Echoes from the Sabine Farm | Page 8

royal good times of her earlier years,
When her folks
regulated the style!
It won't do at all, my dear boy, to believe
That she of whose charms
you are proud
Is beautiful only as means to deceive,--
Merely one
of the horrible crowd.
So constant a sweetheart, so loving a wife,

So averse to all notions of greed
Was surely not born of a mother
whose life
Is a chapter you'd better not read.

As an unbiased party I feel it my place
(For I don't like to do things
by halves)
To compliment Phyllis,--her arms and her face
And
(excuse me!) her delicate calves.
Tut, tut! don't get angry, my boy, or
suspect
You have any occasion to fear
A man whose deportment is
always correct,
And is now in his forty-first year!
TO ARISTIUS FUSCUS
Fuscus, whoso to good inclines,
And is a faultless liver,
Nor
Moorish spear nor bow need fear,
Nor poison-arrowed quiver.
Ay, though through desert wastes he roam,
Or scale the rugged
mountains,
Or rest beside the murmuring tide
Of weird Hydaspan
fountains!
Lo, on a time, I gayly paced
The Sabine confines shady,
And sung
in glee of Lalage,
My own and dearest lady;
And as I sung, a monster wolf
Slunk through the thicket from me;

But for that song, as I strolled along,
He would have overcome me!
Set me amid those poison mists
Which no fair gale dispelleth,
Or in
the plains where silence reigns,
And no thing human dwelleth,--
Still shall I love my Lalage,
Still sing her tender graces;
And while
I sing, my theme shall bring
Heaven to those desert places!
TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS
I
Not to lament that rival flame
Wherewith the heartless Glycera scorns
you,
Nor waste your time in maudlin rhyme,
How many a modern
instance warns you!
Fair-browed Lycoris pines away
Because her Cyrus loves another;


The ruthless churl informs the girl
He loves her only as a brother!
For he, in turn, courts Pholoe,--
A maid unscotched of love's fierce
virus;
Why, goats will mate with wolves they hate
Ere Pholoe will
mate with Cyrus!
Ah, weak and hapless human hearts,
By cruel Mother Venus fated

To spend this life in hopeless strife,
Because incongruously mated!
Such torture, Albius, is my lot;
For, though a better mistress wooed
me,
My Myrtale has captured me,
And with her cruelties subdued
me!
TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS
II
Grieve not, my Albius, if thoughts of Glycera may haunt you, Nor
chant your mournful elegies because she faithless proves; If now a
younger man than you this cruel charmer loves,
Let not the kindly
favors of the past rise up to taunt you.
Lycoris of the little brow for Cyrus feels a passion,
And Cyrus, on the
other hand, toward Pholoe inclines;
But ere this crafty Cyrus can
accomplish his designs
She-goats will wed Apulian wolves in
deference to fashion.
Such is the will, the cruel will, of love-inciting Venus,
Who takes
delight in wanton sport and ill-considered jokes, And brings ridiculous
misfits beneath her brazen yokes,-- A very infelicitous proceeding, just
between us.
As for myself, young Myrtale, slave-born and lacking graces, And
wilder than the Adrian tides which form Calabrian bays, Entangled me
in pleasing chains and compromising ways,
When--just my luck--a
better girl was courting my embraces.

TO MÆCENAS
Mæcenas, thou of royalty's descent,
Both my protector and dear
ornament,
Among humanity's conditions are
Those who take
pleasure in the flying car,
Whirling Olympian dust, as on they roll,

And shunning with the glowing wheel the goal;
While the ennobling
palm, the prize of worth,
Exalts them to the gods, the lords of earth.
Here one is happy if the fickle crowd
His name the threefold honor
has allowed;
And there another, if into his stores
Comes what is
swept from Libyan threshing-floors.
He who delights to till his
father's lands,
And grasps the delving-hoe with willing hands,
Can
never to Attalic offers hark,
Or cut the Myrtoan Sea with Cyprian
bark.
The merchant, timorous of Afric's breeze,
When fiercely
struggling with Icarian seas
Praises the restful quiet of his home,

Nor wishes from the peaceful fields to roam;
Ah, speedily his
shattered ships he mends,--
To poverty his lesson ne'er extends.
One there may be who never scorns to fill
His cups with mellow
draughts from Massic's hill,
Nor from the busy day an hour to wean,

Now stretched at length beneath the arbute green,
Now at the softly
whispering spring, to dream
Of the fair nymphs who haunt the sacred
stream.
For camp and trump and clarion some have zest,--
The cruel
wars the mothers so detest.
'Neath the cold sky the hunter spends his
life,
Unmindful of his home and tender wife,
Whether the doe is
seen by faithful hounds
Or Marsian boar through the fine meshes
bounds.
But as for me, the ivy-wreaths, the prize
Of learned brows, exalt me
to the skies;
The shady grove, the nymphs and satyrs there,
Draw
me away from people everywhere;
If it may be, Euterpe's flute
inspires,
Or Polyhymnia strikes the Lesbian lyres;
And if you place
me where no bard debars,

With head exalted I shall strike the stars!

TO HIS BOOK
You vain, self-conscious little book,
Companion of my happy days,

How eagerly you seem to look
For wider fields to spread your lays;

My desk and locks cannot