No More Learning

Count me but in the lyric choir--
My crest shall to the stars aspire.


TO PYRRHA

What slender youth bedewed with liquid odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? Oh, 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 dropping weeds
To the stern god of sea.


WINTER CHEER

Seest thou yon mountain laden with deep snow
The groves beneath their fleecy burthen bow,
The streams congealed, forget to flow?
Come, thaw the cold, and lay a cheerful pile
Of fuel on the hearth;
Broach the best cask and make old winter smile
With seasonable mirth.

This be our part--let Heaven dispose the rest;
If Jove commands, the winds shall sleep
That now wage war upon the foamy deep,
And gentle gales spring from the balmy west.

E'en let us shift to-morrow as we may:
When to-morrow's passed away,
We at least shall have to say,
We have lived another day;
Your auburn locks will soon be silvered o'er,
Old age is at our heels, and youth returns no more.


"GATHER YE ROSEBUDS WHILE YE MAY"

Secure those golden early joys,
That youth unsoured with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possessed;
The best is but in season best.

The appointed tryst of promised bliss,
The pleasing whisper in the dark,
The half-unwilling willing kiss,
The laugh that guides thee to the mark,
When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again--
These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain.


GOD AND EMPEROR

Saturnian Jove, parent and guardian god
Of human kind, to thee the Fates award
The care of Caesar's reign; to thine alone
Inferior, let his empire rise.
Whether the Parthian's formidable power
Or Indians or the Seres of the East,
With humbled pride beneath his triumph fall,
Wide o'er a willing world shall he
Contented rule, and to thy throne shall bend
Submissive. Thou in thy tremendous car
Shalt shake Olympus' head, and at our groves
Polluted hurl thy dreadful bolts.


THE STRENGTH OF INNOCENCE

The man of life, unstained and free from craft,
Ne'er needs, my Fuscus, Moorish darts to throw;
He needs no quiver filled with venomed shaft,
Nor e'er a bow.

Whether he fare thro' Afric's boiling shoals,
Or o'er the Caucasus inhospitable,
Or where the great Hydaspes river rolls,
Renowned in fable.

Once in a Sabine forest as I strayed
Beyond my boundary, by fancy charmed,
Singing my Lalage, a wolf, afraid,
Shunned me unarmed.

The broad oak-woods of hardy Daunia,
Rear no such monster mid their fiercest scions,
Nor Juba's arid Mauretania,
The nurse of lions.

Set me where, in the heart of frozen plains,
No tree is freshened by a summer wind,
A quarter of the globe enthralled by rains,
And Jove unkind;

Or set me 'neath the chariot of the Sun,
Where, overnear his fires, no homes may be;
I'll love, for her sweet smile and voice, but one--
My Lalage.


TRANQUILLITY

Should fortune frown, live thou serene;
Nor let thy spirit rise too high,
Though kinder grown she change the scene;
Bethink thee, Delius, thou must die.

Whether thy slow days mournful pass,
Or swiftly joyous fleet away,
While thou reclining on the grass
Dost bless with wine the festal day.

Where poplar white and giant pine
Ward off the inhospitable beam;
Where their luxuriant branches twine,
Where bickers down its course the stream,

Here bid them perfumes bring, and wine,
And the fair rose's short-lived flower,
While youth and fortune and the twine
Spun by the Sisters, grant an hour.

We all must tread the path of Fate,
And ever shakes the fateful urn,
Whose lot embarks us, soon or late,
On Charon's boat--beyond return.


TO A FAIR DECEIVER

Did any punishment attend
Thy former perjuries,
I should believe a second time,
Thy charming flatteries:
Did but one wrinkle mark thy face
Or hadst thou lost one single grace.

No sooner hast thou, with false vows,
Provoked the powers above,
But thou art fairer than before,
And we are more in love.
Thus Heaven and Earth seem to declare
They pardon falsehood in the fair.

The nymphs, and cruel Cupid too,
Sharpening his pointed dart
On an old home besmeared with blood,
Forbear thy perjured heart.
Fresh youth grows up to wear thy chains,
And the old slave no freedom gains.