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,