 | Poems |  |
55
[“Life is brief and art is long,”]
εν τω φρονειν γαρ μηδευ ηδιστος βιος.
“Life is brief and art is long,”
Like the first shall be my song.
Why should we torment our eyes
With the vulgar fantasies
Of the city and the court,
When our being is so short?
If King Solomon could groan,
Ere a single press was known,
O'er the multitude of books,
And how study wears the looks;
What may we at Athens say,
Sons of Wisdom and To-day,
We who see the Hoangho
Down our placid Isis flow,
Till the classes and the schools
Kill the genial race of fools.
Like the first shall be my song.
Why should we torment our eyes
With the vulgar fantasies
Of the city and the court,
When our being is so short?
If King Solomon could groan,
Ere a single press was known,
O'er the multitude of books,
And how study wears the looks;
56
Sons of Wisdom and To-day,
We who see the Hoangho
Down our placid Isis flow,
Till the classes and the schools
Kill the genial race of fools.
Let me rather far from strife
Like Odysseus choose my life:
Let me rather meet the morn,
Drive the team and bind the corn,
And at eve my eyelids steep
In a real bubulcian sleep.
Freed from fashion's hideous freaks
Changing with the changing weeks;
What in nature no one sees,
Save in some antipodes,
Frightful places that are full
Of the wicked and the dull.
Rise, my brothers, let us flee;
Let the learned progeny
Of the hero of Ardennes
Gore each other in the fens.
We'll away, and to the plains,
Where our goddess Nature reigns;
Hear the brooks and blackbirds sing;
For, believe me, 'tis a thing
Better than to be a king.
Like Odysseus choose my life:
Let me rather meet the morn,
Drive the team and bind the corn,
And at eve my eyelids steep
In a real bubulcian sleep.
Freed from fashion's hideous freaks
Changing with the changing weeks;
What in nature no one sees,
Save in some antipodes,
Frightful places that are full
Of the wicked and the dull.
Rise, my brothers, let us flee;
Let the learned progeny
57
Gore each other in the fens.
We'll away, and to the plains,
Where our goddess Nature reigns;
Hear the brooks and blackbirds sing;
For, believe me, 'tis a thing
Better than to be a king.
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