Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/60
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HESIOD.
absence of any certain data, combine to facilitate our acceptance of this fine passage as the poet's own handiwork. Indeed, it were a hard fate for any poet if, in the lapse of years, his beauties were to be pronounced spurious by hypercriticism, and his level passages alone left to give an idea of his calibre. We give the description of winter from Elton's version:—
"Beware the January month; bewareThose hurtful days, that keenly-piercing airWhich flays the steers, while frosts their horrors cast,Congeal the ground, and sharpen every blast.From Thracia's courser-teeming region sweepsThe northern wind, and, breathing on the deeps,Heaves wide the troubled surge: earth, echoing, roarsFrom the deep forests and the sea-beat shores.He from the mountain-top, with shattering stroke,Rends the broad pine, and many a branching oakHurls 'thwart the glen: when sudden, from on high,With headlong fury rushing down the sky,The whirlwind stoops to earth; then deepening roundSwells the loud storm, and all the boundless woods resound.The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold.Though thick the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,Yet that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.Not his rough hide the ox can then avail,The long-haired goat defenceless feels the gale;Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to woundThe flock, with sheltering fleeces fenced around.••••••And now the hornèd and unhornèd kind,Whose lair is in the wood, sore famished grindTheir sounding jaws, and frozen and quaking fly,Where oaks the mountain-dells imbranch on high;