Columbia, fair queen in your glory!
Columbia, the pride of the earth!
We crown you with song- wreath and story;
We honour the day of your birth!

The wrath of a king and his minions
You braved, to be free, on that day;
And the eagle sailed up on strong pinions,
And frightened the lion at bay.

Since the chains and the shackles are broken,
And citizens now replace slaves,
Since the hearts of your heros have spoken
How dear they held freedom - by graves.

Your beautiful banner is blotless

Oh the dear summer evening! How the air
is mellow with the delicate breath of flowers
and wafts of hay scent from the sunburnt swathes:
how the glad song of life comes everywhence,
from thousand harmless voices, from blithe birds
that twitter on incessant sweet good-nights,
from homeward bees that, through the clover tufts,
stray booming, pilfering treasures to the last,
from sleepless crickets clamouring in the grass.
to tell the world they're happy day and night,
from the persistent rooks in their high town,

"C'est distingue," says Madame La Mode,
'Tis a fabric of subtle distinction.
For street wear it is superb.
The chic of the Rue de la Paix--
The style of Fifth Avenue--
The character of Regent Street--
All are expressed in this new fabric creation.
Leather-like, but feather-light--
It drapes and folds and distends to perfection.
And it may be had in dull or glazed,
Plain or grained, basket weave or moiréd surfaces!

--Advertisement of Pontine, in Vanity Fair.


"C'est distingue," says Madame La Mode.

"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es. IV.

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:

"Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way

Horace: Book III, Ode 30

"Exegi monumentum aere perennius---"


The monument that I have built is durable as brass,
And loftier than the Pyramids which mock the years that pass.
No blizzard can destroy it, nor furious rain corrode--
Remember, I'm the bard who built the first Horatian Ode.

I shall not altogether die; a part of me's immortal.
A part of me shall never pass the mortuary portal;
And when I die my fame shall stand the nitric test of time--
The fame of me of lowly birth, who built the lofty rhyme!

Horace: Book I, Ode 19

"Mater sæva Cupidinum"


Venus, the cruel mother of
The Cupids (symbolising Love),
Bids me to muse upon and sigh
For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"

Believe me or believe me not,
I give this Glycera girl a lot:
Pure Parian marble are her arms--
And she has eighty other charms.

Venus has left her Cyprus home
And will not let me pull a pome
About the Parthians, fierce and rough,
The Scythian war, and all that stuff.

Set up, O slaves, a verdant shrine!

Horace: Book IV, Ode 11

"Est mihi nonum superantis annum--"


Phyllis, I've a jar of wine,
(Alban, B.C. 49)
Parsley wreathes, and, for your tresses,
Ivy that your beauty blesses.

Shines my house with silverware;
Frondage decks the altar stair--
Sacred vervain, a device
For a lambkin's sacrifice.

Up and down the household stairs
What a festival prepares!
Everybody's superintending--
See the sooty smoke ascending!

What, you ask me, is the date
Of the day we celebrate?

'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of fatigue, nor strain
at lamplit tasks-'tis given, as for a royal boon
to beggarly outcasts in homeless vigil, to watch
where uncurtain's behind the great windows of space

MOTHER of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!
   May I sing to thee
As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae?
   Or may I woo thee
In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
   Leaving great verse unto a little clan?
O give me their old vigour! and unheard
   Save of the quiet primrose, and the span
   Of heaven, and few ears,
Rounded by thee, my song should die away

So easy 'tis to make a rhyme,
That did the world but know it,
Your coachman might Parnassus climb,
Your butler be a poet.
II
Then, oh, how charming it would be
If, when in haste hysteric
You called the page, you learned that he
Was grappling with a lyric.
III
Or else what rapture it would yield,
When cook sent up the salad,
To find within its depths concealed
A touching little ballad.
IV
Or if for tea and toast you yearned,
What joy to find upon it
The chambermaid had coyly laid
A palpitating sonnet.
V