built the first Horatian ode.
I shall not altogether die; a part of me's immortal.
A part of me shall never pass the mortuary portal;
And when I die my fame shall stand the nitric test of time--
The fame of me of lowly birth, who built the lofty rhyme!
Ay, fame shall be my portion when no trace there is of me,
For I first made AEolian songs the songs of Italy.
Accept I pray, Melpomene, my modest meed of praise,
And crown my thinning, graying locks with wreaths of Delphic bays!
Glycera Rediviva!
Horace: Book I, Ode 19
"_Mater saeva Cupidinum_"
Venus, the cruel mother of
The Cupids (symbolising Love),
Bids me to muse upon and sigh
For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"
Believe me or believe me not,
I give this Glycera girl a lot:
Pure Parian marble are her arms--
And she has eighty other charms.
Venus has left her Cyprus home
And will not let me pull a pome
About the Parthians, fierce and rough,
The Scythian war, and all that stuff.
Set up, O slaves, a verdant shrine!
Uncork a quart of last year's wine!
Place incense here, and here verbenas,
And watch me while I jolly Venus!
On a Wine of Horace's
What time I read your mighty line,
O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,
In praise of many an ancient wine--
You twanged a wicked lyre to Bacchus!--
I wondered, like a Yankee hick,
If that old stuff contained a kick.
So when upon a Paris card
I glimpsed Falernian, I said: "Waiter,
I'll emulate that ancient bard,
And pass upon his merits later."
Professor Mendell, _quelque_ sport,
Suggested that we split a quart.
O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink
Three glasses and a pair of highballs,
I could not talk; I could not think;
For I was pickled to the eyeballs.
If you sopped up Falernian wine
How did you ever write a line?
"What Flavour?"
Horace: Book III, Ode 13
_"O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro----"_
Worthy of flowers and syrups sweet,
O fountain of Bandusian onyx,
To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat
Mix with the sizz of thy carbonics.
A kid whose budding horns portend
A life of love and war--but vainly!
For thee his sanguine life shall end--
He'll spill his blood, to put it plainly.
And never shalt thou feel the heat
That blazes in the days of Sirius,
But men shall quaff thy soda sweet,
And girls imbibe thy drinks delirious.
Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing,
Be thou immortal by this Ode (a
Not wholly meretricious thing),
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