TO POMPEIUS VARUS

Pompey, what fortune gives you back
  To the friends and the gods who love you? 
Once more you stand in your native land,
  With your native sky above you. 
Ah, side by side, in years agone,
  We’ve faced tempestuous weather,
      And often quaffed
      The genial draught
  From the same canteen together.

When honor at Philippi fell
  A prey to brutal passion,
I regret to say that my feet ran away
  In swift Iambic fashion. 
You were no poet; soldier born,
  You stayed, nor did you wince then. 
     Mercury came
     To my help, which same
  Has frequently saved me since then.

But now you’re back, let’s celebrate
  In the good old way and classic;
Come, let us lard our skins with nard,
  And bedew our souls with Massic! 
With fillets of green parsley leaves
  Our foreheads shall be done up;
     And with song shall we
     Protract our spree
  Until the morrow’s sun-up.

THE POET’S METAMORPHOSIS

Maecenas, I propose to fly
  To realms beyond these human portals;
No common things shall be my wings,
  But such as sprout upon immortals.

Of lowly birth, once shed of earth,
  Your Horace, precious (so you’ve told him),
Shall soar away; no tomb of clay
  Nor Stygian prison-house shall hold him.

Upon my skin feathers begin
  To warn the songster of his fleeting;
But never mind, I leave behind
  Songs all the world shall keep repeating.

Lo!  Boston girls, with corkscrew curls,
  And husky westerns, wild and woolly,
And southern climes shall vaunt my rhymes,
  And all profess to know me fully.

Methinks the West shall know me best,
  And therefore hold my memory dearer;
For by that lake a bard shall make
  My subtle, hidden meanings clearer.

So cherished, I shall never die;
  Pray, therefore, spare your dolesome praises,
Your elegies, and plaintive cries,
  For I shall fertilize no daisies!

TO VENUS

Venus, dear Cnidian-Paphian queen! 
  Desert that Cyprus way off yonder,
And fare you hence, where with incense
  My Glycera would have you fonder;
And to your joy bring hence your boy,
  The Graces with unbelted laughter,
The Nymphs, and Youth,—­then, then, in sooth,
  Should Mercury come tagging after.

IN THE SPRINGTIME

I

’T is spring!  The boats bound to the sea;
  The breezes, loitering kindly over
The fields, again bring herds and men
  The grateful cheer of honeyed clover.

Now Venus hither leads her train;
  The Nymphs and Graces join in orgies;
The moon is bright, and by her light
  Old Vulcan kindles up his forges.