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The man, who loves the golden mean,
A house, not weatherproof nor clean,
Shuns, and is safe: shuns, wise withal,
The envied hall.

Well-schooled the mind, when troubles press,
Expects a change in happiness,
Knows it may come. God summons here

The winter drear,

Then drives it hence. What's ill to-day
May turn to good. 'Tis Phœbus' way
Sometimes to wake the Muse, not bend
His bow sans end.

In straits of fortune steel your heart,
And smile. 'Tis also wisdom's part,
Lest that good wind become a gale,
To shorten sail.

I now pass to C. S. Calverley, the Cambridge scholar, to whom the whole world is indebted for many precious things, but perhaps for nothing quite so precious as his version of one of the loveliest lines in Catullus desideratoque acquiescimus lecto ('And nestle on the pillow of our dreams ') in the sonnet to the peninsula Sirmio. I choose Book I., Ode 9, because it stands first in Calverley's selections.

Here is his version :

One dazzling mass of solid snow

Soracte stands the bent woods fret
Beneath their load; and sharpest-set
With frost, the streams have ceased to flow.

Pile on great faggots and break up
The ice: let influence more benign
Enter with four-years-treasured wine,
Fetched in the ponderous Sabine cup :
Leave to the gods all else. When they
Have once bid rest the winds that war
Over the passionate seas, no more
Gray ash and cypress rock and sway.

Ask not what future suns shall bring.
Count to-day gain, whate'er it chance
To be: nor, young man, scorn the dance
Nor deem sweet Love an idle thing,

Ere time thy April youth hath changed
To sourness. Park and public walk
Attract thee now, and whispered talk
At twilight meetings pre-arranged ;

Hear now the pretty laugh that tells
In what dim corner lurks thy love;
And snatch a bracelet or a glove
From wrist or hand that scarce rebels.

I may say at once that Calverley seems to me to have handicapped himself unwisely by his choice of metre. In Memoriam

claims that metre, by right of priority, for its own themes; and it is generally admitted that Tennyson discovered (or rediscovered) exactly the right metre for his subject-matter. But since few of the themes handled in the loosely-connected poems which make up Tennyson's In Memoriam would have had any attraction for Horace, it follows, I think, that this metre is unlikely to suit the very different themes for which Horace set apart the Alcaic stanza. It seems to me probable that Calverley knew nothing of the Omar Khayyam metre till after he had translated the Odes; that metre, I believe, is the nearest approach possible in English to the Alcaic stanza, not of Alcæus, but of Horace. His Alcaic best illustrates a grave and often a patriotic theme; the present ode, which is imitated, if not translated, from Alcæus, is rather exceptional, but even here Horace is preaching on the folly of taking anxious thought for the morrow and the obligation laid on us all to be as happy as we can. I need hardly remind my readers that Horace chose every tune for a special purpose, and reserved the tune, when chosen, for that purpose only-e.g., a subject suitable for the Sapphic metre would not be suitable for the Asclepiad. The great Roman odes (Book III., 1-6) could only be written in Alcaics. Very occasionally he uses a metre once, and once only, in the Odes; that is because he never again has thoughts which could be expressed in just that particular tune. It is time to give my own version of the ode:

TO THALIARCHUS

You see how on Soracte piled the snow

Is white and shining, how their burdens grow

Too heavy for the groaning oaks, and how
Stayed by sharp frost no more the rivers flow.

To thaw the winter's cold those faggots are
Too few and feeble: pile them higher far:
More liberally wine four-autumns-old

Draw, Thaliarchus, from the Sabine jar.

Leave to the gods all else. It lies with these
To calm the winds that on the boiling seas

Fight out the battle. If their will be peace,
Nor aged rowans toss nor cypress-trees.

Friend, think not of the morrow anxiously,
But count whatever kind of day it be

As profit. While you are a boy, and while
Peevish old age is distant, and life's tree

Is green, nor dances nor sweet love refuse :
Play-ground and square are yours, yours now to use,
Now every nightfall at the trysted hour
Love's soft repeated whispers do not lose.

Sweetly the laugh betrays the girl you missed
Hid in the niche, and gaily from her wrist

The forfeit of the game is snatched away
Or from her finger feigning to resist.

Now let us try one of the great Alcaic odes of Book III. I choose Ode 2 as the shortest of the series, and as containing the most famous and also the most hackneyed line in Horace. I give Calverley's translation first :

Friend! with a poor man's straits to fight
Let warfare teach thy stalwart boy:
Let him the Parthian's front annoy
With lance in rest, a dreaded knight:

Live in the field, inure his eye

To danger. From the foeman's wall
May the armed tyrant's dame, with all
Her damsels, gaze on him, and sigh

'Dare not, in war unschooled, to rouse
Yon Lion-whom to touch is death,

To whom red Anger ever saith,

"

Slay and slay on "-O prince, my spouse!'

-Honoured and blest the patriot dies.
From death the recreant may not flee :
Death shall not spare the faltering knee
And coward back of him that flies.

Valour-unbeat, unsullied still-
Shines with pure lustre: all too great
To seize or drop the sword of state,
Swayed by a people's veering will.
Valour-to souls too great for death
Heav'n op'ning-treads the untrodden way:
And this dull world, this damp cold clay,
On wings of scorn abandoneth.

-Let too the sealed lip honoured be.
The babbler, who'd the secrets tell
Of holy Ceres, shall not dwell
Where I dwell; shall not launch with me

A shallop. Heaven full many a time
Hath with the unclean slain the just :
And halting-footed Vengeance must
O'ertake at last the steps of crime.

On reflection, I do not think that Calverley is here seen at his best, but the ode itself is intensely interesting, because here, above all, we discover what Horace considered to be the ideal education for a Roman boy. That ideal is certainly closer to the Prussian way of thinking than to ours; indeed, Mommsen wrote his monumental history of Rome partly to prove that the Romans were the forerunners of the Prussians. Boyhood, in Horace's view, should be sternly disciplined, for education is a preparation

for war, which is the real business of all good Romans: boys should early be trained to live dangerously; soon it will be their business to invade the lands of their enemies. Death in battle is the crowning distinction of life; meanwhile manliness is what matters, and a good conscience. The ideal Roman will care comparatively little for politics, or for winning the people's voices; he will simply do his duty, and, though at the polls a capricious populace may reject him, he will be sure of the immortality which fame alone can confer. Further, he will be silent and trustworthy: to blab is dangerous, and those who blab should be shunned as companions, for they are all too likely to bring ruin on their associates as well as on themselves. I now give my own version :

Book III., ODE 2

Let every Roman boy be taught to know
Constraining Hardship as a friend, and grow

Strong in fierce warfare, with dread lance and horse
Encountering the gallant Parthian foe,—

Aye, let him live beneath the open sky

In danger. Him from leaguered walls should eye
Mother and daughter of th' insurgent king,
And she for her betrothed, with many a sigh,

Should pray, poor maiden, lest, when hosts engage,
Unversed in arms he face that lion's rage

So dangerous to touch what time he gluts
His wrath upon the battle's bloody stage.
For country 'tis a sweet and seemly thing
To die. Death ceases not from following

Ev'n runaways. Can youth with feeble knees,
That fears to face the battle, scape his wing?
Defeat true Manliness can never know:
Honours untarnished still it has to show,

Not taking up or laying office down
Because the fickle mob will have it so.
'Tis Manliness lifts men too good to die,
And finds a way to that forbidden sky:

Above the thronging multitudes, above
The clinging mists of earth it rises high.
Nor less abides to loyal secrecy

A sure reward: I would not have him be

Neath the same roof, the babbler who reveals

Demeter's secret things, or launch with me

A shallop frail: The god of heav'n has blent
Oft in one doom th' unclean and innocent:

Seldom the miscreant has scaped the slow
And sure pursuit of halting Punishment.

I come next to two metres neither of which Horace uses more than once, for the very simple reason which I have already given;

he had something to say, once and once only, which to no other tune could be set quite so convincingly. The first of the two odes (Book I., Ode 4) gives a solemn turn to a trivial theme. The spring is here again, but it may be the last spring that we shall see: death at any rate is the certain end of all. I give the ode in Conington's version first :

The touch of Zephyr and of Spring has loosen'd Winter's thrall;
The well-dried keels are wheel'd again to sea :

The ploughman cares not for his fire, nor cattle for their stall,
And frost no more is whitening all the lea-
Now Cytherea leads the dance, the bright moon overhead;
The Graces and the Nymphs, together knit,

With rhythmic feet the meadow beat, while Vulcan, fiery red,
Heats the Cyclopian forge in Ætna's pit.

'Tis now the time to wreathe the brow with branch of myrtle green,

Or flowers, just opening to the vernal breeze;

Now Faunus claims his sacrifice among the shady treen,

Lambkin or kidling, whichsoe'er he please.

Pale Death, impartial, walks his round: he knocks at cottage-gate
And palace-portal. Sestius, child of bliss !

How should a mortal's hopes be long, when short his being's date ?
Lo here! the fabulous ghosts, the dark abyss,

The void of the Plutonian hall, where soon as e'er you go,

No more for you shall leap the auspicious die

To seat you on the throne of wine: nor more your breast shall glow
For Lycidas, the star of every eye.

I do not think, now that I have read it again, that this is one of the most favourable specimens of Conington's versions. I chose the ode as the solitary representative of a striking metre, and I had no idea until I wrote out Conington's version that I had selected a tune which is almost identical with his. Have I not the right to hope that this makes it not so very unlikely that my predecessor and I have both hit on the metre which comes as near to representing the Latin original as is possible for any English metre? The ode is remarkable for being divided into two sharply contrasted parts, the former rather lovely, and the latter sombre. The first line of the second half is famous for its 'reverberating emphasis,' which Conington's version rather strangely ignores. I pass ' by treen' in silence and give my own translation :

Sweet Zephyrs usher in the spring, and earth long bound is free,
Dry keels upon the rollers reach the sea.

Nor herdsman loves the inglenook, nor herd the stall to-day,
The meadows shine, but frosts are far away.

Cythera's Venus leads the dance: the Nymphs and Graces spring
From foot to foot in lovely linked ring.

The Moon is watching overhead: swart Vulcan goes the round
Of sweltering Cyclopes underground.

Now is the time on glossy locks the myrtle green to twine

Or flow'rs that in the melting meadow shine,

VOL. XCVIII-No. 582

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