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LUCRETIUS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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17

LUCRETIUS

Sperata Voluptas Suavis Amicitiae

Slow Spring that, slipping thro' the silver light,
Like some young wanderer now returnest home
After strange years,
How like to me! to mine thy timorous plight!
Who quietly near my friendship's altar come
Where yet no God appears.
By many a deed I sought to win his love,
Made him a wreath of all my songs and hours,—
Most vain, most fair!
Now falls about the shroud my years have wove;
My evening drops her large, slow purple flowers
Thro' gardens of gold air.
To him this verse, to him this crown of leaves,
My supreme piety shall I commend:
This is my last,
Wreathed of what Youth endows and Age bereaves,
Bound by the fingers of a lover and friend,
Green with the vital past.
We sunder, he my Truth, I the desire.
I spread my wooing fingers, I would earn
His least address:
But parcels of the heaven-dispersèd fire,

18

Sky-severed exiles, we divinely learn
To suffer loneliness.
My life was little in joy, little in pain;
Mine were the wise denials, with none I coped
To win the sky;
And when I surely saw my love was vain—
The joy of his sweet friendship I had hoped—
I stilled. Now let me die,—
Now that the endless wind is growing warm,
Richer the star, and flowers on many a slope
Undo their sheath;
O let us yield to life's divinest charm
That lured us thro' the blasted field of hope,
Let us return to death.
[1895]