The Consolation of Philosophy · Boethius
Blest he whose feet have stood
Beside the fount of good;
Blest he whose will could break
Earth's chains for wisdom's sake!
The Thracian bard, 'tis said,
Mourned his dear consort dead;
To hear the plaintive strain
The woods moved in his train,
And the stream ceased to flow,
Held by so soft a woe;
The deer without dismay
Beside the lion lay;
The hound, by song subdued,
No more the hare pursued,
But the pang unassuaged
In his own bosom raged.
The music that could calm
All else brought him no balm.
Chiding the powers immortal,
He came unto Hell's portal;
There breathed all tender things
Upon his sounding strings,
Each rhapsody high-wrought
His goddess-mother taught--
All he from grief could borrow
And love redoubling sorrow,
Till, as the echoes waken,
All Tænarus is shaken;
Whilst he to ruth persuades
The monarch of the shades
With dulcet prayer. Spell-bound,
The triple-headed hound
At sounds so strangely sweet
Falls crouching at his feet.
The dread Avengers, too,
That guilty minds pursue
With ever-haunting fears,
Are all dissolved in tears.
Ixion, on his wheel,
A respite brief doth feel;
For, lo! the wheel stands still.
And, while those sad notes thrill,
Thirst-maddened Tantalus
Listens, oblivious
Of the stream's mockery
And his long agony.
The vulture, too, doth spare
Some little while to tear
At Tityus' rent side,
Sated and pacified.
At length the shadowy king,
His sorrows pitying,
'He hath prevailèd!' cried;
'We give him back his bride!
To him she shall belong,
As guerdon of his song.
One sole condition yet
Upon the boon is set:
Let him not turn his eyes
To view his hard-won prize,
Till they securely pass
The gates of Hell.' Alas!
What law can lovers move?
A higher law is love!
For Orpheus--woe is me!--
On his Eurydice--
Day's threshold all but won--
Looked, lost, and was undone!
Ye who the light pursue,
This story is for you,
Who seek to find a way
Unto the clearer day.
If on the darkness past
One backward look ye cast,
Your weak and wandering eyes
Have lost the matchless prize.
BOOK IV.
GOOD AND ILL FORTUNE.
SUMMARY.
CH. I. The mystery of the seeming moral confusion. Philosophy
engages to make this plain, and to fulfil her former promise to the
full.--CH. II. Accordingly, (a) she first expounds the paradox that
the good alone have power, the bad are altogether powerless.--CH.
III. (b) The righteous never lack their reward, nor the wicked
their punishment.--CH. IV. (c) The wicked are more unhappy when
they accomplish their desires than when they fail to attain them.
(d) Evil-doers are more fortunate when they expiate their crimes by
suffering punishment than when they escape unpunished. (e) The
wrong-doer is more wretched than he who suffers injury.--CH. V.
Boethius still cannot understand why the distribution of happiness
and misery to the righteous and the wicked seems the result of
chance. Philosophy replies that this only seems so because we do
not understand the principles of God's moral governance.--CH. VI.
The distinction of Fate and Providence. The apparent moral
confusion is due to our ignorance of the secret counsels of God's
providence. If we possessed the key, we should see how all things
are guided to good.--CH. VII. Thus all fortune is good fortune; for
it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is
either useful or just.
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