ILION AN EPIC IN QUANTITATIVE HEXAMETERS         ILION   AN EPIC IN QUANTITATIVE HEXAMETERS   SRI AUROBINDO         SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY 1957  

Book Five THE BOOK OF ACHILLES MEANWHILE grey from the Trojan gates Talthybius journeyed, Spurred by the secret thought of the Fates who change not nor falter Simois sighed round his wheels and Xanthus roared at his passing, Troas' god like a lion wroth and afraid; to meet him Whistling the ocean breezes came and Ida regarded. So with his haste in his wheels the herald ocean ward driving Came through the gold of the morn o'er the trampled green of the pastures Back to the ships and the roar of the sea and the iron hopped leaguer. Wide to the left his circle he wrote where the tents of Achilles Trooped lik

Book Three THE BOOK OF THE ASSEMBLY BUT as the nation beset betwixt doom and a shameful surrender Waited mute for a voice that could lead and a heart to encourage, Up in the silence deep Laocoön rose up, far-heard,— Heard by the gods in their calm and heard by men in their passion— Cloud-haired, clad in mystic red, flamboyant, sombre, Priam's son Laocoön, fate-darkened seer of Apollo. As when the soul of the Ocean arises rapt in the dawning And mid the rocks and the foam uplifting the voice of its musings Opens the chant of its turbulent harmonies, so rose the far-borne Voice of Laocoön soaring mid

  Book One THE BOOK OF THE HERALD DAWN in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals, Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending, Pallid and bright-lipped a r rived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine. Earth in the dawn-fire delivered from starry and shadowy vastness Woke to the wonder of life and its passion and sorrow and beauty, All on her bosom sustaining, the patient compassionate Mother. Out of the formless vision of Night with its look on things hidden Given to the gaze of the azure she lay in her garment of greenness, Wearing light on her brow. In the dawn-ray

Book Six THE BOOK OF THE CHIEFTAINS BUT from their midst up rearing a brow that no crown could ennoble, Male and kingly of front like a lion conscious of puissance Rose a form august, the monarch great Agamemnon. Wroth he rose yet throwing a rein on the voice of his passion, Governing the beast and the demon within by the god who is mighty. "Happily for thy life and my fame that thou comst with the aegis of heaven Shadowing thy hoary brows, thou herald of pride and of insult. Well is it too for his days who sent thee that other and nobler Heaven made my heart than his who insults and a voice of the immortal

  APPENDICES ON QUANTITATIVE METRE THE REASON OF PAST FAILURES   A definitive verdict seems to have been pronounced by the critical mind on the long-continued attempt to introduce quantitative metres into English poetry. It is evident that the attempt has failed, and it can even be affirmed that it was predestined to failure; quantitative metre is something alien to the rhythm of the language. Pure quantity, dependent primarily on the length or brevity of the vowel of the syllable, but parity also on the consonants on which the vowel sustains itself, quantity as it was understood in the ancient classical languages, is in the English tongue small in its incidence,

  Book Two THE BOOK OF THE STATESMAN NOW from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globe Gold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid. Troy he beheld and he viewed the transient labour of mortals. All her marble beauty and pomp were laid bare to the heavens. Sunlight streamed into Ilion waking the voice of her gardens, Amorous seized on her ways, lived glad in her plains and her pastures, Kissed her leaves into brightness of green. As a lover the last time Yearns to the beauty desired that again shall not wake to

Book Four THE BOOK OF PARTINGS EAGERLY, spurred by Ares swift in their souls to the war-cry, All now pressed to their homes for the food of their strength in the battle; Ilion turned her thoughts in a proud expectancy seaward Waiting to hear the sounds that she loved and the cry of the mellay. Now to their citadel Priam's sons returned with their father, Now from the gates Talthybius issued grey in his chariot; But in the halls of Anchises Aeneas not doffing his breastpiece Hastily ate of the corn of his country, cakes of the millet Doubled with wild-deer's flesh, from the quiet hands of Creüsa. She, as he ate, wit

Celt one who speaks a Celtic language (Gaelic, Welsh, or Breton), or who derives his ancestry from an area where a Celtic language is, or recently was spoken, that is, a person from Ireland, the Scottish Hebrides and Highlands, the Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, or Brittany. The ancient Celts were a people first identified early in the 2nd millennium BC in southwestern Germany and eastern France. They dominated western and central Europe through about half of the 1st millennium BC, and were important in the development of a specifically European civilization. (Col. Enc.; Enc. Br.) Der:   Celtic; Celticised 1:23, 525-26, 559 2:108, 298, 379, 383 3:67-69, 291 9:42, 47-51, 54, 56,

Victor Amadeus Victor Amadeus II (1666-1732), Duke of Savoy who through his diplomacy became (1720) the first king of Sardinia-Piedmont and thus established the foundation for the future Italian national state. (Enc. Br.) 1: 506   Victor Emmanuel probably, Victor Emmanuel II (1820-78), Italian king of Sardinia-Piedmont and first king of united Italy (1861-78). (Col. Enc.) a 17:385   Victoria (1819-1901), Queen of England (1837-1901) and Empress of India (1876- 1901). Her reign was the longest in English history. It restored dignity and popularity to the British crown and may have saved the monarchy from abolition. The term "Victorian" in English literature is used (1)