than ever, when at last several talents were offered for me, and by the very man who in the beginning had undervalued me the most, and prophesied the worst of me. My father scowled at him, and refused the money. I thought he was playing a game, and began to wonder what it could be, since I had never seen it played before. Then I fancied it might be some celebration because plenty had returned to the city, insomuch that my father had bartered the last of the corn he hoarded. I grew more and more delighted at the sport. But soon there advanced an elderly man, who said gravely, “Thou hast stolen this child: her vesture alone is worth above a hundred drachmas. Carry her home again to her parents, and do it directly, or Nemesis and the Eumenides will overtake thee.” Knowing the estimation in which my father had always been holden by his fellow citizens, I laughed again, and pinched his ear. He, although naturally choleric, burst forth into no resentment at these reproaches, but said calmly, “I think I know thee by name, O guest! Surely thou art Xanthus the Samian. Deliver this child from famine.”
Again I laughed aloud and heartily; and thinking it was now my part of the game, I held out both my arms and protruded my whole body towards the stranger. He would not receive me from my father’s neck, but he asked me with benignity and solicitude if I was hungry; at which I laughed again, and more than ever; for it was early in the morning, soon after the first meal, and my father had nourished me most carefully and plentifully in all the days of the famine. But Xanthus, waiting for no answer, took out of a sack, which one of his slaves carried at his side, a cake of wheaten bread and a piece of honeycomb, and gave them to me. I held the honeycomb to my father’s mouth, thinking it the most of a dainty. He dashed it to the ground; but seizing the bread, he began to devour it ferociously. This also I thought was in play; and I clapped my hands at his distortions. But Xanthus looked on him like one afraid, and smote the cake from him, crying aloud, “Name the price.” My father now placed me in his arms, naming a price much below what the other had offered, saying, “The gods are ever with thee, O Xanthus! therefore to thee do I consign my child.” But while Xanthus was counting out the silver, my father seized the cake again, which the slave had taken up and was about to replace in the wallet. His hunger was exasperated by the taste and the delay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning round in the old woman’s bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw my beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless. The more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away; and many were soon between us. Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of famine long before: alas! and he had suffered them for me. Do I weep while I am telling you they ended? I could not have closed his eyes, I was too young; but I might have received his last breath, the only comfort of an orphan’s bosom. Do you now think him blamable, O Æsop?
Æs.It was sublime humanity: it was forbearance and self-denial which even the immortal gods have never shown us. He could endure to perish by those torments which alone are both acute and slow; he could number the steps of death and miss not one; but he could never see thy tears, nor let thee see his. O weakness above all fortitude! Glory to the man who rather bears a grief corroding his breast, than permits it to prowl beyond, and to prey on the tender and compassionate! Women commiserate the brave, and men the beautiful. The dominion of pity has usually this extent, no wider. Thy father was exposed to the obloquy not only of the malicious, but also of the ignorant and thoughtless, who condemn in the unfortunate what they applaud in the prosperous. There is no shame in poverty or in slavery, if we neither make ourselves poor by our improvidence nor slaves by our venality. The lowest and the highest of the human race are sold: most of the intermediate are also slaves, but slaves who bring no money into the market.
Rhod.Surely the great and powerful are never to be purchased, are they?
Æs.It may be a defect in my vision, but I cannot see greatness on the earth. What they tell me is great and aspiring, to me seems little and crawling. Let me meet thy question with another. What monarch gives his daughter for nothing? Either he receives stone walls and unwilling cities in return, or he barters her for a parcel of spears and horses and horsemen, waving away from his declining and helpless age young joyous life, and trampling down the freshest and sweetest memories. Midas in the height of prosperity would have given his daughter to Sycaon, rather than to the gentlest, the most virtuous, the most intelligent of his subjects. Thy father threw wealth aside, and, placing thee under the protection of virtue, rose up from the house of famine to partake in the festivals of the gods.
Release my neck, O Rhodopè! for I have other questions to ask of thee about him.
Rhod.To hear thee converse on him in such a manner I can do even that.
Æs.Before the day of separation was he never sorrowful? Did he never by tears or silence reveal the secret of his soul?
Rhod.I was too infantine to perceive or imagine his intention. The night before I became the slave of Xanthus, he sat on the edge of my bed. I pretended to be asleep: he moved away silently and softly. I saw him collect in the hollow of his hand the crumbs I had wasted on the floor, and then eat them, and then look if any were remaining. I thought he did so out of fondness for me, remembering that, even before the famine, he had often swept up off the table the bread I had broken, and had made me put it between his lips. I would not dissemble very long but said,—
“Come, now you have wakened me, you must sing me asleep again, as you did when I was little.”
He smiled faintly at this, and after some delay, when he had walked up and down the chamber, thus began:—
“I will sing to thee one song more, my wakeful Rhodopè! my chirping bird! over whom is no mother’s wing! That it may lull thee asleep, I will celebrate no longer, as in the days of wine and plenteousness, the glory of Mars, guiding in their invisibly rapid onset the dappled steeds of Rhæsus. What hast thou to do, my little one, with arrows tired of clustering in the quiver? How much quieter is thy pallet than the tents which whitened the plain of Simois! What knowest thou about the river Eurotas? What knowest thou about its ancient palace, once trodden by the assembled gods, and then polluted by the Phrygians? What knowest thou of perfidious men or of sanguinary deeds?
“Pardon me, O goddess who presidest in Cythera! I am not irreverent to thee, but ever grateful. May she upon whose brow I laid my hand praise and bless thee for evermore.
“Ah yes! continue to hold up above the coverlet those fresh and rosy palms clasped together; her benefits have descended on thy beauteous head, my child. The fates also have sung beyond thy hearing, of pleasanter scenes than snow-fed Hebrus; of more than dim grottoes and sky-bright waters. Even now a low murmur swells upward to my ear; and not from the spindle comes the sound, but from those who sing slowly over it, bending all three their tremulous heads together. I wish thou could’st hear it; for seldom are their voices so sweet. Thy pillow intercepts the song perhaps, lie down again, lie down, my Rhodopè—I will repeat what they are saying—
“‘Happier shalt thou be, nor less glorious than even she, the truly beloved, for whose return to the distaff and the lyre, the portals of Tænarus flew open. In the woody dells of Ismarus, and when she bathed among the swans of Strymon, the nymphs called her Eurydice. Thou shalt behold that fairest and that fondest one hereafter. But first thou must go unto the land of the lotos, where famine never cometh, and where alone the works of man are immortal.’
“O my child! the undeceiving fates have uttered this. Other powers have visited me, and have strengthened my heart with dreams and visions. We shall meet again, my Rhodopè! in shady groves and verdant meadows, and we shall sit by the side of those who loved us.”
He was rising: I threw my arms about his neck, and before I would let him go, I made him promise to place me, not by the side, but between them; for I thought of her who had left us. At that time there were but two, O Æsop!
You ponder; you are about to reprove my assurance in having thus repeated my own praises. I would have omitted some of the words, only that it might have disturbed the measure and cadences, and have put me out. They are the very words my dearest father sang; and they are the last. Yet, shame upon me! the nurse (the same who stood listening near, who attended me into this country) could remember them more perfectly; it is from her I have learned them since; she often sings them, even by herself.
Æs.So shall others. There is much both in them and in thee to render them memorable.
Rhod.Who flatters now?
Æs.Flattery often runs beyond truth, in a hurry to embrace her, but not here. The dullest of mortals, seeing and hearing thee, would never misinterpret the prophecy of the fates.
If, turning back, I could overpass the vale of years, and could stand on the mountain top, and could look again far before me at the bright ascending morn, we would enjoy the prospect together; we would walk along the summit hand in hand, O Rhodopè! and we would only sigh at last when we found ourselves below with others.