[1198] 1. A Strain of Jonah the Prophet. After the living, aye -- enduring death Of Sodom and Gomorrah; after fires Penal, attested by time-frosted plains Of ashes; after fruitless apple-growths, 5 Born but to feed the eye; after the death Of sea and brine, both in like fate involved; While whatsoe'er is human still retains In change corporeal its penal badge: [1199] A city -- Nineveh -- by stepping o'er 10 The path of justice and of equity, On her own head had well-nigh shaken down More fires of rain supernal. For what dread [1200] Dwells in a mind subverted? Commonly Tokens of penal visitations prove 15 All vain where error holds possession. Still, Kindly and patient of our waywardness, And slow to punish, the Almighty Lord Will launch no shaft of wrath, unless He first Admonish and knock oft at hardened hearts, 20 Rousing with mind august presaging seers. For to the merits of the Ninevites The Lord had bidden Jonah to foretell Destruction; but he, conscious that He spare; The subject, and remits to suppliants 25 The dues of penalty, and is to good Ever inclinable, was loth to face That errand; lest he sing his seerly strain In vain, and peaceful issue of his threats Ensue. His counsel presently is flight: 30 (If, howsoe'er, there is at all the power God to avoid, and shun the Lord's right hand 'Neath whom the whole orb trembles and is held In check: but is there reason in the act Which in [1201] his saintly heart the prophet dares?) 35 On the beach-lip, over against the shores Of the Cilicians, is a city poised, [1202] Far-famed for trusty port -- Joppa her name. Thence therefore Jonah speeding in a barque Seeks Tarsus, [1203] through the signal providence 40 Of the same God; [1204] nor marvel is't, I ween, If, fleeing from the Lord upon the lands, He found Him in the waves. For suddenly A little cloud had stained the lower air With fleecy wrack sulphureous, itself [1205] 45 By the wind's seed excited: by degrees, Bearing a brood globose, it with the sun Cohered, and with a train caliginous Shut in the cheated day. The main becomes The mirror of the sky; the waves are dyed so 50 With black encirclement; the upper air Down rushes into darkness, and the sea Uprises; nought of middle space is left; While the clouds touch the waves, and the waves all Are mingled by the bluster of the winds 55 In whirling eddy. 'Gainst the renegade, 'Gainst Jonah, diverse frenzy joined to rave, While one sole barque did all the struggle breed 'Twixt sky and surge. From this side and from that Pounded she reels; 'neath each wave-breaking blow 60 The forest of her tackling trembles all; As, underneath, her spinal length of keel, Staggered by shock on shock, all palpitates; And, from on high, her labouring mass of yard Creaks shuddering; and the tree-like mast itself 65 Bends to the gale, misdoubting to be riven. Meantime the rising [1206] clamour of the crew Tries every chance for barque's and dear life's sake: To pass from hand to hand [1207] the tardy coils To tighten the girth's noose: straitly to bind 70 The tiller's struggles; or, with breast opposed, T' impel reluctant curves. Part, turn by turn, With foremost haste outbale the reeking well Of inward sea. The wares and cargo all They then cast headlong, and with losses seek 75 Their perils to subdue. At every crash Of the wild deep rise piteous cries; and out They stretch their hands to majesties of gods, Which gods are none; whom might of sea and sky Fears not, nor yet the less from off their poops 80 With angry eddy sweeping sinks them down. Unconscious of all this, the guilty one 'Neath the poop's hollow arch was making sleep Re-echo stertorous with nostril wide Inflated: whom, so soon as he who guides 85 The functions of the wave-dividing prow Saw him sleep-bound in placid peace, and proud In his repose, he, standing o'er him, shook, And said, "Why sing'st, with vocal nostril, dreams, In such a crisis? In so wild a whirl, 90 Why keep'st thou only harbour? Lo! the wave Whelms us, and our one hope is in the gods. Thou also, whosoever is thy god, Make vows, and, pouring prayers on bended knee, Win o'er thy country's Sovran!" Then they vote 95 To learn by lot who is the culprit, who The cause of storm; nor does the lot belie Jonah: whom then they ask, and ask again, "Who? whence? who in the world? from what abode, What people, hail'st thou?" He avows himself 100 A servant, and an over-timid one, Of God, who raised aloft the sky, who based The earth, who corporally fused the whole: A renegade from Him he owns himself, And tells the reason. Rigid turned they all 105 With dread. "What grudge, then, ow'st thou us? What now Will follow? By what deed shall we appease The main?" For more and far more swelling grew The savage surges. Then the seer begins Words prompted by the Spirit of the Lord: [1208] 110 "Lo! I your tempest am; I am the sum Of the world's [1209] madness: 'tis in me," he says, "That the sea rises, and the upper air Down rushes; land in me is far, death near, And hope in God is none! Come, headlong hurl 115 Your cause of bane: lighten your ship, and cast This single mighty burden to the main, A willing prey!" But they -- all vainly! -- strive Homeward to turn their course; for helm refused To suffer turning, and the yard's stiff poise 120 Willed not to change. At last unto the Lord They cry: "For one soul's sake give us not o'er Unto death's maw, nor let us be besprent With righteous blood, if thus Thine own right hand Leadeth." And from the eddy's depth a whale 125 Outrising on the spot, scaly with shells, [1210] Unravelling his body's train, 'gan urge More near the waves, shocking the gleaming brine, Seizing -- at God's command -- the prey; which, rolled From the poop's summit prone, with slimy jaws 130 He sucked; and into his long belly sped The living feast; and swallowed, with the man, The rage of sky and main. The billowy waste Grows level, and the ether's gloom dissolves; The waves on this side, and the blasts on that, 135 Are to their friendly mood restored; and, where The placid keel marks out a path secure, White traces in the emerald furrow bloom. The sailor then does to the reverend Lord Of death make grateful offering of his fear; [1211] 140 Then enters friendly ports. Jonah the seer The while is voyaging, in other craft Embarked, and cleaving 'neath the lowest waves A wave: his sails the intestines of the fish, Inspired with breath ferine; himself, shut in; 145 By waters, yet untouched; in the sea's heart And yet beyond its reach; 'mid wrecks of fleets Half-eaten, and men's carcasses dissolved In putrid disintegrity: in life Learning the process of his death; but still -- 150 To be a sign hereafter of the Lord [1212] -- A witness was he (in his very self), [1213] Not of destruction, but of death's repulse.
Footnotes: [1198] [Elucidation.] [1199] These two lines, if this be their true sense, seem to refer to Lot's wife. But the grammar and meaning of this introduction are alike obscure. [1200] "Metus;" used, as in other places, of godly fear. [1201] Lit. "from," i.e., which, urged by a heart which is that of a saint, even though on this occasion it failed, the prophet dared. [1202] Libratur. [1203] "Tarshish," Eng. ver.; perhaps Tartessus in Spain. For this question, and the "trustiness" of Joppa (now Jaffa) as a port, see Pusey on Jonah 1:3. [1204] Ejusdem per signa Dei. [1205] i.e., the cloud. [1206] Genitus (Oehler); geminus (Migne) ="twin clamour," which is not inapt. [1207] Mandare (Oehler). If this be the true reading, the rendering in the text seems to represent the meaning; for "mandare" with an accusative, in the sense of "to bid the tardy coils tighten the girth's noose," seems almost too gross a solecism for even so lax a Latinist as our present writer. Migne, however, reads mundare--to "clear" the tardy coils, i.e., probably from the wash and weed with which the gale was cloying them. [1208] Tunc Domini vates ingesta Spiritus infit. Of course it is a gross offence against quantity to make a genitive in "us" short, as the rendering in the text does. But a writer who makes the first syllable in "clamor" and the last syllable of gerunds in do short, would scarcely be likely to hesitate about taking similar liberties with a genitive of the so-called fourth declension. It is possible, it is true, to take "vates" and "Spiritus" as in apposition, and render, "Then the seer-Spirit of the Lord begins to utter words inspired," or "Then the seer-Spirit begins to utter the promptings of the Lord." But these renderings seem to accord less well with the ensuing words. [1209] Mundi. [1210] i.e., apparently with shells which had gathered about him as he lay in the deep. [1211] This seems to be the sense of Oehler's "Nauta at tum Domino leti venerando timorem Sacrificat grates"--"grates" being in apposition with "timorem." But Migne reads: "Nautæ tum Domino læti venerando timorem Sacrificant grates:"-- "The sailors then do to the reverend Lord Gladly make grateful sacrifice of fear:" and I do not see that Oehler's reading is much better. [1212] Comp. Matthew 12:38-41; Luke 11:29, 30. [1213] These words are not in the original, but are inserted (I confess) to fill up the line, and avoid ending with an incomplete verse. If, however, any one is curious enough to compare the translation, with all its defects, with the Latin, he may be somewhat surprised to find how very little alteration or adaptation is necessary in turning verse into verse. |
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