Poems on Several Occasions :: :: University of Virginia Library

The threat'ning sky grows dark, and, lo!
Jove in mighty flakes of snow
Descends: the seas and forests round,
With the Thracian tempest sound,
And the whole World's in Winter drown'd.
Let us, my friends, whilst yet we may,
Snatch occasion from the day:
Let us, whilst yet our life is green,
And 'tis comely, thus be seen,
With decent joys to disengage
The embarass'd brow of age.

239

Give me the vintage of that year,
When my Torquatus held the Chair:
To speak of other thoughts forbear:
God, perhaps, with happy change
These things into their seat will range:
Now let us rest, and joy awhile,
Bath'd with Achemenian oil,
And the rising anguish quell
With the soft Cyllenian shell:
As the noble Centaur sung
To his scholar, great but young;
Unconquer'd mortal, Goddess-born,
Son of Thetis, thee the Morn
Destin'd, and th' Assaraque land
Await, through whose divided strand
The small Scamander's frigid tide,
And the winding Simois glide;
Whence to thee return again
The fates with certain thread restrain;
Nor shall thy wat'ry mother thee
Homeward to thy realm convey.

240

Thence ev'ry ill with wine and song
Lighten, for to these belong,
Soft persuaders, to bestow
Quiet on deformed woe.