"Why, Lydia, why,
I pray, by all the gods above,
Art so resolved that Sybaris should die,
And all for love?
"Why doth he shun
The Campus Martius' sultry glare?
He that once recked of neither dust nor sun,
Why rides he there,
"First of the brave,
Taming the Gallic steed no more?
Why doth he shrink from Tiber's yellow wave?
Why thus abhor
"The wrestlers' oil,
As 'twere from viper's tongue distilled?
Why do his arms no livid bruises soil,
He, once so skilled,
"The disc or dart
Far, far beyond the mark to hurl?
And tell me, tell me, in what nook apart,
Like baby-girl,
"Lurks the poor boy,
Veiling his manhood, as did Thetis' son,
To 'scape war's bloody clang, while fated Troy
Was yet undone?"
In the same class with this poem may be ranked the following ode (I. 27). Just as the poet has made us as familiar with the lovelorn Sybaris as if we knew him, so does he here transport us into the middle of a wine-party of young Romans, with that vivid dramatic force which constitutes one great source of the excellence of his lyrics.
"Hold! hold! 'Tis for Thracian madmen to fight
With wine-cups, that only were made for delight.
'Tis barbarous-brutal! I beg of you all,
Disgrace not our banquet with bloodshed and brawl!
"Sure, Median scimitars strangely accord
With lamps and with wine at the festival board!
'Tis out of all rule! Friends, your places resume,
And let us have order once more in the room!
"If I am to join you in pledging a beaker
Of this stout Falernian, choicest of liquor,
Megilla's fair brother must say, from what eyes
Flew the shaft, sweetly fatal, that causes his sighs.
"How—dumb! Then I drink not a drop. Never blush,
Whoever the fair one may be, man! Tush, tush!
She'll do your taste credit, I'm certain—for yours
Was always select in its little amours.
"Don't be frightened! We're all upon honour, you know,
So out with your tale!—Gracious powers! Is it so?
Poor fellow! Your lot has gone sadly amiss,
When you fell into such a Charybdis as this!
"What witch, what magician, with drinks and with charms,
What god can effect your release from her harms?
So fettered, scarce Pegasus' self, were he near you,
From the fangs of this triple Chimaera would clear you."
In this poem, which has all the effect of an impromptu, we have a genre picture of Roman life, as vivid as though painted by the pencil of Couture or Gerôme.
Serenades were as common an expedient among the Roman gallants of the days of Augustus as among their modern successors. In the fine climate of Greece, Italy, and Spain, they were a natural growth, and involved no great strain upon a wooer's endurance. They assume a very different aspect under a northern sky, where young Absolute, found by his Lydia Languish "in the garden, in the coldest night in January, stuck like a dripping statue," presents a rather lugubrious spectacle. Horace (Odes, III. 7) warns the fair Asteriè, during the absence of her husband abroad, to shut her ears against the musical nocturnes of a certain Enipeus:—
"At nightfall shut your doors, nor then.
Look down into the street again,
When quavering fifes complain;"
using almost the words of Shylock to his daughter Jessica:—
"Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squeaking of the wrynecked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casement then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street."
The name given to such a serenade, adopted probably, with the serenades themselves, from Greece, was paraclausithyron—literally, an out-of-door lament. Here is a specimen of what they were (Odes, III. 10), in which, under the guise of imitating their form, Horace quietly makes a mock of the absurdity of the practice. His serenader has none of the insensibility to the elements of the lover in the Scotch song:—
"Wi' the sleet in my hair, I'd gang ten miles and mair,
For a word o' that sweet lip o' thine, o' thine,
For ae glance o' thy dark e'e divine."