* * * * *
“I am not—am
not what I seem to sight:
What Roland
was, is dead and under ground,
Slain by that most ungrateful
lady’s spite,
Whose faithlessness
inflicted such a wound.
Divided from the flesh,
I am his sprite,
Which in
this hell, tormented, walks its round,
To be, but in its shadow
left above,
A warning to all such
as trust in love.”
All night about the
forest roved the count,
And, at
the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune
to the fount,
Where his
inscription young Medoro wrought.
To see his wrongs inscribed
upon that mount
Inflamed
his fury so, in him was naught
But turned to hatred,
frenzy, rage, and spite;
Nor paused he more,
but bared his falchion bright,
Cleft through the writing;
and the solid block,
Into the
sky, in tiny fragments sped.
Woe worth each sapling
and that caverned rock
Where Medore
and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they
to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth
shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain,
late so clear and pure,
From such tempestous
wrath was ill secure.
* * * * *
So fierce his rage,
so fierce his fury grew,
That all
obscured remained the warrior’s sprite;
Nor, for forgetfulness,
his sword he drew,
Or wondrous
deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight;
But neither this, nor
bill, nor axe to hew,
Was needed
by Orlando’s peerless might.
He of his prowess gave
high proofs and full,
Who a tall pine uprooted
at a pull.
He many others, with
as little let
As fennel, wall-wort-stem,
or dill uptore;
And ilex, knotted oak,
and fir upset,
And beech and
mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar.
He did what fowler,
ere he spreads his net,
Does, to prepare
the champaign for his lore,
By stubble, rush, and
nettle stalk; and broke,
Like these, old sturdy
trees and stems of oak.
The shepherd swains,
who hear the tumult nigh,
Leaving their
flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
Some here, some there,
across the forest hie,
And hurry thither,
all, the cause to see.
But I have reached such
point, my history,
If I o’erpass
this bound, may irksome be.
And I my story will
delay to end
Rather than by my tediousness
offend.
ARISTOPHANES
(B.C. 448-380?)
BY PAUL SHOREY
The birth-year of Aristophanes is placed about 448 B.C., on the ground that he is said to have been almost a boy when his first comedy was presented in 427. His last play, the ‘Plutus,’ was produced in 388, and there is no evidence that he long survived this date. Little is known of his life beyond the allusions, in the Parabases of the ‘Acharnians,’ ‘Knights,’ and ‘Wasps,’ to his prosecution by Cleon, to his own or his father’s estate at Aegina, and to his premature baldness. He left three sons who also wrote comedies.