Perfect your bliss

If some fair miss

Love you yourself and not your minæ;
I, fortune's sport,

All vainly court

The beauteous, polyandrous Phryne!

TO THE SHIP OF STATE

O SHIP of state,

Shall new winds bear you back upon the sea? What are you doing? Seek the harbor's lee Ere 't is too late!

Do you bemoan

Your side was stripped of oarage in the blast? Swift Africus has weakened, too, your mast; The sailyards groan.

Of cables bare,

Your keel can scarce endure the lordly wave. Your sails are rent; you have no gods to save, Or answer pray'r.

Though Pontic pine,

The noble daughter of a far-famed wood,
You boast your lineage and title good,-
A useless line!

The sailor there

In painted sterns no reassurance finds;
Unless you owe derision to the winds,
Beware-beware!

My grief erewhile,

But now my care-my longing! shun the seas That flow between the gleaming Cyclades, Each shining isle.

QUITTING AGAIN

357

QUITTING AGAIN

THE hero of

Affairs of love

By far too numerous to be mentioned,
And scarred as I'm,

It seemeth time

That I were mustered out and pensioned.

So on this wall
My lute and all

I hang, and dedicate to Venus;
And I implore

But one thing more

Ere all is at an end between us.

O goddess fair

Who reignest where

The weather's seldom bleak and snowy,
This boon I urge:

In anger scourge

My old cantankerous sweetheart, Chloe!

SAILOR AND SHADE

SAILOR

You, who have compassed land and sea,

Now all unburied lie;

All vain your store of human lore,
For you were doomed to die.
The sire of Pelops likewise fell,-
Jove's honored mortal guest;
So king and sage of every age
At last lie down to rest.
Plutonian shades enfold the ghost
Of that majestic one

Who taught as truth that he, forsooth,
Had once been Pentheus' son;
Believe who may, he's passed away,
And what he did is done.

A last night comes alike to all;
One path we all must tread,
Through sore disease or stormy seas

Or fields with corpses red.

Whate'er our deeds, that pathway leads To regions of the dead.

SHADE

The fickle twin Illyrian gales
O'erwhelmed me on the wave;
But you that live, I pray you give
My bleaching bones a grave!
Oh, then when cruel tempests rage

You all unharmed shall be;
Jove's mighty hand shall guard by land
And Neptune's on the sea.
Perchance you fear to do what may

Bring evil to your race?

Oh, rather fear that like me here
You'll lack a burial place.

So, though you be in proper haste,

Bide long enough, I pray,

To give me, friend, what boon shall send My soul upon its way!

LET US HAVE PEACE

IN maudlin spite let Thracians fight
Above their bowls of liquor;
But such as we, when on a spree,

Should never brawl and bicker!

TO QUINTUS DELLIUS

These angry words and clashing swords
Are quite de trop, I'm thinking;
Brace up, my boys, and hush your noise,
And drown your wrath in drinking.

Aha, 't is fine,-this mellow wine
With which our host would dope us!
Now let us hear what pretty dear
Entangles him of Opus.

I see you blush,-nay, comrades, hush!
Come, friend, though they despise you,
Tell me the name of that fair dame,—
Perchance I may advise you.

O wretched youth! and is it truth
You love that fickle lady?

I, doting dunce, courted her once;
Since when, she's reckoned shady!

TO QUINTUS DELLIUS

BE tranquil, Dellius, I pray;
For though you pine your life away
With dull complaining breath,
Or speed with song and wine each day,
Still, still your doom is death.

Where the white poplar and the pine
In glorious arching shade combine,
And the brook singing goes,

Bid them bring store of nard and wine
And garlands of the rose.

Let's live while chance and youth obtain;
Soon shall you quit this fair domain
Kissed by the Tiber's gold,

And all your earthly pride and gain
Some heedless heir shall hold.

359

One ghostly boat shall some time bear
From scenes of mirthfulness or cars
Each fated human soul,-

Shall waft and leave its burden where
The waves of Lethe roll.

So come, I prithee, Dellius mine;
Let's sing our songs and drink our wine

In that sequestered nook

Where the white poplar and the pine
Stand listening to the brook.

POKING FUN AT XANTHIAS

Or your love for

your handmaid you need feel no shame. Don't apologize, Xanthias, pray;

Remember, Achilles the proud felt a flame
For Brissy, his slave, as they say.

Old Telamon's son, fiery Ajax, was moved
By the captive Tecmessa's ripe charms;

And Atrides, suspending the feast, it behooved

To gather a girl to his arms.

Now, how do you know that this yellow-haired maid

(This Phyllis you fain would enjoy)

Hasn't parents whose wealth would cast you in the shade,Who would ornament you, Xan, my boy?

Very likely the poor chick sheds copious tears,

And is bitterly thinking the while

Of the 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.