No More Learning

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.


THE GOLDEN MEAN

The man who follows Wisdom's voice,
And makes the Golden Mean his choice,
Nor plunged in squalid gloomy cells
Midst hoary desolation dwells;
Nor to allure the envious eye
Rears a proud palace to the sky;
The man whose steadfast soul can bear
Fortune indulgent or severe,
Hopes when she frowns, and when she smiles
With cautious fear eludes her wiles.


TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA

Bandusia's Well, that crystal dost outshine,
Worthy art thou of festal wine and wreath!
An offered kid to-morrow shall be thine,
Whose swelling brows his earliest horns unsheath.
And mark him for the feats of love and strife.
In vain: for this same youngling from the fold
Of playful goats shall with his crimson life
Incarnadine thy waters fresh and cold.
The blazing Dog-star's unrelenting hour
Can touch thee not: to roaming herd or bulls
O'erwrought by plough, thou giv'st a shady bower,
Thou shalt be one of Earth's renowned pools!
For I shall sing thy grotto ilex-crowned,
Whence fall thy waters of the babbling sound.


TO THE GOD FAUNUS

O Faun-god, wooer of each nymph that flees,
Come, cross my land! Across those sunny leas,
Tread thou benign, and all my flock's increase
Bless ere thou go.

In each full year a tender kid be slain,
If Venus' mate, the bowl, be charged amain
With wine, and incense thick the altar stain
Of long ago.

The herds disport upon the grassy ground,
When in thy name December's Nones come round;
Idling on meads the thorpe, with steers unbound,
Its joys doth show.

Amid emboldened lambs the wolf roams free;
The forest sheds its leafage wild for thee;
And thrice the delver stamps his foot in glee
On earth, his foe.


AN ENVOI

Now have I reared memorial to last
More durable than brass, and to o'ertop
The pile of royal pyramids. No waste
Of rain or ravening Boreas hath power
To ruin it, nor lapse of time to come
In the innumerable round of years.