quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for their causes from popular superstition:—
"Quæ benè quom videas, rationem reddere possis
Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola
Saxa paries formas verborum ex ordine reddant,
Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos
Quærimus, et magna disperses voce ciemus.
Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces
Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis
Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.
Hæc loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere
Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur;
Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti
Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi,
Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas,
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum:
Et genus agricolûm latè sentisoere, quom Pan
Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans,
Unco sæpe labro calamos percurrit hianteis,
Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam."[1]
Lucretius, Lib. iv. l. 576.
- ↑
"Whence may'st thou solve, ingenuous! to the world
The rise of echoes, formed in desert scenes,
Mid rocks, and mountains, mocking every sound,
When late we wander through their solemn glooms,
And, with loud voice, some lost companion call.
And oft re-echoes echo till the peal
Rings seven times round; so rock to rock repels
The mimic shout, reiterated close.
"Here haunt the goat-foot satyrs, and the nymphs,
As rustics tell, and fauns whose frolic dance,
And midnight revels oft, they say, are heard
Breaking the noiseless silence; while soft strains
Melodious issue, and the vocal band
Strike to their madrigals the plaintive lyre,
Such, feign they, sees the shepherd obvious oft,
Led on by Pan, with pine-leaved garland crown'd
And seven-mouth'd reed his labouring lip beneath,
Waking the woodland muse with ceaseless song."
J. Mason Good.
