Act 5 — Poems

Whence is it, sir, that none contented lives With the fair lot which prudent reason gives, Or chance presents, yet all with envy view The schemes that others variously pursue? Broken with toils, with ponderous arms oppressed, The soldier thinks the merchant solely blest. In opposite extreme, when tempests rise, "War is a better choice," the merchant cries. When early clients thunder at his gate, Te barrister applauds the rustic's fate; While, by sub-poenas dragged from home, the clown Thinks the supremely happy dwell in town! Not to be tedious, mark the moral aim Of these examples. Should some god proclaim, "Your prayers are heard: you, soldier, to your seas; You, lawyer, take that envied rustic's ease,— Each to his several part—What! Ha! not move Even to the bliss you wished!" And shall not Jove, With cheeks inflamed and angry brow, forswear A weak indulgence to their future prayer?

Some, self-deceived, who think their lust of gold Is but a love of fame, this maxim hold, "No fortune is enough, since others rate Our worth proportioned to a large estate." Say, for their cure what arts would you employ? Let them be wretched, and their choice enjoy. Would you the real use of riches know? Bread, herbs, and wine are all they can bestow. Or add, what nature's deepest wants supplies; These and no more thy mass of money buys. But with continual watching almost dead, Housebreaking thieves, and midnight fires to dread, Or the suspected slave's untimely flight With the dear pelf—if this be thy delight, Be it my fate, so heaven in bounty please, Still to be poor of blessings such as these!

Nothing was of a piece in the whole man: Sometimes he like a frightened coward ran, Whose foes are at his heels; now soft and slow He moved, like folks who in procession go. Now with two hundred slaves he crowds his train; Now walks with ten. In high and haughty strain, At morn, of kings and governors he prates; At night, "A frugal table, O ye Fates, A little shell the sacred salt to hold, And clothes, though coarse, to keep from me the cold." Yet give this wight, so frugally content, A thousand pounds, 'tis every penny spent Within the week! He drank the night away Till rising dawn, then snored out all the day. Sure, such a various creature ne'er was known. But have you, sir, no vices of your own?

A kindly friend, who balances my good And bad together, as in truth he should, If haply my good qualities prevail, Inclines indulgent to the sinking scale: For like indulgence let his friendship plead, His merits be with equal measure weighed; For he who hopes his wen shall not offend Should overlook the pimples of his friend.

He who, malignant, tears an absent friend, Or fails, when others blame him, to defend, Who trivial bursts of laughter strives to raise And courts for witty cynicism praise, Who can, what he has never seen, reveal, And friendship's secrets knows not to conceal— Romans beware—that man is black of soul.

If some few trivial faults deform my soul (Like a fair face, when spotted with a mole), If none with avarice justly brand my fame, With sordidness, or deeds too vile to name; If pure and innocent; if dear (forgive These little praises) to my friends I live, My father was the cause, who, though maintained By a lean farm but poorly, yet disdained The country schoolmaster, to whose low care The mighty captain sent his high-born heir, With satchel, copy-book, and pelf to pay The wretched teacher on the appointed day. To Rome by this bold father was I brought, To learn those arts which well-born youths are taught, So dressed, and so attended, you would swear I was some wealthy lord's expensive heir. Himself my guardian, of unblemished truth, Among my tutors would attend my youth, And thus preserved my chastity of mind— That prime of virtue in its highest kind.

Alone I saunter, as by fancy led, I cheapen herbs, or ask the price of bread, I watch while fortune-tellers fate reveal, Then homeward hasten to my frugal meal, Herbs, pulse, and pancakes (each a separate plate), While three domestics at my supper wait. A bowl on a white marble table stands, Two goblets, and a ewer to wash my hands, And hallowed cup of true Campanian clay My pure libation to the gods to pay. I then retire to rest, nor anxious fear Before dread Marsyas early to appear. I lie till ten; then take a walk, or choose A book, perhaps, or trifle with the muse. For cheerful exercise and manly toil Anoint my body with the pliant oil— Yet not with such as Natta's, when he vamps His filthy limbs and robs the public lamps. But when the sun pours down his fiercer fire, And bids me from the toilsome sport retire, I haste to bathe, and in a temperate mood Regale my craving appetite with food (Enough to nourish nature for a day); Then trifle my domestic hours away. Such is the life from bad ambition free; Such comfort has one humble born like me: With which I feel myself more truly blest, Than if my sires the quæstor's power possessed.

Suppose a painter to a human head Should join a horse's neck, and wildly spread The various plumage of the feather'd kind O'er limbs of different beasts, absurdly joined. Or if he gave to view of beauteous maid Above the waist with every charm arrayed, But ending, fish-like, in a mermaid tail, Could you to laugh at such a picture fail? Such is the book that, like a sick man's dreams, Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes. "Painters and poets our indulgence claim, Their daring equal, and their art the same." I own the indulgence, such I give and take; But not through nature's sacred rules to break. Your opening promises some grand design, And purple patches with broad lustre shine Sewed on the poem; here in laboured strain A sacred grove, or fair Diana's fane Rises to view; there through delightful meads A murmuring stream its winding water leads. Why will you thus a mighty vase intend, If in a worthless bowl your labours end? Then learn this wandering humour to control, And keep one equal tenour through the whole.

But oft our greatest errors take their rise From our best views. I strive to be concise, And prove obscure. My strength, or passion, flees, When I would write with elegance and ease. Aiming at greatness, some to fustian soar: Some, bent on safety, creep along the shore. Thus injudicious, while one fault we shun, Into its opposite extreme we run.

Examine well, ye writers, weigh with care, What suits your genius, what your strength can bear; For when a well-proportioned theme you choose, Nor words, nor method shall their aid refuse.

The author of a promised work must be Subtle and careful in word-harmony. To choose and to reject. You merit praise If by deft linking of known words a phrase Strikes one as new. Should unfamiliar theme Need fresh-invented terms, proper will seem Diction unknown of old. This licence used With fair discretion never is refused. As when the forest, with the bending year, First sheds the leaves, which earliest appear, So an old race of words maturely dies, And some, new born, in youth and vigour rise. Many shall rise which now forgotten lie; Others, in present credit, soon shall die, If custom will, whose arbitrary sway Words and the forms of language must obey.

'Tis not enough, ye writers, that ye charm With pretty elegance; a play should warm With soft concernment—should possess the soul, And, as it wills, the listeners control. With those who laugh, our social joy appears; With those who mourn, we sympathise in tears; If you would have me weep, begin the strain, Then I shall feel your sorrow, feel your pain; But if your heroes act not what they say, I sleep or laugh the lifeless scene away.

If you would make a common theme your own, Dwell not on incidents already known; Nor word for word translate with painful care, Nor be confined in such a narrow sphere.

Begin your work with modest grace and plain, Not in the cyclic bard's bombastic strain: "I chant the glorious war and Priam's fate——" How will the boaster keep this ranting rate? The mountains laboured with prodigious throes, And lo! a mouse ridiculous arose. Far better Homer, who tries naught in vain, Opens his poem in a humbler strain: "Muse, tell the many who after Troy subdued, Manners and towns of various nations viewed." Right to the great event he speeds his course, And bears his readers, with impetuous force, Into the midst of things, while every line Opens by just degrees his whole design.

The business of the drama must appear In action or description. What we hear, With slower passion to the heart proceeds Than when an audience views the very deeds. But let not such upon the stage be brought Which better should behind the scenes be wrought; Nor force the unwilling audience to behold What may with vivid elegance be told. Let not Medea with unnatural rage Murder her little children on the stage.

Good sense, the fountain of the muse's art, Let the strong page of Socrates impart; For if the mind with clear conceptions glow, The willing words in just expressions flow. The poet who with nice discernment knows What to his country and his friends he owes; How various nature warms the human breast, To love the parent, brother, friend, or guest; What the high duties of our judges are, Of senator or general sent to war; He surely knows, with nice self-judging art, The strokes peculiar to each different part. Keep nature's great original in view, And thence the living images pursue. For when the sentiments and manners please, And all the characters are wrought with ease, Your play, though weak in beauty, force, and art, More strongly shall delight, and warm the heart, Than where a lifeless pomp of verse appears, And with sonorous trifles charms our ears.

Where beauties in a poem faults outshine, I am not angry if a casual line (That with some trivial blot unequal flows) A careless hand or human frailty shows. Then shall I angrily see no excuse If honest Homer slumber o'er his muse? Yet surely sometimes an indulgent sleep O'er works of length allowably may creep!

In certain subjects, Piso, be assured, Tame mediocrity may be endured. But god, and man, and booksellers deny A poet's right to mediocrity!

'Tis long disputed whether poems claim From art or nature their best right to fame; But art, if un-enriched by nature's vein, And a rude genius of uncultured strain, Are useless both: they must be fast combined And mutual succour in each other find.

Mæcenas, sprung from regal line, Bulwark and dearest glory mine! Some love to stir Olympic dust With glowing chariot-wheels which just Avoid the goal, and win a prize Fit for the rulers of the skies. One joys in triple civic fame Conferred by fickle Rome's acclaim; Another likes from Libya's plain To store his private barns with grain; A third who, with unceasing toil, Hoes cheerful the paternal soil, No promised wealth of Attalus Shall tempt to venture timorous Sailing in Cyprian bark to brave The terrors of Myrtoan wave. Others in tented fields rejoice, Trumpets and answering clarion-voice. Be mine the ivy, fair reward, Which blissful crowns the immortal bard; Be mine amid the breezy grove, In sacred solitude to rove— To see the nymphs and satyrs bound, Light dancing in the mazy round, While all the tuneful muses join Their various harmony divine. Count me but in the lyric choir— My crest shall to the stars aspire.

What slender youth bedewed with liquid odours Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave, Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou In wreaths thy golden hair, Plain in thy neatness? Oh, how oft shall he On faith and changed gods complain, and seas Rough with black winds, and storms Unwonted shall admire! Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold, Who always vacant, always amiable Hopes thee, of flattering gales Unmindful. Hapless they To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me, in my vowed Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea.

Seest thou yon mountain laden with deep snow The groves beneath their fleecy burthen bow, The streams congealed, forget to flow? Come, thaw the cold, and lay a cheerful pile Of fuel on the hearth; Broach the best cask and make old winter smile With seasonable mirth. This be our part—let Heaven dispose the rest; If Jove commands, the winds shall sleep That now wage war upon the foamy deep, And gentle gales spring from the balmy west. E'en let us shift to-morrow as we may: When to-morrow's passed away, We at least shall have to say, We have lived another day; Your auburn locks will soon be silvered o'er, Old age is at our heels, and youth returns no more.

Secure those golden early joys, That youth unsoured with sorrow bears, Ere withering time the taste destroys With sickness and unwieldy years. For active sports, for pleasing rest, This is the time to be possessed; The best is but in season best. The appointed tryst of promised bliss, The pleasing whisper in the dark, The half-unwilling willing kiss, The laugh that guides thee to the mark, When the kind nymph would coyness feign, And hides but to be found again— These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain.

Saturnian Jove, parent and guardian god Of human kind, to thee the Fates award The care of Cæsar's reign; to thine alone Inferior, let his empire rise. Whether the Parthian's formidable power Or Indians or the Seres of the East, With humbled pride beneath his triumph fall, Wide o'er a willing world shall he Contented rule, and to thy throne shall bend Submissive. Thou in thy tremendous car Shalt shake Olympus' head, and at our groves Polluted hurl thy dreadful bolts.

The man of life, unstained and free from craft, Ne'er needs, my Fuscus, Moorish darts to throw; He needs no quiver filled with venomed shaft, Nor e'er a bow. Whether he fare thro' Afric's boiling shoals, Or o'er the Caucasus inhospitable, Or where the great Hydaspes river rolls, Renowned in fable. Once in a Sabine forest as I strayed Beyond my boundary, by fancy charmed, Singing my Lalage, a wolf, afraid, Shunned me unarmed. The broad oak-woods of hardy Daunia, Rear no such monster mid their fiercest scions, Nor Juba's arid Mauretania, The nurse of lions. Set me where, in the heart of frozen plains, No tree is freshened by a summer wind, A quarter of the globe enthralled by rains, And Jove unkind; Or set me 'neath the chariot of the Sun, Where, overnear his fires, no homes may be; I'll love, for her sweet smile and voice, but one— My Lalage.

Should fortune frown, live thou serene; Nor let thy spirit rise too high, Though kinder grown she change the scene; Bethink thee, Delius, thou must die. Whether thy slow days mournful pass, Or swiftly joyous fleet away, While thou reclining on the grass Dost bless with wine the festal day. Where poplar white and giant pine Ward off the inhospitable beam; Where their luxuriant branches twine, Where bickers down its course the stream, Here bid them perfumes bring, and wine, And the fair rose's short-lived flower, While youth and fortune and the twine Spun by the Sisters, grant an hour. We all must tread the path of Fate, And ever shakes the fateful urn, Whose lot embarks us, soon or late, On Charon's boat—beyond return.

Did any punishment attend Thy former perjuries, I should believe a second time, Thy charming flatteries: Did but one wrinkle mark thy face Or hadst thou lost one single grace. No sooner hast thou, with false vows, Provoked the powers above, But thou art fairer than before, And we are more in love. Thus Heaven and Earth seem to declare They pardon falsehood in the fair. The nymphs, and cruel Cupid too, Sharpening his pointed dart On an old home besmeared with blood, Forbear thy perjured heart. Fresh youth grows up to wear thy chains, And the old slave no freedom gains.

The man who follows Wisdom's voice, And makes the Golden Mean his choice, Nor plunged in squalid gloomy cells Midst hoary desolation dwells; Nor to allure the envious eye Rears a proud palace to the sky; The man whose steadfast soul can bear Fortune indulgent or severe, Hopes when she frowns, and when she smiles With cautious fear eludes her wiles.

Bandusia's Well, that crystal dost outshine, Worthy art thou of festal wine and wreath! An offered kid to-morrow shall be thine, Whose swelling brows his earliest horns unsheath. And mark him for the feats of love and strife. In vain: for this same youngling from the fold Of playful goats shall with his crimson life Incarnadine thy waters fresh and cold. The blazing Dog-star's unrelenting hour Can touch thee not: to roaming herd or bulls O'erwrought by plough, thou giv'st a shady bower, Thou shalt be one of Earth's renowned pools! For I shall sing thy grotto ilex-crowned, Whence fall thy waters of the babbling sound.

O Faun-god, wooer of each nymph that flees, Come, cross my land! Across those sunny leas, Tread thou benign, and all my flock's increase Bless ere thou go. In each full year a tender kid be slain, If Venus' mate, the bowl, be charged amain With wine, and incense thick the altar stain Of long ago. The herds disport upon the grassy ground, When in thy name December's Nones come round; Idling on meads the thorpe, with steers unbound, Its joys doth show. Amid emboldened lambs the wolf roams free; The forest sheds its leafage wild for thee; And thrice the delver stamps his foot in glee On earth, his foe.

Now have I reared memorial to last More durable than brass, and to o'ertop The pile of royal pyramids. No waste Of rain or ravening Boreas hath power To ruin it, nor lapse of time to come In the innumerable round of years. I shall not wholly die; great part of me Shall 'scape the Funeral Goddess. Evermore Fresh shall my honours grow, while pontiffs still Do climb the Capitol with silent maid. It shall be told where brawls the Aufidus In fury, and where Daunus poor in streams Once reigned o'er rural tribes, it shall be told That Horace rose from lowliness to fame And first adapted to Italian strains The Æolian lay. Assume the eminence, My own Melpomene, which merit won, And deign to wreath my hair in Delphic bays.