Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon

by Algernon Swinburne

  ‘Overmuch’, in Oeneus’s speech (line 628), was frequently used by Browning and Morris as well as by Swinburne. The transitive use of ‘abstain’ (line 640) is ‘rare, and probably a literary imitation of the transitive use of Latin abstinere’, according to the OED (or we might hear Greek πω).

  In Althaea’s response to Oeneus, she sees Meleager as ‘three suns old’ (line 667). This may mean either three days old or three years old (OED, 5), but perhaps ‘blind’ (line 676) suggests the former. The OED indicates that ‘stabile’ (line 687) is ‘used by a few writers to express more unequivocally the etymological sense of stable’ and cites this passage. Meleager’s reference to ‘time and the fruitful hour’ recalls Shakespeare, Macbeth Act I, Scene 3, line 147, ‘Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.’

  Second Stasimon (lines 719–866)

  For the description of the wings of Love (line 720) compare lines 696–7 of the cosmogony in Aristophanes’s Birds, which Swinburne translates in 1880:

  Whence timely with season revolving again sweet Love burst out as a blossom,

  Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning.

  The ‘wings of a dove’ (line 720; also line 796) recall Psalms 55:6 and 68:13. In Homer’s Iliad, Iris has feet like the wind (line 721).

  ‘Sea-foam and the frothing of blood’ (line 730) indicate Aphrodite Anadyomene, that is, Aphrodite rising from sea, having been born of the severed genitals of Uranus; see Hesiod, Theogony, lines 178–200. In Swinburne’s 1887 Selections, this chorus is entitled ‘Anadyomene’. She is the ‘perilous goddess’ of line 742.

  The ‘Sweet articulate words / Sweetly divided apart’ (lines 751–2) that men hear are inspired by two Greek epithets: μǫοψ, ‘dividing the voice’ or ‘articulate’, used of mankind in general; and δυεπς, ‘sweet-speaking’, of particular speakers. ‘Mere’ (line 753) is the sea, where the ‘footless herds’ (sc. of fish) dwell.

  ‘Shipwrecking reefs’ (line 813) may be indebted to the ‘shipwracking storms’ of Macbeth Act 1, Scene 2, line 26. Compare the ‘shipwrecking roar’ of Tennyson, Maud Part 1, line 98.

  The last stanza gives the story of Tyro, who loved the river Enipeus in Thessaly. She is taken in love by Poseidon in the form of Enipeus. The twins she conceived grow to kill the stepmother who abused and humiliated her. In a lost play by Sophocles on the subject, Tyro laments her hair shamefully hacked off; compare the ‘rent hair’ of line 855. Lines 860–1 imply that she was no longer a virginal worshipper of Artemis. ‘Being mixed’ (line 863) follows the Greek use of μεíγvυμι for sexual intercourse (see also OED 4b).

  The chorus consists of ten stanzas:

  lines 719–28: The lines are pentameter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming aabbccddee. There is an internal rhyme after the third foot.

  lines 729–36: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abcdabcd.

  lines 737–48: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abbabacdecde.

  lines 749–55: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abacbac. In the first edition of 1865, these lines are not separated from the preceding stanza.

  lines 756–61: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abcabc.

  lines 762–85: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming ababcdcedfedgfbgfbagabaa. The end of the first and last lines is ‘born’, which also occurs as the rhyme at lines 729 and 742.

  lines 786–99: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abbabacbcbabca. Note that lines 787–90 have the same scansion: / x x / xx / (the initial foot is a trochaic substitution for an iamb) although each of them has the caesura in a different position.

  lines 800–26: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abcdabcdefdgefhghbijkjibkaa. The end of the first and last lines is ‘born’. e is a feminine rhyme.

  lines 827–42: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, except for the last line which is iambic dimeter (with a feminine rhyme). The rhyme scheme is ababcdbecdfegfgf. e and f are feminine rhymes.

  lines 843–66: The lines are trimeter, combining anapests and iambs, and rhyming abcdabcdefghefghijklijkl. c, g, and l are feminine rhymes.

  Third Episode (lines 867–1037)

  Atalanta, Meleager, Toxeus, Plexippus, Althaea, Oeneus.

  Atalanta’s address to the sun, gods and the moon (Artemis, line 870) has a precedent in Prometheus’s invocation of the natural elements in Prometheus Bound, lines 88–91. ‘Just gods’ is a Shakespearean phrase used by Alexander Pope in his Homeric translations (Iliad, Book 7, line 425, Book 23, line 750; Odyssey, Book 18, line 261, Book 23, line 275) and also by William Morris (The Earthly Paradise, 1868–70, ‘The Doom of King Acrisius’, lines 2180 and 2366). ‘Extreme’ (line 886, and also line 1072) is pronounced as a trochee, not an iamb. The golden day (line 890) is white (line 891) in the sense of bright or fortunate; see OED 8 and Greek λευκς. Elis (line 899) is a plain in the northwestern Peloponnesus, and the Acheloian horn (line 899) refers metonymically to Aetolia (see line 35 and the map in the appendix). Iasius (line 902), Atalanta’s father, is spelled thus in Hyginus, Fables 70; it is also spelled ‘Iasus’.

  Meleager’s immoderate praise of Atalanta (lines 906–16) may evoke Hippolytus’s too exclusive praise of Artemis in Euripides’ Hippolytus. The ‘habit’ of Atalanta’s eyes is perhaps both their bearing (OED 4) and their outward appearance (OED 5c).

  The contempt for manly work done by women and womanly work done by men (lines 920–2) is present in a fragment from Euripides’ Meleager. ‘What profit’ (line 933) is a biblical phrase. Plexippus’s lines 934–8 may recall the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Lines 941–2 are influenced by Cassandra’s vision of Clytemnestra’s murdering her husband Agamemnon: ‘Ah, ah, keep the bull from the cow! Catching him in the cloths, with a black-horned thing she strikes!’ (Aeschylus, Agamemnon, lines 1125–8).

  Atalanta’s reference to Artemis’s sudden seven shafts (line 959) invokes Niobe, daughter of Tantalus (line 962), who (according to Ovid) bore seven sons and seven daughters. She boasts that she is more fertile than Leto, who bore only Artemis and Apollo. Artemis kills her daughters and Apollo her sons. The shafts are sudden because death is rapid (OED 6). The seven children are ‘holy born’ (line 962) since Tantalus was descended from Zeus. ‘Loosening knees’ (line 962) is a Homeric expression for dying. Herlet takes the back-blowing torch (line 973) to be part of a wedding procession; he also infers that the snows that face the first of the morning (lines 975–6) are those on mountaintops. ‘Fill the dance’ (line 1015) is also an imperative in Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820) Act 4, line 132. ‘And no man see me more’ quotes Wolsey in Shakespeare, King Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 2, line 227. The reinless mouths (line 1028) resemble the χλινα στματα of Euripides, Bacchae, line 386. Atalanta is associated with Tegea (line 1031), a city in southeastern Arcadia, in Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 8, line 317.

  Oeneus’s address to the head of Atalanta (line 1032) is a usage found in Greek tragedy; see also lines 2182 and 2270 (Meleager’s farewell to his father and mother) and compare with lines 399, 650, 906 and 2076. ‘Strike, cease not’ (line 1036) resembles Tennyson, ‘St. Simeon Stylites’ (1842), line 178, ‘Smite, shrink not.’

  Third Stasimon (lines 1038–1204)

  Contrast the opening lines (‘Who hath given man speech?,’ etc.) with Asia’s words about Prometheus in Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820), Act 2, Scene 4, line 71: ‘He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.’

  Line 1062 may recall Jeremiah 51:36, ‘and I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry’. The ‘weeping Seven’ of line 1077 refers to the Pleiades, often represented as weeping (as in ‘Anactoria’, line 169) or rainy. Perhaps with Herlet we should understand the raiment (line 1077) as a cloud; see, for example, Horace, Odes IV 14, lines 21–2. The ‘
sad gods’ (line 1081) indicate Hades. ‘Iron heaven’ (line 1086) recalls the ‘brazen heaven’ of Homer and Pindar. ‘Fulfilled with’ (line 1104) includes the archaic sense ‘filled full with’. ‘None’ (line 1111) is perhaps to be understood as ‘a nothing, a nobody’: that heaven bow down to that which is insignificant in comparison to itself. The OED gives line 1194 as its first instance of ‘over-speech’, loquacity or indiscretion. The Lord’s hands in Job 5:18 and Jesus Christ in Acts 9:34 are that which make whole, rather than fear (line 1198). For ‘gathering thorns’ (line 1202) see Matthew 7:16 and Luke 6:44.

  There are seven stanzas in this choral ode, each irregularly rhymed. However, Paull F. Baum writes that ‘the rhyme scheme of the stasimon is less complex or irregular than it might at first seem. The stanzas [excluding the coda, lines 1193–1204] are of unequal length: 17, 18, 29, 13, 15, 22, 41 lines respectively; within them couplets are frequent, next the abab pattern and ababab. Other simple patterns occur, mingled with these but in no set order or arrangement’ (‘The Fitzwilliam Manuscript of Swinburne’s “Atalanta”, Verses 1038–1204’, Modern Language Review 54, 1959, p. 176). Note that the stanza breaks have been determined by reference to the 1865 text, and so the two stanzas which Baum describes as consisting of 17 and 18 lines respectively are here printed as one stanza. Because of the length of some of the stanzas, the rhyme schemes are not provided.

  lines 1038–72: Lines 1038–54 are iambic pentameter, interspersed with iambic trimeter lines. Lines 1055–72 are iambic tetrameter, except for the iambic pentameter couplet at the end. There are several feminine rhymes.

  lines 1073–1101: Most of the lines are iambic pentameter. Lines 1080, 1083 and 1087 are iambic tetrameter. The last line is trimeter. Two rhymes are feminine.

  lines 1102–14: The lines are iambic pentameter except for the last, which is iambic hexameter.

  lines 1115–29: The lines are iambic pentameter. One rhyme (‘places’, line 1119 and ‘faces’, line 1123) is feminine.

  line 1130–51: Most of the lines are iambic pentameter. Lines 1135 and 1151 are iambic trimeter.

  lines 1152–92: The lines are iambic pentameter, interspersed with two iambic dimeter lines and one iambic trimeter line. More often than usual, some of the feet are formed by the elision of consecutive syllables (when the first ends with a vowel and the second begins with a vowel or ‘h’).

  lines 1193–1204: Iambic pentameter lines are interspersed with iambic trimeter lines.

  Fourth Episode (lines 1205–1373)

  Althaea, Herald, Chorus.

  The ‘warder gods’ (line 1207) are represented by statues in front of the royal house, which faces east; see Aeschylus, Agamemnon, line 519. ‘Frequent flames’ (line 1211) are numerous or abundant (OED: somewhat archaic).

  The herald’s speech adapts the story of the hunt mainly from Ovid (Metamorphoses Book 8, lines 260–444), but with some details taken from Apollodorus (1.8.2). Acarnania (line 1233) is west of Aetolia, divided from it by the river Achelous. He mentions the participants in the following order:

  Laertes (line 1235), king of the island Ithaca (and father of Odysseus).

  Nestor (line 1236), king of Pylos, later the wise older statesman of the Iliad. Gerenian is a Homeric epithet of Nestor, derived from a city in Messenia.

  Panopeus (line 1236) is named in Ovid but not elsewhere (Nestor and Toxeus are similarly included only in Ovid’s account).

  Cepheus and Ancaeus (line 1237) are first introduced in lines 436–9. Cepheus and Iphicles (line 1246) are not included in Ovid’s narrative.

  Atalanta (line 1239).

  Meleager (line 1244).

  Iphicles (line 1246), also called Iphiclus, is the twin brother of Heracles.

  Theseus is he ‘that slew the biform bull’ (line 1247), the Minotaur, half-bull and half-man. See note to ‘Phædra’.

  Pirithous (line 1248), king of the Lapiths in Thessaly, is the close friend of Theseus.

  Eurytion (line 1248), son of Actor, purified Peleus (Aeacides, line 1249) after the latter was banished with his brother Telamon for killing their half-brother Phocus. During the hunt, he is killed accidentally by Peleus (lines 1298–1304), as in Apollodorus but not in Ovid.

  ‘Aeacides’ (line 1249) means ‘son of Aeacus’, namely Peleus, husband of the sea nymph Thetis (and father of Achilles). He is first introduced at line 391.

  Telamon (line 1250), brother of Peleus, is first introduced at line 429.

  Amphiaraus (line 1252) is a seer and resident at Argos (and participant in the expedition of the seven against Thebes). His is the prophet’s hand at line 1220.

  ‘Thy mother’s sons’ (line 1253) are Althaea’s brothers, Toxeus and Plexippus.

  ‘Thy sister’s sons’ (line 1253) are Leda’s sons Castor and Pollux, introduced at line 397.

  Jason (line 1255) is the leader of the Argonauts; see Meleager’s speech starting at line 571 for details of the expedition.

  Dryas (line 1255) is the son of Ares.

  Idas (line 1257) is the brother of Lynceus (line 1258).

  Lynceus (line 1258), brother of Idas, ‘excelled in sharpness of sight, so that he could even see things under ground’, according to Apollodorus (3.10.3).

  Admetus (line 1258), king of Pherae in Thessaly, is the husband of Alcestis, who sacrifices her own life for his, but is brought back to life by Heracles.

  Hippasus (line 1259) is gored by the boar in Ovid, but not here.

  Hyleus (line 1259) is killed by the boar in Apollodorus and here (line 1296).

  Swinburne departs from Ovid mainly in order to develop the characters of his drama. Plexippus boasts that he has no need of Artemis’s help at line 1266 (although seeing the boar, he does not finish saying that which he would say, line 1268); in Ovid, Ancaeus makes the boast, and it is Echio, not Plexippus, who shoots at but misses the boar. Atalanta prays to Artemis at line 1284; in Ovid, Mopsus prays for Apollo’s help. Some of the description is Homeric: night coming over the eyes in death (line 1297; Homer, Iliad, Book 5, line 310) or the boar crashing like a tower when struck (line 1313; Homer, Iliad, Book 4, line 462).

  ‘Wound’ (line 1334) is perhaps the archaic form of the participle (pace OED ‘missile’, A.c.), as ‘dedicate’ is in line 1356. A faun (line 1355) is a rural deity like the satyr; a dryad (line 1355) is a wood-nymph. ‘Melilote’ (line 1350) means, literally, honey-clover. ‘Laud ye the gods’ (line 1362) resembles ‘Laud we the gods’ in Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act V, Scene 5, line 475.

  Fourth Stasimon (lines 1374–1468)

  The opening of this choral ode resembles the Euripidean escape prayer, as at Bacchae, lines 402–16 or Hippolytus, lines 732–51, which may have little relevance to the plot.

  The chorus first invokes Bacchus (whose ‘yellow hair’, line 1381, Shelley mentions in line 66 of his translation of Euripides’ Cyclops, line 1840). Then Artemis is invoked in line 1400; Iamus, her ‘brother’s seed’ (line 1425) is the son of Apollo and Euadne. In distress Euadne abandoned him among violets (line 1417); later, he became a prophet and the founder of a people; see Pindar, Olympian 6.28–73. Orion (line 1465), in one story (Homer, Odyssey, Book 5, lines 121–4), is killed by Artemis because he was loved by Eos.

  ‘Reluctant’ (line 1402) includes the sense of struggling and entangling. The ‘indissoluble zone’ (line 1467) is the maiden girdle, ζνη, which is not to be loosened before marriage (cf. Homer, Odyssey, Book 11, line 245).

  The metre is trochaic tetrameter, interspersed with a few lines of trochaic trimeter. The rhyme is irregular. As is common in English poetry, the trochaic lines are catalectic, that is, they lack the final unstressed syllable.

  Fifth Episode (lines 1469–1808)

  Messenger, Chorus, Althaea.

  Several passages are reminiscent of Greek tragedy. Lines 1589–92 and 1674–5 on the irreplaceability of brothers (as opposed to sons) strongly recalls Antigone’s assertion in Sophocles, Antigone, lines 905–12. The gnomic sentiment of line 1728 is similar to Sopho
cles, Electra, line 860, ‘Death is the common lot.’ Althaea’s dark, visionary language at lines 1786–90 resembles Cassandra’s in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (lines 1256, 1309, etc.). Finally, the expression of the chorus at line 1806 over the destruction of the royal house may recall Aeschylus, The Libation-Bearers, line 50, ‘O destruction of the house.’ Virgil is the source of another classical reminiscence: line 1754 recalls the famous simile in Aeneid Book 6, lines 309–10 about the throng of the dead, ‘thick as the leaves of the forest that at autumn’s first frost falls’ (cf. Milton, Paradise Lost Book 1, lines 301–3). The pun of Meleager and grievous huntsman (lines 1498–9) is found in a fragment of Euripides’ Meleager (Dindorf fragment 525: μελα γρα = unhappy hunt).

  ‘It is here’ occurs in Shakespeare, Hamlet Act V, Scene 2, line 302: ‘It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.’ Althaea’s desire not to be in sight of the sun may draw on Shakespeare, Macbeth Act V, Scene 5, line 49, ‘I ’gin to be aweary of the sun’, or Sophocles, Oedipus the King, lines 1425–31, where Oedipus cannot be suffered to remain in the presence of the sun. To shoot out lips in scorn (line 1537) recalls Psalms 22:7. ‘Relume’ (line 1584), to relight or rekindle, is used by Shakespeare, Othello Act V, Scene 2, line 13. ‘Facile feet’ (line 1635) are unconstrained, running freely (OED, ‘facile’ 3). For the son to eat and drink his mother as one who breaks bread (line 1679) recalls and distorts the Christian eucharist. ‘Sect’ (line 1680) is a cutting from a plant, used figuratively here and in Shakespeare, Othello, Act I, Scene 3. ‘Creeping things, / Abominable’ (lines 1730–1) echoes the language of Ezekiel 8:10 and elsewhere.