No More Learning

ODI PROFANUM.


I bid the unhallow'd crowd avaunt!
Keep holy silence; strains unknown
Till now, the Muses' hierophant,
I sing to youths and maids alone.
Kings o'er their flocks the sceptre wield;
E'en kings beneath Jove's sceptre bow:
Victor in giant battle-field,
He moves all nature with his brow.
This man his planted walks extends
Beyond his peers; an older name
One to the people's choice commends;
One boasts a more unsullied fame;
One plumes him on a larger crowd
Of clients. What are great or small?
Death takes the mean man with the proud;
The fatal urn has room for all.
When guilty Pomp the drawn sword sees
Hung o'er her, richest feasts in vain
Strain their sweet juice her taste to please;
No lutes, no singing birds again
Will bring her sleep. Sleep knows no pride;
It scorns not cots of village hinds,
Nor shadow-trembling river-side,
Nor Tempe, stirr'd by western winds.
Who, having competence, has all,
The tumult of the sea defies,
Nor fears Arcturus' angry fall,
Nor fears the Kid-star's sullen rise,
Though hail-storms on the vineyard beat,
Though crops deceive, though trees complain,
One while of showers, one while of heat,
One while of winter's barbarous reign.
Fish feel the narrowing of the main
From sunken piles, while on the strand
Contractors with their busy train
Let down huge stones, and lords of land
Affect the sea: but fierce Alarm
Can clamber to the master's side:
Black Cares can up the galley swarm,
And close behind the horseman ride.
If Phrygian marbles soothe not pain,
Nor star-bright purple's costliest wear,
Nor vines of true Falernian strain,
Nor Achaemenian spices rare,
Why with rich gate and pillar'd range
Upbuild new mansions, twice as high,
Or why my Sabine vale exchange
For more laborious luxury?




II.

ANGUSTAM AMICE.


To suffer hardness with good cheer,
In sternest school of warfare bred,
Our youth should learn; let steed and spear
Make him one day the Parthian's dread;
Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life.
Methinks I see from rampired town
Some battling tyrant's matron wife,
Some maiden, look in terror down,--
"Ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war!
O tempt not the infuriate mood
Of that fell lion! see! from far
He plunges through a tide of blood! "
What joy, for fatherland to die!
Death's darts e'en flying feet o'ertake,
Nor spare a recreant chivalry,
A back that cowers, or loins that quake.
True Virtue never knows defeat:
HER robes she keeps unsullied still,
Nor takes, nor quits, HER curule seat
To please a people's veering will.
True Virtue opens heaven to worth:
She makes the way she does not find:
The vulgar crowd, the humid earth,
Her soaring pinion leaves behind.
Seal'd lips have blessings sure to come:
Who drags Eleusis' rite to day,
That man shall never share my home,
Or join my voyage: roofs give way
And boats are wreck'd: true men and thieves
Neglected Justice oft confounds:
Though Vengeance halt, she seldom leaves
The wretch whose flying steps she hounds.




III.

JUSTUM ET TENACEM.


The man of firm and righteous will,
No rabble, clamorous for the wrong,
No tyrant's brow, whose frown may kill,
Can shake the strength that makes him strong:
Not winds, that chafe the sea they sway,
Nor Jove's right hand, with lightning red:
Should Nature's pillar'd frame give way,
That wreck would strike one fearless head.
Pollux and roving Hercules
Thus won their way to Heaven's proud steep,
'Mid whom Augustus, couch'd at ease,
Dyes his red lips with nectar deep.
For this, great Bacchus, tigers drew
Thy glorious car, untaught to slave
In harness: thus Quirinus flew
On Mars' wing'd steeds from Acheron's wave,
When Juno spoke with Heaven's assent:
"O Ilium, Ilium, wretched town!
The judge accurst, incontinent,
And stranger dame have dragg'd thee down.
Pallas and I, since Priam's sire
Denied the gods his pledged reward,
Had doom'd them all to sword and fire,
The people and their perjured lord.