Short Poems

Lady , thou lovest high and holy Thought,
And noble deeds, and hopes sublime or beauteous;
Thou lovest charities in secret wrought,
And all things pure, and generous, and duteous;
What then if these be drest in robes of power,
Triumphant WORDS , that thrill the heart of man,
Conquering for good beyond the flitting hour,
With stately march, and music in the van?

Against Curetius.

Uranius, Curetius' father, could set deceptive stars in a sphere of glass, gloomily shake his head over the errant course of Saturn, or ensure for a trifle the favourable influence of Jupiter. The father's chicanery meets with its punishment, so long deferred, in the son whose mouth needs must pay the just penalty. For filthy are his delights and he wastes all his substance in wantoning and debauchery. And so the tongue of the son has squandered all the riches which that of his lying father gathered together.

The Wild Boar and the Lion.

A dark boar and a tawny lion met once in battle, each exulting in his strength: the one shook his cruel bristles, the other his dreadful mane. One was Mar's favourite, the other Cybele's: both are kings of the mountains, both engaged the labours of Hercules.

Letter to Serena.

The Magnet.

Whosoever with anxious thought examines the universe and searches out the origin of things — the reason of the sun's and moon's eclipse, the causes of comets' red and baneful fires, the source of the winds, the motion that makes the earth to quake, the force that splits the heavens in twain, the noise of the thunder, the brilliance of the rainbow, let this man (if man's mind has any power to conceive the truth) explain to me something I would fain understand.

The Nile.

Blessed is the man who cleaves the soil of Egypt with his plough; he need not hope for clouds to shroud the heavens in darkness nor call upon the storm-winds that bring the chilling rain or the rainbow bright with its various colours.

Aponus.

Fount that prolongest life for the dwellers in Antenor's city, banishing by thy neighbouring waters all harmful fates, seeing that thy marvels stir utterance even in the dumb, that a people's love bids poets to honour thee in song, and that there is no hand whose fingers have not traced for thee some lines in thankful witness of prayers granted, shall I not be held guilty alike by the Muses and the Nymphs if I alone sing not thy praises? How can a spot whose fame is on so many lips rightly be passed over by me in slighting silence?

Of Theodore and Hadrian

Manlius Theodorus sleeps night and day; the sleepless Egyptian steals alike from gods and men. Peoples of Italy, be this your one prayer — that Manlius keep awake and the Egyptian sleep.

Of an old Man of Verona who never left his home.

Letter to Gennadius, ex-Proconsul.

Glory of all Italy, who dwellest on the pleasant banks of Rubicon, ornament of the Roman bar second only to Cicero, well known to the peoples of Greece and to Egypt, land of my birth (for both have feared and loved thy rule), dost thou ask for poems to appease thy hungry throat?
By our friendship, I swear there are none at home. My verses soon learn to trust to their own wings and leave the nest, flying far afield nor ever returning to their humble home.