A Handbook for Latin Clubs

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 Christopher 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 Sulpicius³
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

THE GOLDEN MEAN

Horace. Book II, Ode 10

Receive, dear friends, the truths I teach,
So shalt thou live beyond the reach

Of adverse Fortune's power;

Not always tempt the distant deep,
Nor always timorously creep

Along the treacherous shore.

He that holds fast the golden mean
And lives contentedly between

The little and the great,

Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door,

Imbittering all his state.

The tallest pines feel most the power
Of wintry blasts; the loftiest tower

Comes heaviest to the ground;

The bolts that spare the mountain's side
His cloud-capt eminence divide,

And spread the ruin round.

The well-informed philosopher
Rejoices with a wholesome fear,

And hopes in spite of pain;

If winter bellow from the north,
Soon the sweet spring comes dancing forth,

And nature laughs again.

What if thine heaven be overcast?
The dark appearance will not last;

Expect a brighter sky.

The god that strings a silver bow
Awakes sometimes the Muses too,

And lays his arrows by.

If hindrances obstruct thy way,
Thy magnanimity display,

And let thy strength be seen:

But O! if Fortune fill thy sail
With more than a propitious gale,

Take half thy canvas in.

—William Cowper

TO THE READER

Martial

He unto whom thou art so partial,
O reader, is the well-known Martial,
The Epigrammatist: while living,
Give him the fame thou wouldst be giving
So shall he hear, and feel, and know it:
Post-obits rarely reach a poet.

—Lord Byron

ON PORTIA

Martial. Book I, xlii

When the sad tale, how Brutus fell, was brought,
And slaves refused the weapon Portia sought;
"Know ye not yet," she said, with towering pride,
"Death is a boon that cannot be denied?
I thought my father amply had imprest
This simple truth upon each Roman breast."
Dauntless she gulph'd the embers as they flamed
And, while their heat within her raged, exclaim'd
"Now, troublous guardians of a life abhorr'd,
Still urge your caution, and refuse the sword."

—George Lamb

TO POTITUS

Martial. Book X, lxx

That scarce a piece I publish in a year,
Idle perhaps to you I may appear.
But rather, that I write at all, admire,
When I am often robbed of days entire.
Now with my friends the evening I must spend:
To those preferred my compliments must send.
Now at the witnessing a will make one:
Hurried from this to that, my morning's gone.
Some office must attend; or else some ball;
Or else my lawyer's summons to the hall.
Now a rehearsal, now a concert hear;
And now a Latin play at Westminster.
Home after ten return, quite tir'd and dos'd.
When is the piece, you want, to be compos'd?

—John Hay

WHAT IS GIVEN TO FRIENDS IS NOT LOST

Martial

Your slave will with your gold abscond,
The fire your home lay low,

Your debtor will disown his bond
Your farm no crops bestow;

Your steward a mistress frail shall cheat;
Your freighted ship the storms will beat;

That only from mischance you'll save,
Which to your friends is given;

The only wealth you'll always have
Is that you've lent to heaven.

—English Journal of Education, Jan., 1856

TO COTILUS

Martial

They tell me, Cotilus, that you're a beau:
What this is, Cotilus, I wish to know.
"A beau is one who, with the nicest care,
In parted locks divides his curling hair;
One who with balm and cinnamon smells sweet,
Whose humming lips some Spanish air repeat;
Whose naked arms are smoothed with pumice-stone,
And tossed about with graces all his own:
A beau is one who takes his constant seat
From morn till evening, where the ladies meet;
And ever, on some sofa hovering near,
Whispers some nothing in some fair one's ear;
Who scribbles thousand billets-doux a day;
Still reads and scribbles, reads, and sends away;
A beau is one who shrinks, if nearly pressed
By the coarse garment of a neighbor guest;
Who knows who flirts with whom, and still is found
At each good table in successive round:
A beau is one—none better knows than he
A race-horse, and his noble pedigree"—
Indeed? Why Cotilus, if this be so,
What teasing trifling thing is called a beau!

—Elton

THE HAPPY LIFE

Martial

To Julius Martialis

The things that make a life to please,
(Sweetest Martial), they are these:
Estate inherited, not got:
A thankful field, hearth always hot:
City seldom, law-suits never:
Equal friends, agreeing forever:
Health of body, peace of mind:
Sleeps that till the morning bind:
Wise simplicity, plain fare:
Not drunken nights, yet loos'd from care:
A sober, not a sullen spouse:
Clean strength, not such as his that plows;
Wish only what thou art, to be;
Death neither wish, nor fear to see.

—Sir Richard Fanshawe

TO A SCHOOLMASTER

Martial. Book X, lxii

Thou monarch of eight parts of speech,
Who sweep'st with birch a youngster's breech,
Oh! now awhile withhold your hand!
So may the trembling crop-hair'd band
Around your desk attentive hear,
And pay you love instead of fear;
So may yours ever be as full,
As writing or as dancing school.
The scorching dog-day is begun;
The harvest roasting in the sun;
Each Bridewell keeper, though requir'd
To use the lash, is too much tir'd.
Let ferula and rod together
Lie dormant, till the frosty weather.
Boys do improve enough in reason,
Who miss a fever in this season.

—John Hay

EPITAPH ON EROTION

Martial. Book X, lxi

Underneath this greedy stone,
Lies little sweet Erotion;⁴
Whom the Fates, with hearts as cold,
Nipp'd away at six years old.
Thou, whoever thou mayst be,
That hast this small field after me,
Let the yearly rites be paid
To her little slender shade;
So shall no disease or jar
Hurt thy house, or chill thy Lar;
But this tomb be here alone
The only melancholy stone.

—Leigh Hunt

NON AMO TE

Martial. I, 32

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare:
Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.⁵

GRATITUDE

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat
And sae the Lord be thanket.

—Burns

TRANSLATION

Sunt quibus est panis
nec amor tamen ullus edendi:

Sunt quibus hic amor est
deest tamen ipse cibus.

Panis at est nobis
et amor quoque panis edendi

Pro quibus est Domino
gratia habenda Deo.

—The Lawrence Latinist

A HYMN TO THE LARES

It was, and still my care is,
To worship ye, the Lares,
With crowns of greenest parsley,
And garlick chives not scarcely;
For favors here to warme me,
And not by fire to harme me;
For gladding so my hearth here,
With inoffensive mirth here;
That while the wassaile bowle here
With North-down ale doth troule here,
No sillable doth fall here,
To marre the mirth at all here.
For which, O chimney-keepers!
(I dare not call ye sweepers)
So long as I am able
To keep a country-table
Great be my fare, or small cheere,
I'll eat and drink up all here.

—Robert Herrick

ELYSIUM

Past the despairing wail—
And the bright banquets of the Elysian Vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!
Elysian life survey!
There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads,
His merry west-winds blithely leads
The ever-blooming May!
Through gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the Hours,
In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers,
And Truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day.
And joy today and joy tomorrow
But wafts the airy soul aloft;
The very name is lost to Sorrow,
And Pain is Rapture tuned more exquisitely soft.
Here the Pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb,
And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim,
The load he shall bear never more;
Here the mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams
Lull'd with harp strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams
The fields, when the harvest is o'er.
Here, He, whose ears drank in the battle roar,
Whose banners streamed upon the startled wind
A thunder-storm,—before whose thunder tread
The mountains trembled,—in soft sleep reclined,
By the sweet brook that o'er its pebbly bed
In silver plays, and murmurs to the shore,
Hears the stern clangour of wild spears no more.

—Schiller

A Handbook for Latin Clubs

About This Book

AFTER CONSTRUING

NIL ADMIRARI

PERDIDI DIEM

JUPITER AND HIS CHILDREN

A CLASSIC FABLE

MORAL

THE PRAYER OF SOCRATES

BY THE ROMAN ROAD

A NYMPH'S LAMENT

AN ETRUSCAN RING

ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE

Book II, Ode 16

Book IV, Ode 12

THE GOLDEN MEAN

Horace. Book II, Ode 10

Martial

Martial. Book I, xlii

TO POTITUS

Martial. Book X, lxx

Martial

TO COTILUS

Martial

Martial

To Julius Martialis

Martial. Book X, lxii

EPITAPH ON EROTION

Martial. Book X, lxi

Martial. I, 32

GRATITUDE

TRANSLATION

ELYSIUM