t. But this is one
nurtured in the Eleatic and Academic philosophies. Nay, get ye gone, ye
sirens, whose sweetness lasteth not; leave him for my muses to tend and
heal!' At these words of upbraiding, the whole band, in deepened
sadness, with downcast eyes, and blushes that confessed their shame,
dolefully left the chamber.

But I, because my sight was dimmed with much weeping, and I could not
tell who was this woman of authority so commanding--I was dumfoundered,
and, with my gaze fastened on the earth, continued silently to await
what she might do next. Then she drew near me and sat on the edge of my
couch, and, looking into my face all heavy with grief and fixed in
sadness on the ground, she bewailed in these words the disorder of my
mind:

FOOTNOTES:

[A] [Greek: P] (P) stands for the Political life, the life of action;
[Greek: Th] (Th) for the Theoretical life, the life of thought.

[B] The Stoic, Epicurean, and other philosophical sects, which Boethius
regards as heterodox. See also below, ch. iii., p. 14.

SONG II.

HIS DESPONDENCY.

Alas! in what abyss his mind
Is plunged, how wildly tossed!
Still, still towards the outer night
She sinks, her true light lost,
As oft as, lashed tumultuously
By earth-born blasts, care's waves rise high.

Yet once he ranged the open heavens,
The sun's bright pathway tracked;
Watched how the cold moon waxed and waned;
Nor rested, till there lacked
To his wide ken no star that steers
Amid the maze of circling spheres.

The causes why the blusterous winds
Vex ocean's tranquil face,
Whose hand doth turn the stable globe,
Or why his even race
From out the ruddy east the sun
Unto the western waves doth run:

What is it tempers cunningly
The placid hours of spring,
So that it blossoms with the rose
For earth's engarlanding:
Who loads the year's maturer prime
With clustered grapes in autumn time:

All this he knew--thus ever strove
Deep Nature's lore to guess.
Now, reft of reason's light, he lies,
And bonds his neck oppress;
While by the heavy load constrained,
His eyes to this dull earth are chained.

II.

'But the time,' said she, 'calls rather for healing than for
lamentation.' Then, with her eyes bent full upon me, 'Art thou that
man,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the
nourishm