Текст книги "The Oxford Book of Latin Verse: From the Earliest Fragments to the End of the Vth Century A.D. "

Автор книги: H. Garrod

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Ah! for pity; but ah! for him the sparrow,

Our poor sparrow, on whom to think my lady's

Eyes do angrily redden all a-weeping.

R. Ellis.

86 a

Langhorne is best known by his translation of Plutarch's Lives. But he was a copious poet; and Catullus has never perhaps been more gracefully rendered than in the following piece:

LESBIA, live to love and pleasure,

Careless what the grave may say:

When each moment is a treasure

Why should lovers lose a day?

Setting suns shall rise in glory,

But when little life is o'er,

There's an end of all the story—

We shall sleep, and wake no more.

Give me, then, a thousand kisses,

Twice ten thousand more bestow,

Till the sum of boundless blisses

Neither we nor envy know.

J. Langhorne.

I append the beginning of Blacklock's version:

THOUGH sour-loquacious Age reprove,

Let us, my Lesbia, live for love.

For when the short-lived suns decline

They but retire more bright to shine:

But we, when fleeting life is o'er

And light and love can bless no more,

Are ravished from each dear delight

To sleep one long eternal night.

T. Blacklock.

86 b

KISS me, sweet: the wary lover

Can your favours keep, and cover,

When the common courting jay

All your bounties will betray.

Kiss again! no creature comes;

Kiss, and score up wealthy sums

On my lips, thus hardly sundered,

While you breathe. First give a hundred,

Then a thousand, then another

Hundred, then unto the tother

Add a thousand and so more,

Till you equal with the store

All the grass that Rumney yields,

Or the sands in Chelsea fields,

Or the drops in silver Thames,

Or the stars that gild his streams

In the silent summer nights

When Youth plies its stolen delights:

That the curious may not know

How to tell 'em as they flow,

And the envious, when they find

What their number is, be pined.

Ben Jonson.

92

CATULLUS, let the wanton go:

No longer play the fool, but deem

For ever lost what thou must know

Is fled for ever like a dream!

O life was once a heaven to thee!

To haunt her steps was rapture then—

That woman loved as loved shall be

No woman ever on earth again.

Then didst thou freely taste the bliss,

On which empassioned lovers feed:

When she repaid thee kiss for kiss,

O, life was then a heaven indeed!

'Tis past: forget as she forgets:

Lament no more, but let her go:

Tear from thy heart its mad regrets,

And into very marble grow!

Girl, fare thee well. Catullus ne'er

Will sue where love is met with scorn:

But, false one, thou with none to care

For thee, shalt pine through days forlorn.

Think, think, how drear thy life will be!

Who'll woo thee now? who praise thy charms?

Who now will be all in all to thee

And live but in thy loving arms?

Ay, who will give thee kiss for kiss,

Whose lip wilt thou in rapture bite?

But thou, Catullus, think of this

And spurn her in thine own despite.

Theodore Martin.

97

Of this, one of the most famous and effective of Catullus's poems, I offer two versions. The first (an adaptation) is by 'knowing Walsh', the friend of Pope, pronounced by Dryden to be 'the first critic in the nation': the second is by Prof. Slater of Cardiff:

IS there a pious pleasure that proceeds

From contemplation of our virtuous deeds?

That all mean sordid action we despise,

And scorn to gain a throne by cheats and lies?

Thyrsis, thou hast sure blessings laid in store

From thy just dealing in this curst amour.

What honour can in words or deeds be shown

Which to the fair thou hast not said and done?

On her false heart they all are thrown away:

She only swears more easily to betray.

Ye powers that know the many vows she broke,

Free my just soul from this unequal yoke.

My love boils up, and like a raging flood

Runs through my veins and taints my vital blood.

I do not vainly beg she may grow chaste,

Or with an equal passion burn at last—

The one she cannot practise, though she would,

And I contemn the other, though she should—:

Nor ask I vengeance on the perjured jilt;

'Tis punishment enough to have her guilt.

I beg but balsam for my bleeding breast,

Cure for my wounds and from my labours rest.

W. Walsh.

IF any joy awaits the man

Of generous hand and conscience clean,

Who ne'er has leagued with powers unseen

To wrong the partner of his plan;

Rich store of memories thou hast won

From this thy seeming-fruitless love,

Who all that man may do to prove

His faith by word or deed hast done,

And all in vain. Her thankless heart

Is hardened. Harden then thine own.

Writhe not but part, as stone from stone,

And willy-nilly heal the smart.

'Tis hard, ay, hard to fling aside

A love long cherished. Yet you must.

Be strong, prevail, and from the dust

A conqueror rise, whate'er betide.

Ye gods, who of your mercy give

Force to the fainting, let my life

Of honour win me rest from strife,

And from my blood the canker drive;

Ere yet from limb to limb it steal,

And in black darkness plunge my soul,

Oh, drive it hence and make me whole;

A caitiff wounds, a god may heal.

No more for answering love I sue,

No more that her untruth be true:

Purge but my heart, my strength renew

And doom me not my faith to rue.

D.A. Slater.

100

OVER the mighty world's highway,

City by city, sea by sea,

Brother, thy brother comes to pay

Pitiful offerings unto thee.

I only ask to grace thy bier

With gifts that only give farewell,

To tell to ears that cannot hear

The things that it is vain to tell,

And, idly communing with dust,

To know thy presence still denied,

And ever mourn forever lost

A soul that never should have died.

Yet think not wholly vain to-day

This fashion that our fathers gave

That hither brings me, here to lay

Some gift of sorrow on thy grave.

Take, brother, gifts a brother's tears

Bedewed with sorrow as they fell,

And 'Greeting' to the end of years,

And to the end of years 'Farewell'.

H.W.G.

101

FRIEND, if the mute and shrouded dead

Are touched at all by tears,

By love long fled and friendship sped

And the unreturning years,

O then, to her that early died,

O doubt not, bridegroom, to thy bride

Thy love is sweet and sweeteneth

The very bitterness of death.

H.W.G.

103

SICK, Cornificius, is thy friend,

Sick to the heart: and sees no end

Of wretched thoughts that gathering fast

Threaten to wear him out at last.

And yet you never come and bring,

Though 'twere the least and easiest thing,

A comfort in that talk of thine.

You vex me. This to love of mine?

Prithee a little talk, for ease,

Full as the tears of sad Simonides!

Leigh Hunt.

110

AVAUNT, ye vain bombastic crew,

Crickets that swill no Attic dew:

Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow,

Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro:

A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools,

The tinkling cymbals of the schools!

Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye,

With all our pretty company!

I'm sailing for the blissful shore,

Great Siro's high recondite lore,

That haven where my life shall be

From every tyrant passion free.

You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell,

Sweet muses mine, for truth to tell

Sweet were ye once, but now begone;

And yet, and yet, return anon,

And when I write, at whiles be seen

In visits shy and far between.

T.H. Warren.

I append Clough's Lines Written in a Lecture Room. The theme is that of Vergil inverted. But the mood in either poet is the same—that mood of passionate revolt against academicism which never comes to some people and never departs from others:

AWAY, haunt thou not me,

Thou dull Philosophy!

Little hast thou bestead,

Save to perplex the head

And leave the spirit dead.

Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,

While from the secret treasure-depths below,

Fed by the skiey shower,

And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,

Wisdom at once and Power,

Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?

Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,

When the fresh breeze is blowing,

And the strong current flowing,

Right onward to the Eternal Shore?

A.H. Clough.

116

Dryden's version of this piece shows him at his best as a translator of Vergil. 'Methinks I come,' he writes, 'like a malefactor, to make a speech upon the gallows, and to warn all other poets, by my sad example, from the sacrilege of translating Vergil.' But in the Georgics, at any rate, which he reckons 'more perfect in their kind than even the divine Aeneids,' he can challenge comparison with most of his rivals.

O HAPPY, if he knew his happy state,

The swain, who, free from bus'ness and debate,

Receives his easy food from Nature's hand,

And just returns of cultivated land!

No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants,

T' admit the tides of early visitants,

With eager eyes devouring, as they pass,

The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;

No statues threaten, from high pedestals;

No Persian arras hides his homely walls,

With antic vests, which, through their shady fold,

Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold:

He boasts no wool, whose native white is dy'd

With purple poison of Assyrian pride:

No costly drugs of Araby defile,

With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:

But easy quiet, a secure retreat,

A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,

With home-bred plenty, the rich owner bless;

And rural pleasures crown his happiness.

Unvex'd with quarrels, undisturb'd with noise,

The country king his peaceful realm enjoys—

Cool grots, and living lakes, the flow'ry pride

Of meads, and streams that through the valley glide,

And shady groves that easy sleep invite,

And, after toilsome days, a sweet repose at night.

Wild beasts of nature in his woods abound;

And youth of labour patient, plough the ground,

Inur'd to hardship, and to homely fare.

Nor venerable age is wanting there,

In great examples to the youthful train;

Nor are the gods ador'd with rites profane.

From hence Astraea took her flight, and here

The prints of her departing steps appear.

Ye sacred muses! with whose beauty fir'd,

My soul is ravish'd, and my brain inspir'd—

Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear—

Would you your poet's first petition hear;

Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,

The depths of heav'n above, and earth below:

Teach me the various labours of the moon,

And whence proceed th' eclipses of the sun;

Why flowing tides prevail upon the main,

And in what dark recess they shrink again;

What shakes the solid earth; what cause delays

The summer nights, and shortens winter days.

But if my heavy blood restrain the flight

Of my free soul, aspiring to the height

Of nature, and unclouded fields of light—

My next desire is, void of care and strife,

To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life—

A country cottage near a crystal flood,

A winding valley, and a lofty wood.

Some god conduct me to the sacred shades,

Where Bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids,

Or lift me high to Haemus' hilly crown,

Or in the plains of Tempe lay me down,

Or lead me to some solitary place,

And cover my retreat from human race.

Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws,

Through known effects can trace the secret cause—

His mind possessing in a quiet state,

Fearless of Fortune, and resign'd to Fate!

And happy too is he, who decks the bow'rs

Of sylvans, and adores the rural pow'rs—

Whose mind, unmov'd, the bribes of courts can see,

Their glitt'ring baits, and purple slavery—

Nor hopes the people's praise, nor fears their frown,

Nor, when contending kindred tear the crown,

Will set up one, or pull another down.

Without concern he hears, but hears from far,

Of tumults, and descents, and distant war;

Nor with a superstitious fear is aw'd,

For what befalls at home or what abroad.

Nor envies he the rich their happy store,

Nor his own peace disturbs with pity for the poor.

He feeds on fruits, which of their own accord,

The willing ground and laden trees afford.

From his lov'd home no lucre him can draw;

The senate's mad decrees he never saw:

Nor heard, at bawling bars, corrupted law.

Some to the seas, and some to camps, resort;

And some with impudence invade the court:

In foreign countries, others seek renown;

With wars and taxes, others waste their own,

And houses burn, and household gods deface,

To drink in bowls which glitt'ring gems enchase,

To loll on couches, rich with citron steds,

And lay their guilty limbs on Tyrian beds.

This wretch in earth entombs his golden ore,

Hov'ring and brooding on his buried store.

Some patriot fools to pop'lar praise aspire

Of public speeches, which worse fools admire,

While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds,

Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.

Some, through ambition, or through thirst of gold,

Have slain their brothers, or their country sold,

And, leaving their sweet homes, in exile run

To lands that lie beneath another sun.

The peasant, innocent of all these ills,

With crooked ploughs the fertile fallows tills,

And the round year with daily labour fills:

And hence the country markets are supplied:

Enough remains for household charge beside,

His wife and tender children to sustain,

And gratefully to feed his dumb deserving train.

Nor cease his labours till the yellow field

A full return of bearded harvest yield—

A crop so plenteous, as the land to load,

O'ercome the crowded barns, and lodge on ricks abroad.

Thus ev'ry sev'ral season is employ'd,

Some spent in toil, and some in ease enjoy'd.

The yeaning ewes prevent the springing year:

The laden boughs their fruits in autumn bear:

'Tis then the vine her liquid harvest yields,

Bak'd in the sunshine of ascending fields,

The winter comes; and then the falling mast

For greedy swine provides a full repast:

Then olives, ground in mills, their fatness boast,

And winter fruits are mellow'd by the frost.

His cares are eas'd with intervals of bliss;

His little children, climbing for a kiss,

Welcome their father's late return at night;

His faithful bed is crown'd with chaste delight.

His kine with swelling udders ready stand,

And, lowing for the pail, invite the milker's hand.

His wanton kids, with budding horns prepar'd,

Fight harmless battles in his homely yard:

Himself in rustic pomp, on holy-days,

To rural pow'rs a just oblation pays,

And on the green his careless limbs displays.

The hearth is in the midst: the herdsmen, round

The cheerful fire, provoke his health in goblets crown'd.

He calls on Bacchus, and propounds the prize:

The groom his fellow-groom at butts defies,

And bends, and levels with his eyes,

Or stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil,

And watches, with a trip, his foe to foil.

Such was the life the frugal Sabines led:

So Remus and his brother-god were bred,

From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose;

And this rude life our homely fathers chose.

Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth

(The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth),

Which now on sev'n high hills triumphant reigns,

And in that compass all the world contains.

Ere Saturn's rebel son usurp'd the skies,

When beasts were only slain for sacrifice,

While peaceful Crete enjoy'd her ancient lord,

Ere sounding hammers forg'd th' inhuman sword,

Ere hollow drums were beat, before the breath

Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death,

The good old god his hunger did assuage,

With roots and herbs, and gave the golden age.

I append a portion of Cowley's unequal paraphrase (beginning from the words Felix qui potuit):

HAPPY the man, I grant, thrice happy he

Who can through gross effects their causes see:

Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs,

Nor vainly fears inevitable things,

But does his walk of virtue calmly go,

Through all the allarms of death and hell below.

Happy, but next such conquerors, happy they

Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way.

They unconcerned from their safe-distant seat

Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.

The quarrels of the mighty without fear

And the descent of foreign troops they hear.

Nor can ev'n Rome their steddy course misguide

With all the lustre of her perishing pride.

Them never yet did strife or avarice draw

Into the noisy markets of the law,

The camps of gownлd war, nor do they live

By rules or forms that many mad men give.

Duty for Nature's bounty they repay,

And her sole laws religiously obey.

Cowley.

118

(Beginning at At cantu commotae....)

THEN from the deepest deeps of Erebus,

Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades

Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms

Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie

To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour

Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;

Matrons and men, and great heroic frames

Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,

Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.

Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,

Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp

Of dull dead water, and to pen them fast,

Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.

Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death

Stood lost in wonderment, the Eumenides,

Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined,

E'en Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,

And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.

And now with homeward footstep he had passed

All perils scathless, and, at length restored,

Eurydice, to realms of upper air

Had well-nigh won behind him following—

So Proserpine had ruled it—when his heart

A sudden mad desire surprised and seized—

Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.

For at the very threshold of the day,

Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,

He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice—

His own once more. But even with the look,

Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond

Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard

Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.

'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought

On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again

The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep

Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell:

Girt with enormous night I am borne away,

Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,

These helpless hands.' She spoke, and suddenly,

Like smoke dissolving into empty air,

Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him,

Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,

Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time

Hell's boatman lists he pass the watery bar.

James Rhoades

119 a

ONCE a slender silvan reed

Answered all my shepherd's need;

Once to farmer lads I told

All the lore of field and fold:

Well they liked me, for the soil

Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.

Ah! who am I, 'mid war's alarms,

To 'sing the hero and his arms'?

H.W.G.

121

I give first the version of Conington—an excellent specimen of his skill and its limitations; and I add Pope's imitation—a piece as graceful as anything he wrote:

THINK not those strains can e'er expire,

Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar

Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre

I sing with arts unknown before.

Though Homer fill the foremost throne,

Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,

And fierce Alcaeus holds his own

With Pindar and Simonides.

The songs of Teos are not mute,

And Sappho's love is breathing still:

She told her secret to the lute,

And still its chords with passion thrill.

Not Sparta's queen alone was fired

By broidered robe and braided tress,

And all the splendours that attired

Her lover's guilty loveliness:

Not only Teucer to the field

His arrows brought, not Ilion

Beneath a single conqueror reeled:

Not Crete's majestic lord alone,

Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown:

Not Hector first for child and wife,

Or brave Deiphobus, laid down

The burden of a manly life.

Before Atrides men were brave,

But ah! oblivion dark and long

Has locked them in a tearless grave,

For lack of consecrating song.

'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,

What difference? Youshall ne'er be dumb,

While strains of mine have voice and breath:

The dull neglect of days to come

Those hard-won honours shall not blight:

No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours

Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright

When Fortune smiles and when she lowers:

To greed and rapine still severe,

Spurning the gain men find so sweet:

A consul not of one brief year,

But oft as on the judgement-seat

You bend the expedient to the right,

Turn haughty eyes from bribes array,

Or bear your banners through the fight,

Scattering the foeman's firm array.

The lord of countless revenues

Salute not him as happy: no,

Call him the happy who can use

The bounty that the gods bestow,

Can bear the load of poverty,

And tremble not at death, but sin:

No recreant he when called to die

In cause of country or of kin.

J. Conington.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,

Which sounds the silver Thames along,

Taught on the wings of Truth to fly

Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,

In Spenser native Muses play;

Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,

Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay—

Sages and chiefs long since had birth

Ere Caesar was, or Newton, named;

Those raised new empires o'er the earth,

And these new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!

They had no poet, and they died.

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!

They had no poet, and are dead.

Pope.

124

ANGEL of Love, high-thronлd in Cnidos,

Regent of Paphos, no more repine:

Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us

Visit our soberly censлd shrine.

Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,

Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste

The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,

And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.

H.W.G.

125

WHAT slender youth bedewed with liquid odours

Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha, for whom bindst thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he

On faith and changed gods complain: and seas

Rough with black winds and storms

Unwonted shall admire:

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,

Who always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee, of flattering gales

Unmindful. Hapless they

To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed

Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung

My dank and dripping weeds

To the stern God of Sea.

Milton.

Milton's version has been a good deal criticized. Yet, though it lacks the lightness of its original, it remains a nobler version than any other. Of other versions the most interesting is, perhaps, that of Chatterton (made from a literal English translation), and the most graceful that of William Hamilton of Bangour. Of the latter I quote a few lines:

WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours

Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?

For whom retired to secret shade,

Soft on thy panting bosom laid,

Set'st thou thy looks with nicest care,

O neatly plain? How oft shall he

Bewail thy false inconstancy!

Condemned perpetual frowns to prove,

How often weep thy altered love,

Who thee, too credulous, hopes to find,

As now, still golden and still kind!

W. Hamilton.

126

Of this often-translated poem I give first the version of Herrick and then that of Gladstone. There is an amusing adaptation in the Poems of Soame Jenyns, Dialogue between the Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham and Modern Popularity.

Hor.WHILE, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee,

Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me

To hug thy whitest neck: than I,

The Persian King liv'd not more happily.

Lyd.While thou no other didst affect,

Nor Cloe was of more respect;

Then Lydia, far-fam'd Lydia,

I flourish't more than Roman Ilia.

Hor.Now Thracian Cloe governs me,

Skilfull i' th' Harpe, and Melodie:

For whose affection, Lydia, I

(So Fate spares her) am well content to die.

Lyd.My heart now set on fire is

By Ornithes sonne, young Calais;

For whose commutuall flames here I

(To save his life) twice am content to die.

Hor.Say our first loves we sho'd revoke,

And sever'd, joyne in brazen yoke:

Admit I Cloe put away,

And love again love-cast-off Lydia?

Lyd.Though mine be brighter than the Star;

Thou lighter than the Cork by far;

Rough as th' Adratick sea, yet I

Will live with thee, or else for thee will die.

Herrick.

Hor.WHILE no more welcome arms could twine

Around thy snowy neck than mine,

Thy smile, thy heart while I possessed,

Not Persia's monarch lived as blessed.

Lyd.While thou didst feed no rival flame,

Nor Lydia after Chloe came,

Oh then thy Lydia's echoing name

Excelled ev'n Ilia's Roman fame.

Hor.Me now Threician Chloe sways,

Skilled in soft lyre and softer lays;

My forfeit life I'll freely give

So she, my better life, may live.

Lyd.The son of Ornytus inspires

My burning breast with mutual fires;

I'll face two several deaths with joy

So Fate but spare my Thracian boy.

Hor.What if our ancient love awoke,

And bound us with its golden yoke?

If auburn Chloe I resign

And Lydia once again be mine?

Lyd.Though fairer than the stars is he,

Thou rougher than the Adrian sea

And fickle as light cork, yet I

With thee would live, with thee would die.

Gladstone.

Prior's 'echo' of this poem is well known:

'SO when I am weary of wandering all day,

To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;

No matter what beauties I saw in my way,

They were but my visits, but thou art my home.

Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,

And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;

For thou art a girl as much brighter than her

As he was a poet sublimer than me.'

( Answer to Chloe Jealous).

127

O CRUEL, still and vain of beauty's charms,

When wintry age thy insolence disarms,[10]

When fall those locks that on thy shoulders play,

And youth's gay roses on thy cheeks decay,

When that smooth face shall manhood's roughness wear,

And in your glass another form appear,

Ah, why, you'll say, do I now vainly burn,

Or with my wishes not my youth return?

Francis.

135

I print Dryden's version in its entirety. 'I have endeavoured to make it my masterpiece in English,' he says. It is perhaps the only translation of the Odeswhich retains what Dryden calls their 'noble and bold purity' and at the same time keeps the friendly and familiar strokes of style which lighten Horace's graver moods.

DESCENDED of an ancient line,

That long the Tuscan sceptre swayed,

Make haste to meet the generous wine

Whose piercing is for thee delayed.

The rosie wreath is ready made

And artful hands prepare

The fragrant Syrian oil that shall perfume thy hair

When the wine sparkles from afar

And the well-natured friend cries 'Come away',

Make haste and leave thy business and thy care,

No mortal interest can be worth thy stay.

Leave for awhile thy costly country seat,

And—to be great indeed—forget

The nauseous pleasures of the great:

Make haste and come,

Come, and forsake thy cloying store,

Thy turret that surveys from high

The smoke and wealth and noise of Rome,

And all the busie pageantry

That wise men scorn and fools adore:

Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.

Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try

A short vicissitude and fit of Poverty;

A savoury dish, a homely treat,

Where all is plain, where all is neat,

Without the stately spacious room,

The Persian carpet or the Tyrian loom

Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.

The Sun is in the Lion mounted high,

The Syrian star

Barks from afar,

And with his sultry breath infects the sky;

The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry;

The shepherd drives his fainting flock

Beneath the covert of a rock

And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh.

The Sylvans to their shade retire,

Those very shades and streams new streams require,

And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.

Thou, what befits the new Lord May'r,

And what the City Faction dare,

And what the Gallique arms will do,

And what the quiverbearing foe,

Art anxiously inquisitive to know.

But God has wisely hid from human sight

The dark decrees of future fate,

And sown their seeds in depth of night:

He laughs at all the giddy turns of state

When mortals search too soon and learn too late.

Enjoy the present smiling hour,

And put it out of Fortune's power.

The tide of business, like the running stream,

Is sometimes high and sometimes low,

A quiet ebb or a tempestuous flow,

And always in extreme.

Now with a noiseless gentle course

It keeps within the middle bed,

Anon it lifts aloft its head

And bears down all before it with tempestuous force;

And trunks of trees come rolling down,

Sheep and their folds together drown,

Both house and homestead into seas are borne,

And rocks are from their old foundations torn,

And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.

Happy the man—and happy he alone,—

He who can call to-day his own,

He who, secure within, can say

'To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:

Be fair or foul or rain or shine,

The joys I have possessed in spite of Fate are mine,

Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.'

Fortune, that with malicious joy

Does Man, her slave, oppress,

Proud of her office to destroy,

Is seldom pleased to bless;

Still various and unconstant still,

But with an inclination to be ill,

Promotes, degrades, delights in strife

And makes a lottery of life.

I can enjoy her while she's kind,

But when she dances in the wind,

And shakes the wings and will not stay,

I puff the prostitute away.

The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:

Content with poverty my soul I arm,

And Vertue, tho' in rags, will keep me warm.

What is't to me,

Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,

If storms arise and clouds grow black,

If the mast split and threaten wrack?

Then let the greedy merchant fear

For his ill-gotten gain,

And pray to gods that will not hear,

While the debating winds and billows bear

His wealth into the main.

For me, secure from Fortune's blows,

Secure of what I cannot lose,

In my small pinnace I can sail,

Contemning all the blustering roar:

And running with a merry gale

With friendly stars my safety seek

Within some little winding creek,

And see the storm ashore.

Dryden.

136

O PRECIOUS Crock, whose summers date,

Like mine, from Manlius' consulate,

I wot not whether in your breast

Lie maudlin wit or merry jest,

Or sudden choler, or the fire

Of tipsy Love's insane desire,

Or fumes of soft caressing sleep,

Or what more potent charms you keep;

But this I know, your ripened power

Befits some choicely festive hour!

A cup peculiarly mellow

Corvinus asks: so come, old fellow,

From your time-honoured bin descend,

And let me gratify my friend!

No churl is he your charms to slight,

Though most intensely erudite:

And ev'n old Cato's worth, we know,

Took from good wine a nobler glow.

Your magic power of wit can spread