Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

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Elegy 2. To Morpheus

Sleep-causing Morpheus, most baleful image of death, may the gods bring destruction upon you and your apparitions. For it was you who called me, although the night was far past, and did not allow me to go to my mistress. I see my senses falter, their motion suppressed, and from where the way lies opens, from my brain, into my whole body. I see that the ashes lie half-buried without light, and the oath-breakers lie closed up in a black prison. a And so, because I lay through the night after settling down for sleep, I have suffered losing out on the delights of my mistress. Life, a deserter, fled its post unbidden, while there had been no sense in my lifeless body. Now dawn, returning after the darkness, has fled, and I grieve in vain at being deprived of the night promised. Indeed, with her arms intertwined around my neck and her body pressed to mine, she gave a sweet kiss, and with her alluring mouth she promised me the night so longed for (and said 'farewell, my love - return soon') that I, in a frenzy, suffered through a sleepless night, and she saw apparitions that should terrify delicate minds.  [p145]Often, when turning herself in their empty embraces, she felt the shadows, and that the place was lacking a body: heaving out sighs, she cried out with a heavy heart, 'your expectation, long trifled with, is on my tounge'. Alas, now the promise has been secured, surely the forgetting of our passion hasn't started, and some other cursed love holds you? Perhaps, as you mingle jokes shared with my replacement, you repay a great many things concerning my trustfulness. And I suppose, indeed, that these things and many others are said of me, so that love is full of the suspicion of complaint. And will there ever be another man such as may denounce as a vice the leading on of lovers to fair promises, when he treats them with contempt? And will any woman oblige him, when credulous beautiful Glycinna has realised that the promise to her has not been kept? Paris was gentler when, seized by his love of the daughter of Tyndareus, he spurned the love of the woodland nymph Oenone; b no more unworthily was the Colchean woman, whom Jason married; c she was wounded by a mistress set in place over her; no more cruel was Theseus who, having abandoned the daughter of Cnossos, undertook to unfurl the sails against the cruel south wind; d none were worse than he whose empty promise and lies left Glycinna turning her ice-cold limbs in an empty bed. I confess that I am like these examples, except that evil intent stood in their way, a mistake made me a criminal. And when these cruelties are spoken of in times to come, I shall say that I was full of sleep. Because when she promised me a night of shining kisses, and when she fixed the time in advance with definite signs, she said: 'do not come earlier than when Bootes turns the constellation, e and the din of feet has ceased throughout the whole town.' So when the table had been cleared, and friends had departed, I went hastily to bed, and while I was waiting for the hour, which would bring the joys of the longed-for night, and which should never be thought on during the day, deeper sleep drew together my unwilling eyes, and night and my mistress fell from my mind. Ah, Morpheus! You deceiver of frolicsome love! Ah, may the Gods bring you many evils as your just rewards.   [p146] Who gave you this power over mortal bodies, so that no one can seek to lead a life without you? There may be times for sordidness, and times when business should be attended to, but sleep holds us for a longer time. Sleep, disturbing our vitals with empty shades, deadens bodies already fatigued with anxious fear. Why does this most-baleful image of death imprison us, without sense, bound in its chains? So that finally swifter Phoebus puts flight to night-time shadows, and renews daily labours with the reddening dawn: the mind is dull, and liquid excess has deprived the brain of sense, and liquid has streamed from both my eyes. But what, Morpheus, livid like the Furies, drove you to have made my repose so much more deep than usual? So that my eyes, conquered, are being held fast by hard shackles: my flopping limbs are dissolved by the soft bed: and as my pleasure owed the usual obligations to empty apparitions, so my mind was obliged to supply them with what they were accustomed to. Perhaps, even if my mind, disturbed by apparitions, had led to home, then Love would have there been my companion. The youth whom the sister of Pheobus embraced in marriage often completed the sweet labour in his sleep. f But I beg you, stop finding fault in my sad complaints, give my dear girl remission from my sins. At any rate, the players did not divert me, unmindful of sleep, from the cold bed of my mistress. For if Venus had bore arms for me against sleep, Love himself would have taken up the struggle for me. But Bacchus urged on times soaked in much wine, and sleep oppressed my tired eyes. Indolent repose held me, and father Dionysius himself was cunning with the vine's fruit. There can be no wonder, nor crime, nor great glory in this, when a mere man is conquered by two gods. There was a mistake, and a promise unbroken is deserving of favour, and the error above has this to its advantage: Bacchus will come mightier to a battle of Venus, when peaceful sleep has checked and renewed him.