Kitabı oku: «Echoes from the Sabine Farm», sayfa 2

CHLORIS PROPERLY REBUKED

 
Chloris, my friend, I pray you your misconduct to forswear;
The wife of poor old Ibycus should have more savoir faire.
A woman at your time of life, and drawing near death's door,
Should not play with the girly girls, and think she's en rapport.
 
 
What's good enough for Pholoe you cannot well essay;
Your daughter very properly courts the jeunesse dorée,—
A Thyiad, who, when timbrel beats, cannot her joy restrain,
But plays the kid, and laughs and giggles à l'Américaine.
 
 
'T is more becoming, Madame, in a creature old and poor,
To sit and spin than to engage in an affaire d'amour.
The lutes, the roses, and the wine drained deep are not for you;
Remember what the poet says: Ce monde est plein de fous!
 

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA

 
O fountain of Bandusia!
Whence crystal waters flow,
With garlands gay and wine I'll pay
The sacrifice I owe;
A sportive kid with budding horns
I have, whose crimson blood
Anon shall dye and sanctify
Thy cool and babbling flood.
 
 
O fountain of Bandusia!
The Dog-star's hateful spell
No evil brings into the springs
That from thy bosom well;
Here oxen, wearied by the plow,
The roving cattle here
Hasten in quest of certain rest,
And quaff thy gracious cheer.
 
 
O fountain of Bandusia!
Ennobled shalt thou be,
For I shall sing the joys that spring
Beneath yon ilex-tree.
Yes, fountain of Bandusia,
Posterity shall know
The cooling brooks that from thy nooks
Singing and dancing go.
 

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA

 
O fountain of Bandusia! more glittering than glass,
And worthy of the pleasant wine and toasts that freely pass;
More worthy of the flowers with which thou modestly art hid,
To-morrow willing hands shall sacrifice to thee a kid.
 
 
In vain the glory of the brow where proudly swell above
The growing horns, significant of battle and of love;
For in thy honor he shall die,—the offspring of the herd,—
And with his crimson life-blood thy cold waters shall be stirred.
 
 
The Dog-star's cruel season, with its fierce and blazing heat,
Has never sent its scorching rays into thy glad retreat;
The oxen, wearied with the plow, the herd which wanders near,
Have found a grateful respite and delicious coolness here.
 
 
When of the graceful ilex on the hollow rocks I sing,
Thou shalt become illustrious, O sweet Bandusian spring!
Among the noble fountains which have been enshrined in fame,
Thy dancing, babbling waters shall in song our homage claim.
 

THE PREFERENCE DECLARED

 
Boy, I detest the Persian pomp;
I hate those linden-bark devices;
And as for roses, holy Moses!
They can't be got at living prices!
Myrtle is good enough for us,—
For you, as bearer of my flagon;
For me, supine beneath this vine,
Doing my best to get a jag on!
 

A TARDY APOLOGY
I

 
Mæcenas, you will be my death,—though friendly you profess yourself,—
If to me in a strain like this so often you address yourself:
"Come, Holly, why this laziness? Why indolently shock you us?
Why with Lethean cups fall into desuetude innocuous?"
 
 
A god, Mæcenas! yea, a god hath proved the very curse of me!
If my iambics are not done, pray, do not think the worse of me;
Anacreon for young Bathyllus burned without apology,
And wept his simple measures on a sample of conchology.
 
 
Now, you yourself, Mæcenas, are enjoying this beatitude;
If by no brighter beauty Ilium fell, you've cause for gratitude.
A certain Phryne keeps me on the rack with lovers numerous;
This is the artful hussy's neat conception of the humorous!
 

A TARDY APOLOGY
II

 
You ask me, friend,
Why I don't send
The long since due-and-paid-for numbers;
Why, songless, I
As drunken lie
Abandoned to Lethean slumbers.
 
 
Long time ago
(As well you know)
I started in upon that carmen;
My work was vain,—
But why complain?
When gods forbid, how helpless are men!
 
 
Some ages back,
The sage Anack
Courted a frisky Samian body,
Singing her praise
In metered phrase
As flowing as his bowls of toddy.
 
 
Till I was hoarse
Might I discourse
Upon the cruelties of Venus;
'T were waste of time
As well of rhyme,
For you've been there yourself, Mæcenas!
 
 
Perfect your bliss
If some fair miss
Love you yourself and not your minæ;
I, fortune's sport,
All vainly court
The beauteous, polyandrous Phryne!
 

TO THE SHIP OF STATE

 
O ship of state
Shall new winds bear you back upon the sea?
What are you doing? Seek the harbor's lee
Ere 't is too late!
 
 
Do you bemoan
Your side was stripped of oarage in the blast?
Swift Africus has weakened, too, your mast;
The sailyards groan.
 
 
Of cables bare,
Your keel can scarce endure the lordly wave.
Your sails are rent; you have no gods to save,
Or answer pray'r.
 
 
Though Pontic pine,
The noble daughter of a far-famed wood,
You boast your lineage and title good,—
A useless line!
 
 
The sailor there
In painted sterns no reassurance finds;
Unless you owe derision to the winds,
Beware—beware!
 
 
My grief erewhile,
But now my care—my longing! shun the seas
That flow between the gleaming Cyclades,
Each shining isle.
 

QUITTING AGAIN

 
The hero of
Affairs of love
By far too numerous to be mentioned,
And scarred as I'm,
It seemeth time
That I were mustered out and pensioned.
 
 
So on this wall
My lute and all
I hang, and dedicate to Venus;
And I implore
But one thing more
Ere all is at an end between us.
 
 
O goddess fair
Who reignest where
The weather's seldom bleak and snowy,
This boon I urge:
In anger scourge
My old cantankerous sweetheart, Chloe!
 

SAILOR AND SHADE

SAILOR

 
You, who have compassed land and sea,
Now all unburied lie;
All vain your store of human lore,
For you were doomed to die.
The sire of Pelops likewise fell,—
Jove's honored mortal guest;
So king and sage of every age
At last lie down to rest.
Plutonian shades enfold the ghost
Of that majestic one
Who taught as truth that he, forsooth,
Had once been Pentheus' son;
Believe who may, he's passed away,
And what he did is done.
A last night comes alike to all;
One path we all must tread,
Through sore disease or stormy seas
Or fields with corpses red.
Whate'er our deeds, that pathway leads
To regions of the dead.
 

SHADE

 
The fickle twin Illyrian gales
Overwhelmed me on the wave;
But you that live, I pray you give
My bleaching bones a grave!
Oh, then when cruel tempests rage
You all unharmed shall be;
Jove's mighty hand shall guard by land
And Neptune's on the sea.
Perchance you fear to do what may
Bring evil to your race?
Oh, rather fear that like me here
You'll lack a burial place.
So, though you be in proper haste,
Bide long enough, I pray,
To give me, friend, what boon shall send
My soul upon its way!
 

LET US HAVE PEACE

 
In maudlin spite let Thracians fight
Above their bowls of liquor;
But such as we, when on a spree,
Should never brawl and bicker!
 
 
These angry words and clashing swords
Are quite de trop, I'm thinking;
Brace up, my boys, and hush your noise,
And drown your wrath in drinking.
 
 
Aha, 't is fine,—this mellow wine
With which our host would dope us!
Now let us hear what pretty dear
Entangles him of Opus.
 
 
I see you blush,—nay, comrades, hush!
Come, friend, though they despise you,
Tell me the name of that fair dame,—
Perchance I may advise you.
 
 
O wretched youth! and is it truth
You love that fickle lady?
I, doting dunce, courted her once;
Since when, she's reckoned shady!
 

TO QUINTUS DELLIUS

 
Be tranquil, Dellius, I pray;
For though you pine your life away
With dull complaining breath,
Or speed with song and wine each day,
Still, still your doom is death.
 
 
Where the white poplar and the pine
In glorious arching shade combine,
And the brook singing goes,
Bid them bring store of nard and wine
And garlands of the rose.
 
 
Let's live while chance and youth obtain;
Soon shall you quit this fair domain
Kissed by the Tiber's gold,
And all your earthly pride and gain
Some heedless heir shall hold.
 
 
One ghostly boat shall some time bear
From scenes of mirthfulness or care
Each fated human soul,—
Shall waft and leave its burden where
The waves of Lethe roll.
 
 
So come, I prithee, Dellius mine;
Let's sing our songs and drink our wine
In that sequestered nook
Where the white poplar and the pine
Stand listening to the brook.
 

POKING FUN AT XANTHIAS

 
Of your love for your handmaid you need feel no shame.
Don't apologize, Xanthias, pray;
Remember, Achilles the proud felt a flame
For Brissy, his slave, as they say.
Old Telamon's son, fiery Ajax, was moved
By the captive Tecmessa's ripe charms;
And Atrides, suspending the feast, it behooved
To gather a girl to his arms.
 
 
Now, how do you know that this yellow-haired maid
(This Phyllis you fain would enjoy)
Hasn't parents whose wealth would cast you in the shade,—
Who would ornament you, Xan, my boy?
Very likely the poor chick sheds copious tears,
And is bitterly thinking the while
Of the royal good times of her earlier years,
When her folks regulated the style!
 
 
It won't do at all, my dear boy, to believe
That she of whose charms you are proud
Is beautiful only as means to deceive,—
Merely one of the horrible crowd.
So constant a sweetheart, so loving a wife,
So averse to all notions of greed
Was surely not born of a mother whose life
Is a chapter you'd better not read.
 
 
As an unbiased party I feel it my place
(For I don't like to do things by halves)
To compliment Phyllis,—her arms and her face
And (excuse me!) her delicate calves.
Tut, tut! don't get angry, my boy, or suspect
You have any occasion to fear
A man whose deportment is always correct,
And is now in his forty-first year!