Classic Poem

This festal day, two thousand times returning,
Should light fresh fires on all the altar sods;
His natal day! We should set incense burning,
And call—if gods there were!—upon the gods.
We, his good friends, right joyous should demean us,
Like Horace on the birth-day of Maecenas.

Eheu! we lack all Persian apparatus,—
The wine, the nard, the rose's tardy bloom;
No troops of saucy home-bred slaves await us,
Nor polished silver in the fire-lit room;
And as for lyres and lutes of sound convention,
The H. C. L. precludes their very mention.

Around our board what cronies he'd find missing:
No Tyndaris, no Cyrus,—and no quarrel!
No Telephus with his tantalizing kissing,
No Cervius droning his long-winded moral;
No Thaliarch to push the lagging Massic.
What in our party, then, would he find classic?

There is one thing would save us from disaster,
And make our feast full worthy of the day,
A fitting tribute to the Lyric Master,—
I mean, of course, an ode by F. P. A.
Give us but that,—'t were the whole celebration
In Horace's and in our estimation.

Then string your lyre, gay Spirit of the Column;
Make glad the date that gave our poet birth.
The times are dark; our mood is tragic-solemn,
And much we need the medicine of mirth.
Let clash the shell! and long shall we remember
Through dreary months this bright day of December.