C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
To my Wife: An Invitation to a Journey
By Statius (c. 45–c. 96 A.D.)
W
To sigh all night, and mope all day?
I know thee true to me, my life!
No wanton shaft hath found its way
To that pure heart, and shall not so;
I scorn thee. Nemesis, while I say’t!
To war, to sea, had I to go,
For twenty years my love would wait,
And send a thousand suitors hence.
She ne’er would stoop her web to ravel,
But shut her doors without pretense,
And calmly bid the rascals travel!
Why then this grieved and lofty look,
Because the impulse cometh to me
To seek our childhood’s pious nook
And lay my bones in ancient Cumæ?
Take heart! Thou ne’er wert one of those
Possessed by Circe, or a madness
For those accursed theatric shows;
But honor, peace, and sober gladness
Content thee well. And do but think
How light the voyage we take! Though truly
Thine is a soul which would not shrink
From the dark shores of western Thule,
The horrors of the icy North,
Or seven-mouthed Nile’s mysterious sources,
If once the fiat had gone forth
That doomed me to such distant courses.
Venus be praised, my early love
Is mine as well, in life’s decline!
The chains I wear, nor would remove,
But gladly sport, are thine, dear—thine!
Thine, when I won the Alban crown,
And Cæsar’s blessèd gold was earning,
The wreathèd arms about me thrown,
The panting kiss, my own returning;
And thine, on Capitolian mount,—
Worsted with me, in contest fateful,—
Wrath on my slighted lyre’s account
And keen reproach to Jove ungrateful;
The nights that wakeful thou hast lain
No stammering note of mine to miss;
And all the years of cheerful pain
Thou livedst with me, my Thebaïs!
Who else, when late the darksome grave
Had all but claimed me, and the roar
Was in my ears of Lethe’s wave,
My foot upon the utmost shore,
Had stood, like thee, with eyes so sad
The imminent doom confronting? Lo,
Thy grief it was the end forbade:
The great gods dared not face thy woe.
And wilt thou then, who once with me
Such way hast trod, decline to share
A brief sail on a smiling sea?
Why! where’s thy far-famed courage? Where
Thy likeness to the dames of Greece
And Latium in heroic ages?
Love’s reckless. Had it chanced to please
The most astute of married sages
To set up housekeeping in Troy,
Penelope had gone there gayly!
Sure as desertion slew the joy
Of Melibœa, Ægiale….
Come then to fair Parthenope!
For when that nymph,—Apollo guiding,—
With Venus’s team traversed the sea,
She found a place of sweet abiding.
And I, who after all, am not
Either a Lydian or a Thracian,
Will choose for thee some happy spot,
Some soft sea-lapped and sheltered station,
In summer cool, in winter mild;
Where days go by in easeful quiet,
And nights in slumber sweet beguiled.
No echo of the Forum’s riot
Shall enter there, nor dismal strife
Of wrangling courts; but he’s the victor
Who lives, unforced, the noblest life,
And keeps the peace without a lictor!
Who cares, I say, for all the splendor
That glads the eye in golden Rome?
Vistas of columns without end, or
Park, temple, portico and dome?
Seats in the theatre’s shady half,
Or five-year Capitolian contest?
Menander’s blend of Grecian chaff
With Roman feeling, fair and honest?
Nor need we lack diversions here:
There’s Baiæ, by her summer ocean;
The Sibyl’s mystic mount is near,
Predestined goal of pious Trojan;
The slopes of Gaurus gush with wine,
While yonder, rival of the moon,
A Pharos flings across the brine,
For sailor’s cheer, its radiant boon;
Long on Sorrento’s lovely hills
Hath Pollius grown a vintage brave;
Dear are Ænaria’s healing rills,
And Stabiæ risen from its grave.
Retell? Enough, dear wife, to say
She bore me for thy tender arms,
To be thy comrade many a day.
And shall the mother of us both
Be slighted thus? A truce to teasing!
Thou comest, love, and nothing loth;
I see thee so thy speed increasing,
Mayhap thou’lt e’en arrive before me!
Nay, without me, I almost deem
The stately Roman homes would bore thee,
And even Tiber’s lordly stream!