_My soul's half:_ Animae
dimidium
meae, Hor.
Robert Herrick
Grosart gives a full collation on pp. cli. -cliii. of his Memorial
Introduction. The MS. appears to follow an unrevised version of the
poem, and contains a few couplets which Herrick afterwards thought fit
to omit. The most important passage comes after line 92: "Virtue had,
and mov'd her sphere".
"Nor know thy happy and unenvied state
Owes more to virtue than to fate,
Or fortune too; for what the first secures,
That as herself, or heaven, endures.
The two last fail, and by experience make
Known, not they give again, they take. "
_Thrice and above blest. _ Felices ter et amplius, Hor. I. _Od. _ xiii. 7.
_My soul's half:_ Animae dimidium meae, Hor. I. _Od. _ iii. 8. The poem is
full of such reminiscences: "With holy meal and spirting (MS. crackling)
salt" is the "Farre pio et saliente mica" of III. _Od. _ xxiii. 20;
"Untaught to suffer poverty" the "Indocilis pauperiem pati" of I. _Od. _
i. 18; "A heart thrice wall'd" comes from I. _Od. _ iii. 9: Illi robur et
aes triplex, etc.
