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.

When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights; --
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore; --
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: --

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black night, --
A Meteor strange and bright: --
Hither and thither the vision strays,
A single lurid light.

HE surely must be wrong who loving fears;
And does not flee when beauty first appears.
Ye FAIR, with charms divine, I know your fame;
No more I'll burn my fingers in the flame.
From you a soft sensation seems to rise,
And, to the heart, advances through the eyes;
What there it causes I've no need to tell:
Some die of love, or languish in the spell.
Far better surely mortals here might do;
There's no occasion dangers to pursue.
By way of proof a charmer I will bring,
Whose beauty to a hermit gave the sting:

Who dwelt in yonder lonely Cot,
Why is it thus forsaken?
It seems, by all the world forgot,
Above its path the high grass grows,
And through its thatch the northwind blows
--Its thatch, by tempests shaken.

And yet, it tops a verdant hill
By Summer gales surrounded:
Beneath its door a shallow rill
Runs brawling to the vale below,
And near it sweetest flowrets grow
By banks of willow bounded.

Then why is ev'ry casement dark?
Why looks the Cot so chearless?
Ah ! why does ruin seem to mark

He did not lie – the ghost, so sad and thoughtful,
That from a star took his name by a chance,
When he had said, “Don’t fear the Lord”, to us,
“Just try the fruit and be like Him immortal”.

All routs for youths were opened in glow,
And all forbidden works – for older ones,
And amber fruits -- for gaily girls, at once,
And the rhinoceros forever white as snow.

But why we lean, bereft of any strength,
And feel that someone has forgot all us at length,
And grasp the dread of the old lure, if only

We're taking Marie Toro to her home in Père-La-Chaise;
We're taking Marie Toro to her last resting-place.
Behold! her hearse is hung with wreaths till everything is hid
Except the blossoms heaping high upon her coffin lid.
A week ago she roamed the street, a draggle and a slut,
A by-word of the Boulevard and everybody's butt;
A week ago she haunted us, we heard her whining cry,
We brushed aside the broken blooms she pestered us to buy;
A week ago she had not where to rest her weary head . . .
But now, oh, follow, follow on, for Marie Toro's dead.

Mourn, O you Loves and Cupids
and such of you as love beauty:
my girl’s sparrow is dead,
sparrow, the girl’s delight,
whom she loved more than her eyes.
For he was sweet as honey, and knew her
as well as the girl her own mother,
he never moved from her lap,
but, hopping about here and there,
chirped to his mistress alone.
Now he goes down the shadowy road
from which they say no one returns.
Now let evil be yours, evil shadows of Orcus,
that devour everything of beauty:
you’ve stolen lovely sparrow from me.

Their reward is
they become innocent again,

and when they reappear in memory
death has completely erased
the blurs, given them boundaries. They rise

and move through their new world with clean,
clear edges. My grandmother, in particular
has become buoyant, unattached finally

from her histories, from the trappings
of family. By no means was she

a good woman. But the dead don't care anymore for that.
Weightless, they no longer assume
responsibility, they no longer

have bodies. Once,

Who was there had seen us
Wouldn't bid him run?
Heavy lay between us
All our sires had done.

There he was, a-springing
Of a pious race,
Setting hags a-swinging
In a market-place;

Sowing turnips over
Where the poppies lay;
Looking past the clover,
Adding up the hay;

Shouting through the Spring song,
Clumping down the sod;
Toadying, in sing-song,
To a crabbed god.

There I was, that came of
Folk of mud and name-
I that had my name of
Them without a name.

When we were building Skua Light--
The first men who had lived a night
Upon that deep-sea Isle--
As soon as chisel touched the stone,
The friendly seals would come ashore;
And sit and watch us all the while,
As though they'd not seen men before;
And so, poor beasts, had never known
Men had the heart to do them harm.
They'd little cause to feel alarm
With us, for we were glad to find
Some friendliness in that strange sea;
Only too pleaed to let them be
And sit as long as they'd a mind