No More Learning

Consider next the yearning after long life.

Pernicious prayer! for mark what ills attend
Still on the old, as to the grave they bend:
A ghastly visage, to themselves unknown;
For a smooth skin, a hide with scurf o'ergrown;
And such a cheek, as many a grandam ape
In Tabraca's thick woods is seen to scrape.

The old man rouses feelings of impatient loathing in those around him;
his physical strength and faculties for enjoyment are gone. Even if
he remain hale, he may suffer harrowing bereavements. Nestor, Peleus,
and Priam had to lament the death of heroic sons; and in Roman history
Marius and Pompey outlived their good fortune.

Campania, prescient of her Pompey's fate,
Sent a kind fever to arrest his date:
When lo! a thousand suppliant altars rise,
And public prayers obtain him of the skies.
The city's fate and his conspired to save
His head, to perish near the Egyptian wave.

Again, there is the frequent prayer for good looks. But beauty is a
danger. If linked with unchastity, it leads to evil courses. Even if
linked with chastity, it may draw on its possessor the tragic fate
of a Lucretia, a Virginia, a Hippolytus, or a Bellerophon. What is a
Roman knight to do if an empress sets her heart on him?

Amid all such vanities, then, is there nothing left for which men may
reasonably pray?
Say, then, shall man, deprived all power of choice,
Ne'er raise to Heaven the supplicating voice?
Not so; but to the gods his fortunes trust.
_Their_ thoughts are wise, _their_ dispensations just.
What best may profit or delight they know,
And real good for fancied bliss bestow;
With eyes of pity they our frailties scan;
More dear to them than to himself is man.
By blind desire, by headlong passion driven,
For wife and heirs we daily weary Heaven;
Yet still 'tis Heaven's prerogative to know,
If heirs, or wife, will bring us weal or woe.
But (for 'tis good our humble hope to prove),
That thou mayst still ask something from above,
Thy pious offerings to the temple bear,
And, while the altars blaze, be this thy prayer:
O THOU, who know'st the wants of human kind,
Vouchsafe me health of body, health of mind;
A soul prepared to meet the frown of fate,
And look undaunted on a future state;
That reckons death a blessing, yet can bear
Existence nobly, with its weight of care;
That anger and desire alike restrains,
And counts Alcides' toils, and cruel pains,
Superior far to banquets, wanton nights,
And all the Assyrian monarch's soft delights!
Here bound, at length, thy wishes. I but teach
What blessings man, by his own powers, may reach.
THE PATH TO PEACE IS VIRTUE. We should see,
If wise, O Fortune, nought divine in thee:
But _we_ have deified a name alone,
And fixed in heaven thy visionary throne!


FOOTNOTES:

[Q] Juvenal was born, it is usually believed, at Aquinum,
about 55 A. D. He lived to an advanced age, but the year of his death
is unknown. Rome he evidently knew well, and from long experience.
But there is great obscurity about his career. His "Satires," in
declamatory indignation, form a powerful contrast to the genial mockery
of Horace (p.