Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

POETRY
The prey is hooked, and slantwise from the flood
The lad has flicked his prey. A hissing wind
Follows the blow, as when a lash is plied
And a wind whistles through the stricken air.
The dripping victims flounder on the rocks;
In terror of the sunlight's deadly rays
They quake; the fire that moved them while they lived
Down in their native element, expires
Beneath our sky; gasping, they yield up life.
Dull throbs go shuddering through their weakened frame;
The sluggish tail flaps in one final throe;
Mouths gape; the breath they drew returns again
In pantings linked with death. As when some breeze
Fans a forge-fire, the valve, that works within
The beechen bellows, first admits the wind
Then holds it, now by this vent, now by that.
Some fish have I beheld which, in their last
Death-struggle, have put forth their powers, to plunge
Head downward to the river; and so reached
The once despaired-of waters. Quick the lad,
Impatient of his loss, dives from above
And seeks to grasp them in his wild pursuit, —
A bootless quest/ Ev'n so fared Glaucus once
(That old man of the sea); soon as his lips
Touched Circe's deadly herbs, he ate the grass
Sucked by the dying fish: then headlong leapt —
Strange denizen/ — into Carpathia's main.
He that was wont, furnished with hooks and net,
To plunder Nereus in his watery realm,
Floats— the once pirate of those helpless tribes. (Tr. Blakeney (1933))
This passage displays Ausonius' sympathetic observation of everyday
features of country life, and his ability to transform his observations by firm
control and adaptation to a sophisticated literary tradition. Of the three fishermen
two are described statically in neat couplets (243—6), the third is depicted
at length in the process of catching and landing his fish (247—69). Ausonius
is always skilful at varying the pace of his exposition. The poet goes on to
comment in his own person on the difficulties attendant on rod-and-line
fishing (270—5). There are two extended similes in the epic manner. The first
(267—9) i s entirely original, depending on the poet's own perception of the
similarity between the movements of gills and mouth of a stranded fish and
those of the valves of a blacksmith's double bellows. It is, incidentally, probably
the first description in European literature of the double bellows, a technological
development of late antiquity which made possible the casting of iron.
The second (276—82) is an elaborate allusion to a Greek myth which had been
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