No More Learning

GOOD SENSE A WELL-SPRING OF POETRY

Good sense, the fountain of the muse's art,
Let the strong page of Socrates impart;
For if the mind with clear conceptions glow,
The willing words in just expressions flow.
The poet who with nice discernment knows
What to his country and his friends he owes;
How various nature warms the human breast,
To love the parent, brother, friend, or guest;
What the high duties of our judges are,
Of senator or general sent to war;
He surely knows, with nice self-judging art,
The strokes peculiar to each different part.
Keep nature's great original in view,
And thence the living images pursue.
For when the sentiments and manners please,
And all the characters are wrought with ease,
Your play, though weak in beauty, force, and art,
More strongly shall delight, and warm the heart,
Than where a lifeless pomp of verse appears,
And with sonorous trifles charms our ears.


PERFECTION CANNOT BE EXPECTED

Where beauties in a poem faults outshine,
I am not angry if a casual line
(That with some trivial blot unequal flows)
A careless hand or human frailty shows.
Then shall I angrily see no excuse
If honest Homer slumber o'er his muse?
Yet surely sometimes an indulgent sleep
O'er works of length allowably may creep!


A HIGH STANDARD MUST BE EXACTED

In certain subjects, Piso, be assured,
Tame mediocrity may be endured.
But god, and man, and booksellers deny
A poet's right to mediocrity!


ARE POETS BORN OR MADE?

'Tis long disputed whether poems claim
From art or nature their best right to fame;
But art, if un-enriched by nature's vein,
And a rude genius of uncultured strain,
Are useless both: they must be fast combined
And mutual succour in each other find.




_Odes_


A DEDICATION

Maecenas, sprung from regal line,
Bulwark and dearest glory mine!
Some love to stir Olympic dust
With glowing chariot-wheels which just
Avoid the goal, and win a prize
Fit for the rulers of the skies.
One joys in triple civic fame
Conferred by fickle Rome's acclaim;
Another likes from Libya's plain
To store his private barns with grain;
A third who, with unceasing toil,
Hoes cheerful the paternal soil,
No promised wealth of Attalus
Shall tempt to venture timorous
Sailing in Cyprian bark to brave
The terrors of Myrtoan wave.
Others in tented fields rejoice,
Trumpets and answering clarion-voice.
Be mine the ivy, fair reward,
Which blissful crowns the immortal bard;
Be mine amid the breezy grove,
In sacred solitude to rove--
To see the nymphs and satyrs bound,
Light dancing in the mazy round,
While all the tuneful muses join
Their various harmony divine.
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.