Sonnets of Jos -Maria de Heredia

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... L'Eumolpide vengeur n'a point dans Satnothrace SecouG vers le seuil les longs manteaux sanglants, Et, malgrfe moi, je fuis, le coeur las, les pieds lents. J'entends les chiens sacr s qui hurlent sur ma trace. Now I take the meaning to be: The Eumolpid avenger has not in Satnothrace Shaken his long bloody (purple) robes against the threshold, Yet, in spite of myself, I flee with sinking heart, and sluggish feet; (And) I hear the sacred dogs which howl upon my track. This whole passage then can be explained with clearness. The young faithless swain, although he has not been cursed by the Eumolpid Priest of the Cabiri in Samothrace, nor had the long bloody ( purple) robes (which those priests habitually wore) shaken out or against the threshold of his dwelling, by which he would be driven from his home and pursued to his destruction; still, as the young woman whom he has abandoned -- after the most solemn betrothals, and who for that reason is emphatically under the protection of those dread Divinities, the Cabiri -- calls upon him with open arms, so that he appeals to his parents to know if he is not of an accursed race, he feels the full force of the curse, although the Eumolpid has not in the formal way usually pursued, cursed him and called upon the Furies to dog his steps. THE CHARIOTEER (page 55). This Libyan bold dear to the Emperor's soul. The word in the original here translated Emperor is Autocrator. Under the Eastern Empire, as Bury points out in his History of the Later Roman Empire, Autocrator got to be used as an official title of the Emperor. The second tercet of the sestet of this sonnet is as follows in the original: Et tu vas voir, si l'oeil d'un mortal peut suffire A cette apotheose oil fuit un char de feu, La Victoire voler pour rejoindr...