Classic Poem

IS HALF-CAUSTIC, HALF-CRYPTIC ABOUT IT

Horatius Flaccus, child of fate,
?Was honest as the fabled farmer;
His gentle virtues held him strait
?As though they were a suit of armor.
His guileless spirit always hid
What ruder natures went and did,
And all he knew of ways forbid
?Was kept from every charmer.
Careless of this or that mischance,
?He walked the outskirts daily;
Convinced that each fell circumstance
?Would somehow meet him gaily.
So that he watched with half a yawn
A brute upon his new-cut lawn,
A hairy sort of devil's spawn,
?Red-eyed and almost scaly.
The creature stretched unearthly jaws;
?Hell opened to affright him.
But Flaccus, holding to the laws
?Of what could not excite him,
Followed a path direct and long,
Continuing to shape his song;
“The man,” it went, “who knows no wrong
?Is armed” … ad infinitum .
And with this bland, incurious faith
?He passed a calm existence;
Having, for all the ghosts, no wraith
?Of question or resistance;
Held to a bright security,
Like sunlight on a fallen tree,
Or voices rising from the sea,
?Waking a moonlit distance.