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The noble tribute of Lucretius, "as our Ennius sang in immortal verse, he who first brought down from lovely Helicon a garland of evergreen leaf to sound and shine throughout the nations of Italy," was no less than due from a poet who owed so much to Ennius in manner and versification.
Passed like a cloud absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters! "A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game."
As for this laurel, we were wont to await it trembling: and in taking it we were afraid. Your English way of hunting it down with yelpings and hallooings well, I may be out of date, but we wouldn't have stood that sort of thing on Helicon. So he hobbles down the road. Good night, old fellow! Out of date? Well, it may be so. And alas! the blame is ours.
The very titles of the collections of lyrics which followed the famous Tottel's Miscellany of 1557 flash with the spirit of the epoch: A Paradise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, A Handfull of Pleasant Delights, The Phoenix Nest, England's Helicon, Davison's Poetical Rhapsody.
While Pegasus had been doing his utmost to shake Bellerophon off his back, he had flown a very long distance, and they had come within sight of a lofty mountain by the time the bit was in his mouth. Bellerophon had seen this mountain before, and knew it to be Helicon, on the summit of which was the winged horse's abode.
It is a man, suddenly cut off from the old household holy ties, conscious of great powers, and confronted on all sides by barriers of iron, alone with hard Reality and scornful London; and if he catches a glimpse of the lost Helicon, he sees, where he saw the Muse, a pale melancholy spirit veiling its face in shame, the ghost of the mournful mother, whose child has no name, not even the humblest, among the family of men.
But he had still weary stadia before him, and running was out of the question. Ever and anon he would stop his hobbling, take air, and stare at the vague tracery of the hills,—Cithæron to southward, Helicon to west, and northward the wide dark Theban plain. He gave up counting how many times he halted, how many times he spoke the magic words, “For Hellas! For Hermione!” and forced onward his way.
The forest-clad mountains burned, Athos and Taurus and Tmolus and OEte; Ida, once celebrated for fountains, but now all dry; the Muses' mountain Helicon, and Haemus; Aetna, with fires within and without, and Parnassus, with his two peaks, and Rhodope, forced at last to part with his snowy crown.
When Perseus cut off Medusa's head, the blood sinking into the earth produced the winged horse Pegasus. Minerva caught him and tamed him and presented him to the Muses. The fountain Hippocrene, on the Muses' mountain Helicon, was opened by a kick from his hoof. The Chimaera was a fearful monster, breathing fire.
England's Helicon contains 'the Nymphs reply, commonly attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, and also a long imitation; Donne wrote a piscatory version, and Herrick paid it the sincerest form of flattery, while less distinct reminiscences are common in the poetry of the time. Yet Kit Marlowe's verses stand unrivalled.
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