No More Learning

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 gownëd 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.