No More Learning

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
The halo round a dullard's head,
Can make the sage forget his care,
His bosom's inmost thoughts unbare,
And drown his solemn-faced pretence
Beneath your blithesome influence.
Bright hope you bring and vigour back
To minds outworn upon the rack,
And put such courage in the brain
As makes the poor be men again,
Whom neither tyrants' wrath affrights
Nor all their bristling satellites.

Bacchus, and Venus, so that she
Bring only frank festivity,
With sister Graces in her train,
Twining close in lovely chain,
And gladsome taper's living light,
Shall spread your treasures o'er the night,
Till Phoebus the red East unbars,
And puts to rout the trembling stars.

THEODORE MARTIN.
_139_

I give the first stanza of this poem in the effective paraphrase of
Herrick, and the first two stanzas in the rather diffuse rendering of
Byron. Byron's version is one of his earliest pieces but not altogether
wanting in force.

NO wrath of Men, or rage of Seas,
Can shake a just man's purposes:
No threats of Tyrants, or the Grim
Visage of them can alter him;
But what he doth at first entend
That he holds firmly to the end.

HERRICK.

THE man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control:
No threatening tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent;
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main
Would awe his fixed determined mind in vain.

Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurled,
He would unmoved, unawed behold.
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crushing chaos rolled,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,
Might light his glorious funeral pile,
Still dauntless 'mid the wreck of earth he'd smile.

BYRON.


_145_

BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Thine is the flower-crowned bowl, for thee shall die
When dawns yon sun, the kid
Whose horns, half-seen, half-hid,

Challenge to dalliance or to strife--in vain.
Soon must the firstling of the wild herd be slain,
And these cold springs of thine
With blood incarnadine.

Fierce glows the Dog-star, but his fiery beam
Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream
To labour-wearied ox,
Or wanderer from the flocks:

And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain:
My harp shall tell how from thy cavernous mountain,
Where the brown oak grows tallest,
All babblingly thou fallest.

C. S. CALVERLEY.


_148_

The rendering that follows is printed in the author's _Ionica_ not as a
translation, but as a poem, under the title _Hypermnestra_.