Short Poems

Once more I leap
From the Leukadian cliff,
And drunk with passion
I plunge into the surging billow!

By Aphrodite, you have said what a god would not dare say in your rashness! " Theron is not beautiful! "
Theron is not beautiful! You only were bold enough to say that and not fear the lightning of Zeus!
Behold in me one who was garrulous like you, whom angry Nemesis shows as a living example of rash speech!

Suckling, whose numbers could invite
Alike to wonder, and delight,
And with new spirit did inspire
The Thespian Scene, and Delphick Lyre;
Is thus exprest in either part,
Above the humble reach of Art.
Drawn by the Pencil, here you finde
His Form, by his own Pen his Minde.

Early-singer, evil herald to the sad lover, thrice-accursed, in the night you screech out your din and flap your wings, proud on your perch, when I have but little of the night for love; and you guffaw at my complaints!
Does your owner enjoy your music? By the high Dawn, you have shrieked your piercing song for the last time!

O pipes of the goatherds, sing no more in the hills of Daphnis to please Pan, the lover of goats; and, O lyre, interpreter of Phoebus, sing no more of Hyacinthus crowned with virgin laurel.
This indeed might be when Daphnis lived in the hills, when Hyacinthus was lovely to you; but now Dion holds the sceptre of the Desires.

At noon I saw Alexis walking in the road when Summer shears the tresses of the wheat.
Two rays of fire burned me; the first, Love's from his eyes, the other from the sun which night will soon appease, but in dreams the image of his beauty will but burn me the more.
Sleep, that brings peace to others, brings pain to me, creating beauty, a living flame in my heart.

Pain begins to touch my heart; warm Love, as he wandered idly, chafed it with his finger-tops and said, laughing: " Once more you have a sweet wound, O unhappy lover, burned with the soft and the sharp! "
And then seeing among the young men Diophantus, like an olive branch, I could neither go nor stay still.

In a dream at night Love brought me under one cover a girl, softly-laughing and still dressed; and as I held her slight body against my heart I gathered to me — vain hopes.
The memory of desire burns me and at night I have ever the fugitive of my dream before my eyes.
O my soul, O unhappy lover, cease to burn in vain dreams for this figment of beauty.

A quatrain fills a little space,
Although it's pretty small,
And oftentimes, as in this case,
It has no point at all.

Thro orchard plots with fragrance crowned
The clear cold fountain murmuring flows;
And forest leaves with rustling sound
Invite to soft repose.