|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 25
When 'tis a god's high feast let not your knife
Cut off the withered from the quick with life,
Upon the five-brancht stock--
or, in other words, never cut your finger-nails on a holy day.
Hesiod, by birth an �olian, was by settlement a Boeotian. He lived and
farmed his own land on the slopes of Helikon, under the governance of
the lords of Thespi�, whoever they were. I have been to Thespi�, and
certify that there are no lords there now. I saw little but fleas and
dogs of incredible savagery, where once were the precinct and shrine
of Eros with a famous statue of the god by Praxiteles. It is not far
from the Valley of the Muses, where or whereabouts those fair ladies
met with Hesiod, and, as we are told in the Theogony, plucked him a
rod of olive, a thing of wonder,
And breath'd in me a voice divine and clear
To sing the things that shall be, are, and were.
Also they told him to sing of the blessed gods,
But ever of themselves both first and last,
and he obeyed them. When he won a tripod at Chalkis, in a singing
contest, he dedicated it to his patronesses,
There where they first instilled clear song in me.
So he was a grateful poet, which is very unusual.
In _Works and Days_ he sang of what he knew best, the country round,
and sang it as a poet should who was also a shrewd farmer and thrifty
husbandman. It is full of the love of earth and of the ways of them
who lie closest in her bosom; but it is full of the wisdom, too,
which such men win from their mother, and are not at all unwilling to
impart. There is a good deal of Polonius in Hesiod, who addresses his
_Works and Days_ to his brother Perses, a bad lot. Perses in fact had
diddled him out of his patrimony, or part of it, by bribing the
judges at Thespi�; and the poet, who doesn't mince matters, loses
no opportunity of telling him what he thinks of him. Indeed, one of
Hesiod's reasons for instructing him in good farming was that thereby
he might perhaps prevent him from spunging on his relations. So
the injured bard got a sad, exalted pleasure out of his griefs, and
something back, too, in his quiet way.
After a glance at the golden and other past ages he gets to work with
a charming passage:
Whenas the Pleiads, Atlas' daughters, rise
Begin your harvest; when they hide their eyes,
Then plow. For forty nights and forty days
They are shrouded; then, as the year rounds, they raise
Their shining heads what time unto the stone
You lay your sickle's edge--
and that is your time for harvesting. But you must work hard; for the
law of the plains, of the seaboard, and of the upland dales is the
same:
You who Demeter's gifts will win good cheap
Strip you to plow and sow, and strip to reap--
and if you in particular, Perses, will do that, perhaps you won't need
to go begging at other men's houses as you have begged at Hesiod's.
But he gives you warning that you will get no more out of him--than
advice.
The Pleiades, however, don't set till November, and before that there
is October to be considered, the season of the rains. Get you into
the woods in October and cut for your needs. And what might these
be? Well, a mortar to pound your grain in, and a pestle to pound it
withal; an axle for your wain, a beetle to break the clods. Then, for
your plows, look out for a plow-tree of holm-oak: that is the best
wood for them. Make two plows in case of accident, one all of a piece
([Greek: autogyon]), one jointed and dowelled. The pole should be
of laurel or elm; the share must be oak. The [Greek: gu�s] is the
plow-tree, and it is not always easy to find one ready-made--but get
one if you can.
Two oxen then, each one a nine year bull,
Whose strength is not yet spent, the best to pull,
Which will not fight i' the furrow, break the plow
And leave your work undone. To drive them now
Get a smart man of forty, fed to rights
With a four-quartered loaf of eight full bites:
That's one to work, and drive the furrow plim,
Too old to gape at mates, or mates at him.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|