Array Anacreon - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 1)

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Rash, angry words, and spoken out of season,

When passion has usurp'd the throne of reason,

Have ruin'd many. Passion is unjust,

And for an idle, transitory gust

Of gratified revenge, dooms us to pay

With long repentence at a later day.

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Let no persuasive art tempt you to place

Your confidence in crafty minds and base!

How can it answer? Will their help avail

When danger presses, and your foes assail?

The blessing which the gods in bounty send,

Will they consent to share it with a friend?

No! to bestrew the waves with scatter'd grain,

To cultivate the surface of the main,

Is not a task more absolutely vain,

Than cultivating such allies as these,

Fickle and unproductive as the seas!

Such are all baser minds; never at rest,

With new demands importunately press'd--

A new pretension or a new request;

Till, foil'd with a refusal of the last,

They disavow their obligations past.

But brave and gallant hearts are cheaply gain'd--

Faithful adherents, easily retain'd;

Men that will never disavow the debt

Of gratitude, or cancel or forget.

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Never engage with a poltroon or craven--

Avoid him, Kurnus, as a treach'rous haven!

These friends and hearty comrades, as you think,

(Ready to join you, when you feast and drink),

These easy friends from difficulty shrink.

For a shrewd intellect, the best employ

Is to detect a soul of base alloy;

No task is harder nor imports so much;

Silver or gold, you prove it by the touch;

You separate the pure, discard the dross,

And disregard the labour and the loss:

But a friend's heart, base and adulterate--

A friendly surface with a core of hate!

Of all the frauds with which the Fates have cursed

Our simple easy nature--is the worst:

Beyond the rest ruinous in effect;

And of all others hardest to detect:

For men's and women's hearts you cannot try

Beforehand, like the cattle that you buy.

Nor human wit nor reason, when you treat

For such a purpose, can escape deceit:

Fancy betrays us, and assists the cheat.

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I walk by rule and measure, and incline

To neither side, but take an even line;

Fix'd in a single purpose and design.

With learning's happy gifts to celebrate,

To civilize and dignify the State;

Not leaguing with the discontented crew,

Nor with the proud and arbitrary few.

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The generous and the brave, in common fame,

From time to time encounter praise or blame:

The vulgar pass unheeded; none escape

Scandal or insult in some form or shape.

Most fortunate are those, alive or dead,

Of whom the least is thought--the least is said.

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No costly sacrifice nor offerings given

Can change the purpose of the powers of Heaven;

Whatever Fate ordains, danger or hurt,

Or death predestined, nothing can avert.

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For human nature Hope remains alone

Of all the deities; the rest are flown.

Faith is departed; Truth and Honour dead;

And all the Graces too, my friends, are fled.

The scanty specimens of living worth,

Dwindled to nothing, and extinct on earth.

Yet whilst I live and view the light of heaven,

Since hope remains and never has been driven

From the distracted world--the single scope

Of my devotion is to worship Hope.

When hecatombs are slain, and altars burn,

When all the deities adored in turn,

Let Hope be present; and with Hope, my friend,

Let every sacrifice commence and end.

Yes, Insolence, Injustice, every crime,

Rapine and Wrong, may prosper for a time;

Yet shall they travel on to swift decay,

Who tread the crooked path and hollow way.

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Learn, Kurnus, learn to bear an easy mind;

Accommodate your humour to mankind

And human nature--take it as you find!

A mixture of ingredients, good or bad,

Such are we all, the best that can be had.

The best are found defective, and the rest,

For common use, are equal to the best.

Suppose it had been otherwise decreed--

How could the business of the world proceed?

Fairly examined, truly understood,

No man is wholly bad, nor wholly good,

Nor uniformly wise. In every case,

Habit and accident, and time, and place

Affect us:--'tis the nature of the race!

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The gods send Insolence, to lead astray

The man whom Fortune and the Fates betray,

Predestined to precipitate decay.

Wealth nurses Insolence, and wealth, we find,

When coupled with a poor and paltry mind,

Is evermore with Insolence combined.

Never in anger with the meaner sort

Be moved to a contemptuous, harsh retort,

Deriding their distresses; nor despise,

In hasty speech, their wants and miseries.

Jove holds the balance, and the gods dispense

For all mankind, riches and indigence.

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Learning and wealth the wise and wealthy find

Inadequate to satisfy the mind--

A craving eagerness remains behind;

Something is left for which we cannot rest,

And the last something always seems the best--

Something unknown, or something unpossessed.

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The daily marriages we make,

Where price is everything: for money's sake

Men marry; women are in marriage given.

The churl or ruffian that in wealth has thriven

May match his offspring with the proudest race;

Thus everything is mixed, noble and base!

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To rear a child is easy, but to teach

Morals and manners is beyond our reach;

To make the foolish wise, the wicked good,

That science yet was never understood.

The sons of Esculapius, if their art

Could remedy a perverse and wicked heart,

Might earn enormous wages! But in fact

The mind is not compounded and compact

Of precept and example; human art

In human nature has no share or part.

Hatred of vice, the fear of shame and sin,

Are things of native growth, not grafted in:

Else wives and worthy parents might correct

In children's hearts each error and defect:

Whereas we see them disappointed still,

No scheme nor artifice of human skill

Can rectify the passions or the will.

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You soar aloft, and over land and wave

Are borne triumphant on the wings I gave,

The swift and mighty wings, music and verse;

Your name in easy numbers smooth and terse,

Is wafted o'er the world; and heard among

At banquetings and feasts, chaunted and sung,

Heard and admir'd: the modulated air

Of flutes and voices of the young and fair

Recite it, and to future times shall tell;

When clos'd within the dark sepulchral cell

Your form shall moulder, and your empty ghost

Wander along the dreary Stygian coast,

Yet shall your memory flourish, fresh and young,