Part 10 (1/2)
”To thee 'tis gain thy mother's dust to mock, To mock the silent watchfires of the night, All heaven, the G.o.ds, on whom death's icy shock Can never light.
”Smiles Venus' self, I vow, to see thy arts, The guileless Nymphs and cruel Cupid smile, And, smiling, whets on b.l.o.o.d.y stone his darts Of fire the while.
”Nay more, our youth grow up to be thy prey, New slaves throng round, and those who crouched at first, Though oft they threaten, leave not for a day Thy roof accurst.
”Thee mothers for their unfledged younglings dread; Thee n.i.g.g.ard old men dread, and brides new-made, In misery, lest their lords neglect their bed, By thee delayed.”
Horace is more at home in playful raillery of the bewildering effects of love upon others, than in giving expression to its emotions as felt by himself. In the fourteenth Epode, it is true, he begs Maecenas to excuse his failure to execute some promised poem, because he is so completely upset by his love for a certain naughty Phryne that he cannot put a couple of lines together. Again, he tells us (Odes, I. 19) into what a ferment his whole being has been thrown, long after he had thought himself safe from such emotions, by the marble-like sheen of Glycera's beauty--her _grata protervitas, et voltus nimium lubricus adspici_--
”Her pretty, pert, provoking ways, And face too fatal-fair to see.”
The first Ode of the Fourth Book is a beautiful fantasia on a similar theme. He paints, too, the tortures of jealousy with the vigour (Odes, I. 13) of a man who knew something of them:--
”Then reels my brain, then on my cheek The s.h.i.+fting colour comes and goes, And tears, that flow unbidden, speak The torture of my inward throes, The fierce unrest, the deathless flame, That slowly macerates my frame.”
And when rallying his friend Tibullus (Odes, I. 23) about his doleful ditties on the fickleness of his mistress Glycera, he owns to having himself suffered terribly in the same way. But despite all this, it is very obvious that if love has, in Rosalind's phrase, ”clapped him on the shoulder,” the little G.o.d left him ”heart-whole.” Being, as it is, the source of the deepest and strongest emotions, love presents many aspects for the humorist, and perhaps to no one more than to him who has felt it intensely. Horace may or may not have sounded the depths of the pa.s.sion in his own person; but, in any case, a fellow-feeling for the lover's pleasures and pains served to infuse a tone of kindliness into his ridicule. How charming in this way is the Ode to Lydia (I. 8), of which the late Henry Luttrel's once popular and still delightful 'Letters to Julia' is an elaborate paraphrase!--
”Why, Lydia, why, I pray, by all the G.o.ds above, Art so resolved that Sybaris should die, And all for love?
”Why doth he shun The Campus Martius' sultry glare?
He that once recked of neither dust nor sun, Why rides he there,
”First of the brave, Taming the Gallic steed no more?
Why doth he shrink from Tiber's yellow wave?
Why thus abhor
”The wrestlers' oil, As 'twere from viper's tongue distilled?
Why do his arms no livid bruises soil, He, once so skilled,
”The disc or dart Far, far beyond the mark to hurl?
And tell me, tell me, in what nook apart, Like baby-girl,
”Lurks the poor boy, Veiling his manhood, as did Thetis' son, To 'scape war's b.l.o.o.d.y clang, while fated Troy Was yet undone?”
In the same cla.s.s with this poem may be ranked the following ode (I.
27). Just as the poet has made us as familiar with the lovelorn Sybaris as if we knew him, so does he here transport us into the middle of a wine-party of young Romans, with that vivid dramatic force which const.i.tutes one great source of the excellence of his lyrics.
”Hold! hold! 'Tis for Thracian madmen to fight With wine-cups, that only were made for delight.
'Tis barbarous-brutal! I beg of you all, Disgrace not our banquet with bloodshed and brawl!
”Sure, Median scimitars strangely accord With lamps and with wine at the festival board!
'Tis out of all rule! Friends, your places resume, And let us have order once more in the room!
”If I am to join you in pledging a beaker Of this stout Falernian, choicest of liquor, Megilla's fair brother must say, from what eyes Flew the shaft, sweetly fatal, that causes his sighs.
”How--dumb! Then I drink not a drop. Never blush, Whoever the fair one may be, man! Tush, tus.h.!.+
She'll do your taste credit, I'm certain--for yours Was always select in its little amours.
”Don't be frightened! We're all upon honour, you know, So out with your tale!--Gracious powers! Is it so?