Present Imperative

            Horace: Book I, Ode 11

"Tu ne quaesieris--scire nefas
      --quem mihi; quem tibi--"

               AD LEUCONOEN

NAY querry not, Leuconoë, the finish of the fable;

Eliminate the worry as to what the years may hoard!

You only waste your time upon the Babylonian Table--

(Slang for the ouija board).

And as to whether Jupiter, the final, unsurpassed one,

May add a lot of winters to our portion here below,

Or this impinging season is to be our very last one--

Really, I'd hate to know.

Apply yourself to wisdom! Sweep the floor and wash the dishes,

Nor dream about the things you'll do in 1928!

My counsel is to cease to sit and yearn about your wishes,

Cursing the throws of fate.

My! how I have been chattering on matters sad and pleasant!

(Endure with me a moment while I polish off a rhyme).

If I were you, I think, I'd bother only with the present--

Now is the only time.

The Doughboy's Horace

            Horace: Book III, Ode 9

"Donec eram gratus tibi--"

HORACE, PVT. --TH INFANTRY, A.E.F., WRITES:

WHILE I was fussing you at home

You put the notion in my dome

That I was the Molasses Kid.

I batted strong. I'll say I did.

LYDIA, ANYBURG U.S.A., WRITES:

While you were fussing me alone

To other boys my heart was stone.

When I was all that you could see

No girl had anything on me.

                  HORACE:

Well, say, I'm having some romance

With one Babette, of Northern France.

If that girl gave me the command

I'd dance a jig in No-Man's Land.

                  LYDIA:

I, too, have got a young affair

With Charley--say, that boy is there!

I'd just as soon go out and die

If I thought it'd please that guy

                  HORACE:

Suppose I can this foreign wren

And start things up with you again?

Suppose I promise to be good?

I'd love you Lyd. I'll say I would

                  LYDIA:

Though Charley's good and handsome--oh, boy!

And you're a stormy fickle doughboy,

So give the Hun his final whack,

And I'll marry you when you come back.

From: Horace
      To: Phyllis
      Subject: Invitation

            Horace: Book IV, Ode 11

"Est mihi nonum superantis annum--"

PHYLLIS, I've a jar of wine,

(Alban, B.C. 49)

Parsley wreathes, and, for your tresses,

Ivy that your beauty blesses.

Shines my house with silverware;

Frondage decks the altar stair--

Sacred vervain, a device

For a lambkin's sacrifice.

Up and down the household stairs

What a festival prepares!

Everybody's superintending--

See the sooty smoke ascending!

What, you ask me, is the date

Of the day we celebrate?

13th April, month of Venus--

Birthday of my boss, Mycænas.

Let me, Phyllis, say a word

Touching Telephus, a bird

Ranking far too high above you;

(And the loafer doesn't love you).

Lessons, Phyllie, may be learned

From Phaëton--how he was burned!

And recall Bellerophon was

One equestrian who thrown was.

Phyllis, of my loves the last,

My philandering days are past.

Sing you, in your clear contralto,

Songs I write for the rialto

Advising Chloë

            Horace: Book I, Ode 23

"Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloë--"

WHY shun me, my Chloë? Nor pistol nor bowie

  Is mine with intention to kill.

And yet like a llama you run to your mamma;

  You tremble as though you were ill.

No lion to rend you, no tiger to end you,

  I'm tame as a bird in a cage.

That counsel maternal can run for The Journal--

  You get me, I guess. . . . You're of age.

To An Aged Cut-up

            Horace: Book III, Ode 15

"Uxor pauperis Ibyci,
   Tandem nequitiæ fige modum tuæ--"

               IN CHLORIN

DEAR Mrs. Ibycus, accept a little sound advice,

  Your manners and your speech are overbold;

To chase around the sporty way you do is far from nice;

  Believe me, darling, you are growing old.

Now Pholoë may fool around (she dances like a doe!)

  A débutante has got to think of men;

But you were twenty-seven over thirty years ago--

  You ought to be asleep at half-past ten.

O Chloris, cut the ragging and the roses and the rum--

  Delete the drink, or better, chop the booze!

Go buy a skein of yarn and make the knitting needles hum,

  And imitate the art of Sister Suse.

To An Aged Cut-up, II

CHLORIS lay off the flapper stuff;

What's fit for Pholoë, a fluff,

Is not for Ibycus's wife--

A woman at your time of life!

Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as

The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";

Your presence with the maidens jars--

You are the cloud that dims the stars.

Your daughter Pholoë may stay

Out nights on the Appian Way;

her love for Nothus, as you know,

Makes her as playful as a doe.

No jazz for you, no jars of wine,

No rose that blooms incarnadine.

For one thing only you are fit:

Buy some Lucerian wool--and knit!

His Monument

            Horace: Book III, Ode 30

"Exegi monumentum aere perennius---"

THE monument that I have built is durable as brass,

And loftier than the Pyramids which mock the years that pass.

No blizzard can destroy it, nor furious rain corrode--

Remember, I'm the bard who built the first Horatian Ode.

I shall not altogether die; a part of me's immortal.

A part of me shall never pass the mortuary portal;

And when I die my fame shall stand the nitric test of time--

The fame of me of lowly birth, who built the lofty rhyme!

Ay, fame shall be my portion when no trace there is of me,

For I first madeÆolian songs the songs of Italy.

Accept I pray, Melpomene, my modest meed of praise,

And crowm my thinning, graying locks with wreathes of Delphic bays!

Glycera Rediviva!

            Horace: Book I, Ode 19

"Mater sæva Cupidinum"

VENUS, the cruel mother of

The Cupids (symbolising Love),

Bids me to muse upon and sigh

For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"

Believe me or believe me not,

I give this Glycera girl a lot:

Pure Parian marble are her arms--

And she has eighty other charms.

Venus has left her Cyprus home

And will not let me pull a pome

About the Parthians, fierce and rough,

The Scythian war, and all that stuff.

Set up, O slaves, a verdant shrine!

Uncork a quart of last year's wine!

Place incense here, and here verbenas,

And watch me while I jolly Venus!

On a Wine of Horace's

WHAT time I read your mighty line,

  O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,

In praise of many an ancient wine--

  You twanged a wickid lyric to Bacchus!--

I wondered, like a Yankee hick,

If that old stuff contained a kick.

So when upon a Paris card

  I glimpsed a Falernian, I said: "Waiter,

I'll emulate that ancient bard,

  And pass upon his merits later."

Professor Mendell, quelque sport,

Suggested that we split a quart.

O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink

  Three glasses and a pair of highballs,

I could not talk, I could not think;

  For I was pickled to the eyeballs.

If you sopped up Falernian wine

How did you ever write a line?

"What Flavour?"

            Horace: Book III, Ode 13

"O fons Bandisiæ, splendidior vitro---"

WORTHY of flowers and syrups sweet,

  O fountain of Bandusian onyx,

To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat

  Mix with the sizz of thy carbonics.

A kid whose budding horns portend

  A life of love and war--but vainly!

For thee his sanguine life shall end--

  He'll spill his blood, to put it plainly.

And never shalt thou feel the heat

  That blazes in the days of sirius,

But men shall quaff thy soda sweet,

  And girls imbibe thy drinks delirious.

Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing,

  Be thou immortal by this Ode (a

Not wholly metricious thing),

  Bandusian fount of ice-cream soda!

The Stalling of Q.H.F.

            Horace: Epode 14

"Mollis inertia cur tantam diffuderit imis"

MÆCENAS, you fret me, you worry me

  Demanding I turn out a rhyme;

Insisting on reasons, you hurry me;

  You want my Iambics on time.

You say my ambition's diminishing;

  You ask why my poem's not done.

The god it is keeps me from finishing

      The stuff I've begun.

Be not so persistent, so clamorous.

  Anacreon burned with a flame

Candescently, crescently amorous.

  You rascal, you're doing the same!

Was no fairer the flame that burned Ilium.

  Cheer up, you're a fortunate scamp,

. . . Consider avuncular William

      And Phryne, the vamp.

On the Flight of Time

            Horace: Book I, Ode 2

"Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem, mihi, quem tibi"

               AD LEUCONOEN

Look not, Leuconoë, into the future;

  Seek not to find what the answer may be;

Let no Chaldean clairvoyant compute your

  Time of existence. . . . It irritates me!

Better to bear whatever may happen soever

  Patiently, playing it through like a sport,

Whether the end of your breathing is Never,

  Or, as is likely, your time will be short.

This is the angle, the true situation;

  Get me, I pray, for I'm putting you hep:

While I've been fooling with versification

  Time has been flying. . . . Both gates!

  Watch your step!

The Last Laugh

            Horace: Epode 25

"Nox erat et cælo fulgebat Luna sereno---"

HOW sweet the moonlight sleeps," I quoted,

  "Upon this bank!" that starry night--

The night you vowed you'd be devoted--

  I'll tell the world you held me tight.

The night you said until Orion

  Should cease to whip the wintry sea,

Until the lamb should love the lion,

  You would, you swore, be all for me.

Some day Neæra, you'll be sorry.

  No mollycoddle swain am I.

I shall not sit and pine, by gorry!

  Because you're with some other guy!

No, I shall turn my predilection

  Upon some truer, fairer Jane;

And all your prayer and genuflection

  For my return shall be in vain.

And as for you, who choose to sneer, O,

  Though deals in lands and stocks you swing,

Though handsome as a movie hero,

  Though wise you are, and everything;

Yet, when the loss of her you're mourning,

  How I shall laugh at all your woe!

How I'll remind you of this warning,

  And laugh, "Ha! ha! I told you so!

Again Endorsing the Lady

            Horace: Book II, Elegy 2

"Liber eram et vacuo meditabar vivere lecto--"

I WAS free. I thought that I had entered

Love's Antarctic Zone.

"A truce to sentiment," I said. "My nights

shall be my own."

But Love had double-crossed me. How can

Beauty be so fair?

The grace of her, the face of her--and oh,

her yellow hair!

And oh, the wondrous walk of her! So doth

a goddess glide.

Jove's sister--ay, or Pallas--hath no statelier

a stride.

Fair as Iscomache herself, the Lapithanian

maid;

Or Brimo where at Mercury's side her virgin

form she laid.

Surrender now, ye goddesses whom erst the

shepherd spied!

Upon the heights of Ida lay your vestitures

aside!

And though she reach the countless years of

the Cumæan Sibyl,

May never, never Age at those delightful

features nibble!

Again Endorsing the Lady, II

I THOUGHT that I was wholly free,

  That I had Love upon the shelf;

"Hereafter," I declared in glee,

  "I'll have my evenings to myself."

How can such mortal beauty live?

(Ah, Jove, thine errings I forgive!)

Her tresses pale the sunlight's gold;

  Her hands are featly formed and taper;

Her--well, the rest ought not be told

  In any modest family paper.

Fair as Ischomache, and bright

As Brimo. Quæque queen is right.

O goddesses of long ago,

  A shepherd called ye sweet and slender.

He saw ye, so he ought to know;

  But sooth to her ye must surrender.

O may a million years not trace

A single line upon that face!

Propertius's Bid for Immortality

            Horace: Book III, Ode 3

"Carminis interea nostri redæmus in orbem---"

LET us return, then, for a time,

To our accustomed round of rhyme;

And let my songs' familiar art

Not fail to move my lady's heart.

They say that Orpheus with his lute

Had power to tame the wildest brute;

That "Vatiations on a Theme"

Of his would stay the swiftest stream.

They say that by the minstrel's song

Cithæron's rocks were moved along

To Thebes, where, as you may recall,

They formed themselves to frame a wall.

And Galatea, lovely maid,

Beneath wild Etna's fastness stayed

Her horses, dripping with the mere,

Those Polypheman songs to hear.

What marvel, then, since Bacchus and

Apollo grasp me by the hand,

That all the maidens you have heard

Should hang upon my slightest word?

Tænerian columns in my home

Are not; nor any golden dome;

No parks have I, nor Marcian spring,

Nor orchards--nay, nor anything.

The Muses, though, are friends of mine;

Some readers love my lyric line;

And never is Callipoe

Awearied by my poetry.

O happy she whose meed of praise

Hath fallen upon my sheaf of lays!

And every song of mine is sent

To be thy beauty's monument.

The Pyramids that point the sky,

The House of Jove that soars so high,

Mausolus' tomb--they are not free

From Death his final penalty.

For fire or rain shall steal away

The crumbling glory of their day;

But fame for wit can never die,

And gosh! I was a gay old guy!

A Lament

            Horace: Book II, Elegy 8

"Eripitur nobis iam pridem cara puella---"

WHILE she I loved is being torn

  From arms that held her many years,

Dost thou regard me, friend, with scorn,

  Or seek to check my tears?

Bitter the hatred for a jilt,

  And hot the hates of Eros are;

My hatred, slay me as thou wilt,

  For thee'd be gentler far.

Can I endure that she recline

  Upon another's arm? Shall they

No longer call that lady "mine"

  Who "mine" was yesterday?

For Love is fleeting as the hours.

  The town of Thebes is draped with moss,

And Ilium's well-known topless towers

  Are now a total loss.

Fell Thebes and Troy; and in the grave

  Have fallen lords of high degree.

What songs I sang! What gifts I gave!

  . . . . She never fell for me.

Bon Voyage--and Vice Versa

"Tune igitur demens nec te mea cura moratur?---"

O CYNTHIA, hast thou lost thy mind?

  Have I no claim on thine affection?

Dost love the chill Illyrian wind

  With something passing predilection?

And is thy friend--whoe'er he be--

The kind to take the place of me?

Ah, canst thou bear the surging deep?

  Canst thou endure the hard ship's-mattress?

For scant will be thy hours of sleep

  From Staten Island to Cape Hatt'ras;

And won't thy fairy feet be froze

With treading on the foreign snows?

I hope that doubly blows the gale,

  With billows twice as high as ever,

So that the captain, fain to sail,

  May not achieve his mad endeavor!

The winds, when that they cease to roar,

Shall find me wailing on the shore.

Yet merit thou my love or wrath,

  O False, I pray that Galatea

May smile upon thy watery path!

  A pleasant trip,--that's the idea.

Light of my life, there never shall

For me be any other gal.

And sailors, as they hasten past,

  Will always have to hear my query:

"Where have you seen my Cynthia last?

  Has anybody seen my dearie?"

I'll shout: "In Malden or Marquette

Where'er she be, I'll have her yet!"

Fragment

"Militis in galea nidum fecere columbæ,"--

               PETRONIUS

WITHIN the soldier's helmet see

The nesting dove;

Venus and Mars, it seems to me,

In love

On the Uses of Adversity

"Nam nihil est, quod non mortalibus afferat usum."--PETRONIUS

NOTHING there is that mortal man may utterly despise;

What in our wealth we treasured, in our poverty we prize.

The gold upon a sinking ship has often wrecked the boat,

While on a simple oar a shipwrecked man may keep afloat.

The burglar seeks the plutocrat, attracted by his dress--

The poor man finds his poverty the true preparedness.