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Page 43
Serene he dwelt in fragrant Nasha'pu'r,
But we must wander while the Stars endure.
_He_ knew THE SECRET: we have none that knows,
No Man so sure as Omar once was sure!
XXII.
To Q. Horatius Flaccus.
In what manner of Paradise are we to conceive that you, Horace, are dwelling,
or what region of immortality can give you such pleasures as this life
afforded? The country and the town, nature and men, who knew them so well as
you, or who ever so wisely made the best of those two worlds? Truly here you
had good things, nor do you ever, in all your poems, look for more delight in
the life beyond; you never expect consolation for present sorrow, and when you
once have shaken hands with a friend the parting seems to you eternal.
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis?
So you sing, for the dear head you mourn has sunk for ever beneath the wave.
Virgil might wander forth bearing the golden branch 'the Sibyl doth to singing
men allow,' and might visit, as one not wholly without hope, the dim dwellings
of the dead and the unborn. To him was it permitted to see and sing 'mothers
and men, and the bodies outworn of mighty heroes, boys and unwedded maids,
and young men borne to the funeral fire before their parents' eyes.' The
endless caravan swept past him--'many as fluttering leaves that drop and fall
in autumn woods when the first frost begins; many as birds that flock landward
from the great sea when now the chill year drives them o'er the deep and leads
them to sunnier lands.' Such things was it given to the sacred poet to behold,
and the happy seats and sweet pleasances of fortunate souls, where the larger
light clothes all the plains and dips them in a rosier gleam, plains with
their own new sun and stars before unknown. Ah, not _frustra pius_ was Virgil,
as you say, Horace, in your melancholy song. In him, we fancy, there was a
happier mood than your melancholy patience. 'Not, though thou wert sweeter of
song than Thracian Orpheus, with that lyre whose lay led the dancing trees,
not so would the blood return to the empty shade of him whom once with dread
wand the inexorable god hath folded with his shadowy flocks; but patience
lighteneth what heaven forbids us to undo.'
_Durum, sed levius fit patientia_?
It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we are pushed so
often--
'With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.'
The Epicurean is at one with the Stoic at last, and Horace with Marcus
Aurelius. 'To go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be
afraid of; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about
human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid
of providence?'
An excellent philosophy, but easier to those for whom no Hope had dawn or
seemed to set. Yet it is harder than common, Horace, for us to think of you,
still glad somewhere, among rivers like Liris and plains and vine-clad hills,
that
Solemque suum, sua sidera borunt.
It is hard, for you looked for no such thing.
_Omnes una manet nox
Et calcanda semel via leti_.
You could not tell Maecenas that you would meet him again; you could only
promise to tread the dark path with him.
_Ibimus, ibimus,
Utcunque praecedes, supremum
Carpere iter comites parati_.
Enough, Horace, of these mortuary musings. You loved the lesson of the roses,
and now and again would speak somewhat like a death's head over thy temperate
cups of Sabine _ordinaire_. Your melancholy moral was but meant to heighten
the joy of thy pleasant life, when wearied Italy, after all her wars and civic
bloodshed, had won a peaceful haven. The harbour might be treacherous; the
prince might turn to the tyrant; far away on the wide Roman marches might be
heard, as it were, the endless, ceaseless monotone of beating horses' hoofs
and marching feet of men. They were coming, they were nearing, like footsteps
heard on wool; there was a sound of multitudes and millions of barbarians, all
the North, _officina gentium_, mustering and marshalling her peoples. But
their coming was not to be to-day, nor to-morrow; nor to-day was the budding
princely sway to blossom into the blood-red flower of Nero. In the hall
between the two tempests of Republic and Empire your odes sound 'like linnets
in the pauses of the wind.'
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