The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.1942, Page 17

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
13
larger, part dwells on the Praise of the
Rural Gods, their Contributions to
Civilized Life and the Doings and De-
lights that country life under the gods’
good guidance affords; even Love, life’s
most potent power for good and ill,
came to his own in the country. The
description of the Festival closes with
a quiet evening scene: the holy day
ends with the approach of Night with
her starry train, followed by taciturn
Sleep and the dusky phantoms of
Dreams.
No mere description of this poem will
do it adequate justice; hence I append
my verse translation of it; though no
one is more keenly aware than myself
that much of the metrical technique is
inevitably lost in the transfer of ancient
quantitative verse to the modern kind
that relies on stress and rhymes. Yet I
am convinced that all the meaning and
that much of the flavour can be pre-
served in an English poem that is faith-
fully phrased. For people on our
Canadian prairies, indeed for folk on
the land everywhere, a rural piece, such
as the present one, ought ito possess a
natural appeal: while its details are
Italian and belong to the Roman world
of twenty centuries ago, the funda-
mental elements of it are emancipated
from the restrictions of time and place:
work in conjunction with the soil and
worship of its inscrutable powers are
eternal verities, from the love of which
neither tribulation nor distress, nor
persecution nor famine, nor nakedness,
nor peril, nor yet the sword, shall ever
separate the spirit of man.
THE RURAL FESTIVAL
(Tibullus: El. II. 1.)
Whoso at hand, be hushed: the crops and lands
We cleanse, as customary rite demands
By distant forbear given. God of Wine,
Come unto us and let a cluster fine
Hang from your horns, and, Goddess of the Corn,
Your temples with a spiky wreath adorn.
On this day holy let the land have ease,
And ease the ploughman; his hard labour cease,
With share uphung; let loose the ox-team, and
Before filled stalls now let the oxen stand,
With heads wreathed, as they ought. Let all be done
In service of the gods; let spinner none
Dare to set hand to wool-tasks. I bid too
Avaunt far hence and leave the altar you
Whom Venus yesternight gave joy of love.
Things pure are pleasing to the powers above:
Clean be the garb in which you come, and bring,
In well-cleansed hands, the water from the spring.
Behold how to the gleaming altar goes
The hallowed lamb, and how the throng that glows
In white arrayed, whose tresses are entwined
With olive-wreaths, the victim treads behind!
Our father’s gods, we purify the farms,
We purify the farm-folk: all that harms
Drive ye beyond our bounds: allow no field