Various - A Handbook for Latin Clubs
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Various >> A Handbook for Latin Clubs
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They that thy mantle wore,
As gods were seen--
Rome, Rome! thou art no more
As thou hast been!
Rome! thine imperial brow
Never shall rise:
What hast thou left thee now?--
Thou hast thy skies!
Blue, deeply blue, they are,
Gloriously bright!
Veiling thy wastes afar,
With color'd light.
Thou hast the sunset's glow,
Rome, for thy dower,
Flushing tall cypress bough,
Temple and tower!
And all sweet sounds are thine,
Lovely to hear,
While night, o'er tomb and shrine
Rests darkly clear.
Many a solemn hymn,
By starlight sung,
Sweeps through the arches dim,
Thy wrecks among.
Many a flute's low swell,
On thy soft air
Lingers, and loves to dwell
With summer there.
Thou hast the south's rich gift
Of sudden song--
A charmed fountain, swift,
Joyous and strong.
Thou hast fair forms that move
With queenly tread;
Thou hast proud fanes above
Thy mighty dead.
Yet wears thy Tiber's shore
A mournful mien:
Rome, Rome! Thou art no more
As thou hast been!
--Mrs. Hemans
CAPRI
Rising from the purpling water
With her brow of stone,
Sprite or nymph or Triton's daughter,
Rising from the purpling water,
Capri sits alone--
Sits and looks across the billow
Now the day is done
Resting on her rocky pillow
Sits and looks across the billow
Toward the setting sun.
Misty visions trooping sadly
Glimmer through her tears,
Shapes of men contending madly,--
Misty visions trooping sadly
From the vanished years.
Here Tiberius from his palace
On the headland gray
Hurls his foes with gleeful malice,
Proud Tiberius at his palace
Murd'ring men for play.
There Lamarque's recruits advancing
Scale yon rocky spot,
'Neath the moon their bright steel glancing,
See Lamarque's recruits advancing
Through a storm of shot.
But today the goat bells' tinkle
And the vespers chime,
Vineyards shade each rock-hewn wrinkle,
And today the goat bells' tinkle
Marks a happier time.
Soft the olive groves are gleaming,
War has found surcease,
And as Capri sits a-dreaming
Soft the olive groves are gleaming,
Crowning her with peace.
--Walter Taylor Field
PALLADIUM
Set where the upper streams of Simois flow
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium, far below,
And fought, and saw it not--but there it stood!
It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight
Round Troy,--but while this stood, Troy could not fall.
So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!
Men will renew the battle in the plain
Tomorrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
Helen will come upon the wall to see.
Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,
And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,
And fancy that we put forth all our life,
And never know how with the soul it fares.
Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send;
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,
And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.
--Matthew Arnold
AFTER CONSTRUING
Lord Caesar, when you sternly wrote
The story of your grim campaigns
And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float
Above the burning plains,
Amid the impenetrable wood,
Amid the camp's incessant hum
At eve, beside the tumbling flood,
In high Avaricum,
You little recked, imperious head,
When shrilled your shattering trumpets' noise,
Your frigid sections would be read
By bright-eyed English boys.
Ah me! Who penetrates today
The secret of your deep designs?
Your sovereign visions, as you lay
Amid the sleeping lines?
The Mantuan singer pleading stands;
From century to century
He leans and reaches wistful hands,
And cannot bear to die.
But you are silent, secret, proud,
No smile upon your haggard face,
As when you eyed the murderous crowd
Beside the statue's base.
I marvel: That Titanic heart
Beats strongly through the arid page,
And we, self-conscious sons of art,
In this bewildering age,
Like dizzy revellers stumbling out
Upon the pure and peaceful night,
Are sobered into troubled doubt,
As swims across our sight,
The ray of that sequestered sun,
Far in the illimitable blue,--
The dream of all you left undone,
Of all you dared to do.
--Arthur Christoher Benson
A ROMAN MIRROR
They found it in her hollow marble bed,
There where the numberless dead cities sleep,
They found it lying where the spade struck deep
A broken mirror by a maiden dead.
These things--the beads she wore about her throat,
Alternate blue and amber, all untied,
A lamp to light her way, and on one side
The toll men pay to that strange ferry-boat.
No trace today of what in her was fair!
Only the record of long years grown green
Upon the mirror's lustreless dead sheen,
Grown dim at last, when all else withered there
Dead, broken, lustreless! It keeps for me
One picture of that immemorial land,
For oft as I have held thee in my hand
The chill bronze brightens, and I dream to see
A fair face gazing in thee wondering wise
And o'er one marble shoulder all the while
Strange lips that whisper till her own lips smile
And all the mirror laughs about her eyes.
It was well thought to set thee there, so she
Might smooth the windy ripples of her hair
And knot their tangled waywardness or ere
She stood before the queen Persephone.
And still it may be where the dead folk rest
She holds a shadowy mirror to her eyes,
And looks upon the changelessness, and sighs
And sets the dead land lilies in her hand.
--Rennell Rodd
THE DOOM OF THE SLOTHFUL
When through the dolorous city of damned souls
The Florentine with Vergil took his way,
A dismal marsh they passed, whose fetid shoals
Held sinners by the myriad. Swollen and grey,
Like worms that fester in the foul decay
Of sweltering carrion, these bad spirits sank
Chin-deep in stagnant slime and ooze that stank.
Year after year forever--year by year,
Through billions of the centuries that lie
Like specks of dust upon the dateless sphere
Of heaven's eternity, they cankering sigh
Between the black waves and the starless sky;
And daily dying have no hope to gain
By death or change or respite of their pain.
What was their crime, you ask? Nay, listen: "We
Were sullen--sad what time we drank the light,
And delicate air, that all day daintily
Is cheered by sunshine; for we bore black night
And murky smoke of sloth, in God's despite,
Within our barren souls, by discontent
From joy of all fair things and wholesome pent:
Therefore in this low Hell from jocund sight
And sound He bans us; and as there we grew
Pallid with idleness, so here a blight
Perpetual rots with slow-corroding dew
Our poisonous carcase, and a livid hue
Corpse-like o'erspreads these sodden limbs that take
And yield corruption to the loathly lake."
--John Addington Symonds
HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE
_Andromache_
Will Hector leave me for the fatal plain,
Where, fierce with vengeance for Patroclus slain,
Stalks Peleus' ruthless son?
Who, when thou glid'st amid the dark abodes,
To hurl the spear and to revere the gods,
Shall teach thine Orphan One?
_Hector_
Woman and wife beloved--cease thy tears;
My soul is nerved--the war-clang in my ears!
Be mine in life to stand
Troy's bulwark!--fighting for our hearths, to go
In death, exulting to the streams below,
Slain for my father-land!
_Andromache_
No more I hear thy martial footsteps fall--
Thine arms shall hang, dull trophies, on the wall--
Fallen the stem of Troy!
Thou go'st where slow Cocytus wanders--where
Love sinks in Lethe, and the sunless air
Is dark to light and joy!
_Hector_
Longing and thought--yea, all I feel and think
May in the silent sloth of Lethe sink,
But my love not!
Hark, the wild swarm is at the walls! I hear!
Gird on my sword--Belov'd one, dry the tear--
Lethe for love is not!
--Schiller
ENCELADUS
Under Mount Etna he lies,
It is slumber, it is not death;
For he struggles at times to arise,
And above him the lurid skies
Are hot with his fiery breath.
The crags are piled on his breast,
The earth is heaped on his head;
But the groans of his wild unrest,
Though smothered and half suppressed,
Are heard, and he is not dead.
And the nations far away
Are watching with eager eyes;
They talk together and say,
"Tomorrow, perhaps today,
Enceladus will arise!"
And the old gods, the austere
Oppressors in their strength,
Stand aghast and white with fear
At the ominous sounds they hear,
And tremble, and mutter, "At length!"
Ah me! for the land that is sown
With the harvest of despair!
Where the burning cinders, blown
From the lips of the overthrown
Enceladus, fill the air.
Where ashes are heaped in drifts
Over vineyard and field and town,
Whenever he starts and lifts
His head through the blackened rifts
Of the crags that keep him down.
See, see! the red light shines!
'Tis the glare of his awful eyes!
And the storm-wind shouts through the pines,
Of Alps and of Apennines,
"Enceladus, arise!"
--Henry W. Longfellow
NIL ADMIRARI
When Horace in Venusian groves
Was scribbling wit or sipping "Massic,"
Or singing those delicious loves
Which after ages reckon classic,
He wrote one day--'twas no vagary--
These famous words:--_Nil admirari!_
"Wonder at nothing!" said the bard;
A kingdom's fall, a nation's rising,
A lucky or a losing card,
Are really not at all surprising;
However men or manners vary,
Keep cool and calm: _Nil admirari!_
If kindness meet a cold return;
If friendship prove a dear delusion;
If love, neglected, cease to burn,
Or die untimely of profusion,--
Such lessons well may make us wary,
But needn't shock: _Nil admirari!_
Ah! when the happy day we reach
When promisers are ne'er deceivers;
When parsons practice what they preach,
And seeming saints are all believers,
Then the old maxim you may vary,
And say no more, _Nil admirari!_
--John G. Saxe
PERDIDI DIEM
The Emperor Titus, at the close of a day in which he had neither
gained any knowledge nor conferred benefit, was accustomed to
exclaim, "Perdidi diem," "I have lost a day."
Why art thou sad, thou of the sceptred hand?
The rob'd in purple, and the high in state?
Rome pours her myriads forth, a vassal band,
And foreign powers are crouching at thy gate;
Yet dost thou deeply sigh, as if oppressed by fate.
"_Perdidi diem!_"--Pour the empire's treasure,
Uncounted gold, and gems of rainbow dye;
Unlock the fountains of a monarch's pleasure
To lure the lost one back. I heard a sigh--
One hour of parted time, a world is poor to buy.
"_Perdidi diem!_"--'Tis a mournful story,
Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell,
Of morning's firm resolves, the vanish'd glory,
Hope's honey left within the withering bell
And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloomed so well.
Hail, self-communing Emperor, nobly wise!
There are, who thoughtless haste to life's last goal.
There are, who time's long squandered wealth despise.
_Perdidi vitam_ marks their finished scroll,
When Death's dark angel comes to claim the startled soul.
--Mrs. Sigourney
JUPITER AND HIS CHILDREN
A Classic Fable
Once, on sublime Olympus, when
Great Jove, the sire of gods and men,
Was looking down on this our Earth,
And marking the increasing dearth
Of pious deeds and noble lives,
While vice abounds and meanness thrives,--
He straight determined to efface
At one fell swoop the thankless race
Of human kind. "Go!" said the King
Unto his messenger, "and bring
The vengeful Furies; be it theirs,
Unmindful of their tears and prayers,
These wretches,--hateful from their birth,--
To wipe from off the face of earth!"
The message heard, with torch of flame
And reeking sword, Alecto came,
And by the beard of Pluto swore
The human race should be no more!
But Jove, relenting thus to see
The direst of the murderous three,
And hear her menace, bade her go
Back to the murky realms below.
"Be mine the cruel task!" he said,
And, at a word, a bolt he sped,
Which, falling in a desert place,
Left all unhurt the human race!
Grown bold and bolder, wicked men
Wax worse and worse, until again
The stench to high Olympus came,
And all the gods began to blame
The monarch's weak indulgence,--_they_
Would crush the knaves without delay!
At this, the ruler of the air
Proceeds a tempest to prepare,
Which, dark and dire, he swiftly hurled
In raging fury on the world!
But not where human beings dwell
(So Jove provides) the tempest fell.
And still the sin and wickedness
Of men grew more, instead of less:
Whereat the gods declare, at length,
For thunder bolts of greater strength
Which Vulcan soon, at Jove's command,
Wrought in his forge with dexterous hand.
Now from the smithy's glowing flame
Two different sorts of weapons came:
To _hit_ the mark was one designed;
As sure to _miss_, the other kind.
The second sort the Thunderer threw,
Which not a human being slew;
But roaring loudly, hurtled wide
On forest-top and mountain-side!
MORAL
What means this ancient tale? That _Jove_
In wrath still felt a parent's love:
Whatever crimes he may have done,
The father yearns to spare the son.
--John G. Saxe
THE PRAYER OF SOCRATES
_Socrates_
Ere we leave this friendly sky,
And cool Ilyssus flowing by,
Change the shrill cicala's song
For the clamor of the throng,
Let us make a parting prayer
To the gods of earth and air.
_Phaedrus_
My wish, O Friend, accords with thine,
Say thou the prayer, it shall be mine.
_Socrates_
This then, I ask, O thou beloved Pan,
And all ye other gods: Help, as ye can,
That I may prosper in the inner man;
Grant ye that what I have or yet may win
Of those the outer things may be akin
And constantly at peace within;
May I regard the wise the rich, and care
Myself for no more gold, as my earth-share,
Than he who's of an honest heart can bear.
--John H. Finley
BY THE ROMAN ROAD
"Poetry and paganism do not mix very well nowadays. The Hellenism of
our versifiers is, as a rule, not Greek; it is derived partly from
Swinburne and partly from Pater. But now and then there comes a poet
who has real appreciation of the beauty of classic days; who can
express sincerely and vividly the haunting charm of Greek or Roman
culture. Such an one is the anonymous writer of these lines, which
appeared in the London _Punch_."
The wind it sang in the pine-tops, it sang like a humming harp;
The smell of the sun on the bracken was wonderful sweet and sharp.
As sharp as the piney needles, as sweet as the gods were good,
For the wind it sung of the old gods, as I came through the wood!
It sung how long ago the Romans made a road,
And the gods came up from Italy and found them an abode.
It sang of the wayside altars (the pine-tops sighed like the surf),
Of little shrines uplifted, of stone and scented turf,
Of youths divine and immortal, of maids as white as the snow
That glimmered among the thickets a mort of years ago!
All in the cool of dawn, all in the twilight gray,
The gods came up from Italy along the Roman way.
The altar smoke it has drifted and faded afar on the hill;
No wood-nymphs haunt the hollows; the reedy pipes are still;
No more the youth Apollo shall walk in his sunshine clear;
No more the maid Diana shall follow the fallow-deer
(The woodmen grew so wise, the woodmen grew so old,
The gods went back to Italy--or so the story's told!).
But the woods are full of voices and of shy and secret things
The badger down by the brook-side, the flick of a woodcock's wings,
The plump of a falling fir-cone, the pop of the sunripe pods,
And the wind that sings in the pine-tops the song of the ancient gods--
The song of the wind that says the Romans made a road,
And the gods came up from Italy and found them an abode!
A NYMPH'S LAMENT
O Sister Nymphs, how shall we dance or sing
Remembering
What was and is not? How sing any more
Now Aphrodite's rosy reign is o'er?
For on the forest-floor
Our feet fall wearily the summer long,
The whole year long:
No sudden goddess through the rushes glides,
No eager God among the laurels hides;
Jove's eagle mopes beside an empty throne,
Persephone and Ades sit alone,
By Lethe's hollow shore.
And hear not any more
Echoed from poplar-tree to poplar-tree,
The voice of Orpheus making sweetest moan
For lost Eurydice.
The Fates walk all alone
In empty kingdoms, where is none to fear
Shaking of any spear.
Even the ghosts are gone
From lightless fields of mint and euphrasy:
There sings no wind in any willow-tree,
And shadowy flute-girls wander listlessly
Down to the shore where Charon's empty boat,
As shadowed swan doth float,
Rides all as listlessly, with none to steer.
A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan
Unsought of any man:
Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown,
And now she seeks Persephone alone.
The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill,
And all the songs are still
Of grieving Dryads, left
To wail about our woodland ways, bereft,
The endless summertide.
Queen Venus draws aside
And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill.
And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims
Her flowers, and quenches all her altar-flames,
And strikes dumb in their throats
Her doves' complaining notes:
And sorrow
Sits crowned upon her seat: nor any morrow
Hears the Loves laughing round her golden chair.
(Alas, thy golden seat, thine empty seat!)
Nor any evening sees beneath her feet
The daisy rosier flush, the maidenhair
And scentless crocus borrow
From rose and hyacinth their savour sweet.
Without thee is no sweetness in the morn,
The morn that was fulfilled of mystery,
It lies like a void shell, desiring thee,
O daughter of the water and the dawn,
Anadyomene!
There is no gold upon the bearded corn,
No blossom on the thorn;
And in wet brakes the Oreads hide, forlorn
Of every grace once theirs: no Faun will follow
By herne or hollow
Their feet in the windy morn.
Let us all cry together "Cytherea!"
Lock hands and cry together: it may be
That she will heed and hear
And come from the waste places of the sea,
Leaving old Proteus all discomforted,
To cast down from his head
Its crown of nameless jewels, to be hurled
In ruins, with the ruined royalty
Of an old world.
The Nereids seek thee in the salt sea-reaches,
Seek thee; and seek, and seek, and never find:
Canst thou not hear their calling on the wind?
We nymphs go wandering under pines and beeches,
And far--and far behind
We hear Paris' piping blown
After us, calling thee and making moan
(For all the leaves that have no strength to cry,
The young leaves and the dry),
Desiring thee to bless these woods again,
Making most heavy moan
For withered myrtle-flowers,
For all thy Paphian bowers
Empty and sad beneath a setting sun;
For dear days done!
The Naiads splash in the blue forest-pools--
"Idalia--Idalia!" they cry.
"On Ida's hill,
With flutings faint and shrill,--
On Ida's hill the shepherds vainly try
Their songs, and coldly stand their damsels by,
Whatever tunes they try;
For beauty is not, and Love may not be,
On land or sea--
Oh, not in earth or heaven, on land or sea,
While darkness holdeth thee."
The Naiads weep beside their forest-pools,
And from the oaks a hundred voices call,
"Come back to us, O thou desired of all!
Elsewhere the air is sultry: here it cools
And full it is of pine scents: here is still
The world-pain that has driven from Ida's hill
Thine unreturning feet.
Alas! the days so fleet that were, and sweet,
When kind thou wert, and dear,
And all the loves dwelt here!
Alas! thy giftless hands, thy wandering feet!
Oh, here for Pithys' sake the air is sweet
And here snow falls not, neither burns the sun
Nor any winds make moan for dear days done.
Come, then: the woods are emptied all of glee,
And all the world is sad, desiring thee!"
--Nora Hopper
HELEN OF TROY
I am that Helen, that very Helen
Of Leda, born in the days of old:
Men's hearts as inns that I might dwell in:
Houseless I wander to-night, and cold.
Because man loved me, no God takes pity:
My ghost goes wailing where I was Queen!
Alas! my chamber in Troy's tall city,
My golden couches, my hangings green!
Wasted with fire are the halls they built me,
And sown with salt are the streets I trod,
Where flowers they scattered and spices spilt me--
Alas, that Zeus is a jealous God!
Softly I went on my sandals golden;
Of love and pleasure I took my fill;
With Paris' kisses my lips were holden,
Nor guessed I, when life went at my will,
That the fates behind me went softlier still.
--Nora Hopper
AN ETRUSCAN RING
Where, girt with orchard and with oliveyard,
The white hill-fortress glimmers on the hill,
Day after day an ancient goldsmith's skill
Guided the copper graver, tempered hard
By some lost secret, while he shaped the sard
Slowly to beauty, and his tiny drill,
Edged with corundum, ground its way until
The gem lay perfect for the ring to guard.
Then seeing the stone complete to his desire,
With mystic imagery carven thus,
And dark Egyptian symbols fabulous,
He drew through it the delicate golden wire,
And bent the fastening; and the Etrurian sun
Sank behind Ilva, and the work was done.
What dark-haired daughter of a Lucumo
Bore on her slim white finger to the grave
This the first gift her Tyrrhene lover gave,
Those five-and-twenty centuries ago?
What shadowy dreams might haunt it, lying low
So long, while kings and armies, wave on wave,
Above the rock-tomb's buried architrave
Went trampling million-footed to and fro?
Who knows? but well it is so frail a thing,
Unharmed by conquering Time's supremacy,
Still should be fair, though scarce less old than Rome.
Now once again at rest from wandering
Across the high Alps and the dreadful sea,
In utmost England let it find a home.
--J. W. Mackail
ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music, plants and flowers
Ever sprung: as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep or hearing, die.
--William Shakespeare
A HYMN IN PRAISE OF NEPTUNE
Of Neptune's empire let us sing
At whose command the waves obey;
To whom the rivers tribute pay,
Down the high mountains sliding:
To whom the scaly nation yields
Homage for the crystal fields
Wherein they dwell:
And every sea-god pays a gem
Yearly out of his wat'ry cell
To deck great Neptune's diadem.
The Tritons dancing in a ring
Before his palace gates do make
The waters with their echoes quake,
Like the great thunder sounding:
The sea-nymphs chant their accents shrill,
And the sirens, taught to kill
With their sweet voice,
Make every echoing rock reply
Unto their gentle murmuring noise
The praise of Neptune's empery.
--Thomas Campion
HORACE'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
Book II, Ode 16
(In part, only)
He lives on little, and is blest,
On whose plain board the bright
Salt-cellar shines, which was his sire's delight,
Nor terrors, nor cupidity's unrest,
Disturb his slumbers light.
Why should we still project and plan,
We creatures of an hour?
Why fly from clime to clime, new regions scour?
Where is the exile, who, since time began,
To fly from self had power?
Fell care climbs brazen galley's sides;
Nor troops of horse can fly
Her foot, which than the stag's is swifter, ay,
Swifter than Eurus when he madly rides
The clouds along the sky.
Careless what lies beyond to know,
And turning to the best,
The present, meet life's bitters with a jest,
And smile them down; since nothing here below
Is altogether blest.
In manhood's prime Achilles died,
Tithonus by the slow
Decay of age was wasted to a show,
And Time may what it hath to thee denied
On me perchance bestow.
To me a farm of modest size,
And slender vein of song,
Such as in Greece flowed vigorous and strong,
Kind fate hath given, and spirit to despise
The base, malignant throng.
--Sir Theodore Martin
AN INVITATION TO DINE WRITTEN BY HORACE TO VIRGIL
Book IV, Ode 12
Yes, a small box of nard from the stores of Sulpicius[2]
A cask shall elicit, of potency rare
To endow with fresh hopes, dewy-bright and delicious,
And wash from our hearts every cobweb of care.
If you'd dip in such joys, come--the better the quicker!--
But remember the fee--for it suits not my ends,
To let you make havoc, scot-free, 'with my liquor,
As though I were one of your heavy-pursed friends.
To the winds with base lucre and pale melancholy!--
In the flames of the pyre these, alas! will be vain,
Mix your sage ruminations with glimpses of folly,--
'Tis delightful at times to be somewhat insane.
--Sir Theodore Martin
[Footnote 2: Virgil must bring some rare perfume in exchange
for the rich wine, since Horace thus playfully conditions his
invitation.]
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