THE NEW-YEAR'S GIFT
Now the month of Mars beginning brings the merry season near,
By our fathers named and numbered as the threshold of the year.
Faithfully their custom keeping, through the wide streets to and fro,
Offered at each friendly dwelling, seasonable gifts must go.
O what gifts, Pierian Muses, may acceptably be poured
On my own adored Neaera?—or, if not my own, adored!
Song is love's best gift to beauty; gold but tempts the venal soul;
Therefore, 'tis a song I send her on this amateurish scroll.
Wind a page of saffron parchment round the white papyrus there,
Polish well with careful pumice every silvery margin fair:
On the dainty little cover, for a title to the same
Let her bright eyes read the blazon of a love-sick poet's name.
Let the pair of horn-tipped handles be embossed with colors gay,
For my book must make a toilet, must put on its best array.
By Castalia's whispering shadow, by Pieria's vocal spring,
By yourselves, O listening Muses, who did prompt the song I sing,—
Fly, I pray you, to her chamber, and my pretty booklet bear,
All unmarred and perfect give it, every color fresh and fair:
Let her send you back, confessing, if our hearts together burn;
Or, if she but loves me little, or will nevermore return.
Utter first, for she deserves it, many a golden wish and vow;
Then deliver this true message, humbly, as I speak it now.
'Tis a gift, O chaste Neaera, from thy husband yet to be.
Take the trifle, though a "brother" now is all he seems to thee.
He will swear he loves thee dearer than the blood in all his veins;
Whether husband, or if only that cold "sister" name remains.
Ah! but "wife" he calls it: nothing takes this sweet hope from his soul!
Till a hapless ghost he wanders where the Stygian waters roll.
ELEGY THE SECOND
HE DIED FOR LOVE
Whoe'er from darling bride her husband dear
First forced to part, had but a heart of stone;
And not less hard the man who could appear
To bear such loss and live unloved, alone.
I am but weak in this; such fortitude
My soul has not; grief breaks my spirit quite.
I shame not to declare it is my mood
To sicken of a life such sorrows smite.
When I shall journey to the shadowy land,
And over my white bones black ashes be,
Beside my pyre let fair Neaera stand,
With long, loose locks unbound, lamenting me.
Let her dear mother's grief with hers have share,
One mourn a husband, one a son bewail!
Then call upon my ghost with holy prayer,
And pour ablution o'er their fingers pale.
The white bones, which my body's wreck outlast,
Girdled in flowing black they will upbear,
Sprinkle with rare, old wine, and gently cast
In bath of snowy milk, with pious care.
These will they swathe with linen mantles o'er,
And lay unmouldering in their marble bed;
Then gift of Arab or Panchaian shore,
Assyrian balm and Orient incense shed.
And may they o'er my tomb the gift disburse
Of faithful tears, remembering him below;
For those cold ashes I have made this verse,
That all my doleful way of death may know.
My oft-frequented grave the words shall bear,
And all who pass will read with pitying eyes:—
"Here Lygdamus, consumed with grief and care"For his lost bride Neaera, hapless lies."
ELEGY THE THIRD
RICHES ARE USELESS
'Tis vain to plague the skies with eager prayer,
And offer incense with thy votive song,
If only thou dost ask for marbles fair,
To deck thy palace for the gazing throng.
Not wider fields my oxen to employ,
Nor flowing harvests and abundant land,
I ask of heaven; but for a long life's joy
With thee, and in old age to clasp thy hand.
If when my season of sweet light is o'er,
I, carrying nothing, unto Charon yield,
What profits me a ponderous golden store,
Or that a thousand yoke must plough my field?
What if proud Phrygian columns fill my halls,
Taenarian, Carystian, and the rest,
Or branching groves adorn my spacious walls,
Or golden roof, or floor with marbles dressed?
What pleasure in rare Erythraean dyes,
Or purple pride of Sidon and of Tyre,
Or all that can solicit envious eyes,
And which the mob of fools so well admire?
Wealth has no power to lift life's load of care,
Or free man's lot from Fortune's fatal chain;
With thee, Neaera, poverty looks fair,
And lacking thee, a kingdom were in vain.
O golden day that shall at last restore
My lost love to my arms! O blest indeed,
And worthy to be hallowed evermore!
May some kind god my long petition heed!
No! not dominion, nor Pactolian stream,
Nor all the riches the wide world can give!
These other men may ask. My fondest dream
Is, poor but free, with my true wife to live.
Saturnian Juno, to all nuptials kind,
Receive with grace my ever-anxious vow!
Come, Venus, wafted by the Cyprian wind,
And from thy car of shell smile on me now!
But if the mournful sisters, by whose hands
Our threads of life are spun, refuse me all—
May Pluto bid me to his dreary lands,
Where those wide rivers through the darkness fall!