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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.
I shall not wholly die; great part of me
Shall 'scape the Funeral Goddess. Evermore
Fresh shall my honours grow, while pontiffs still
Do climb the Capitol with silent maid.
It shall be told where brawls the Aufidus
In fury, and where Daunus poor in streams
Once reigned o'er rural tribes, it shall be told
That Horace rose from lowliness to fame
And first adapted to Italian strains
The AEolian lay. Assume the eminence,
My own Melpomene, which merit won,
And deign to wreath my hair in Delphic bays.




VICTOR HUGO[I]




Hernani


_Persons in the Drama_

HERNANI A MOUNTAINEER
CHARLES V. OF SPAIN A PAGE
DON RICARDO SOLDIERS
DON RUY GOMEZ CONSPIRATORS
DONA SOL RETAINERS

Date of action, 1519.


ACT I

SCENE--KING CHARLES _and some of his noblemen are creeping into the
courtyard of the palace of_ DON RUY GOMEZ DE SILVA _at Saragossa.
It is midnight, and the palace is dark, save for a dim light
coming from a balcony window_.