Wine, Women, and Song Part 7

Young men kindle heart's desire; You may liken them to fire: Old men frighten love away With cold frost and dry decay.

A roundelay, which might be styled the _Praise of May_ or the exhortation to be liberal in love by _The Example of the Rose_, shall follow.

THE EXAMPLE OF THE ROSE.

No. 9.

Winter's untruth yields at last, Spring renews old mother earth; Angry storms are overpast, Sunbeams fill the air with mirth; Pregnant, ripening unto birth, All the world reposes.

Our delightful month of May, Not by birth, but by degree, Took the first place, poets say; Since the whole year's cycle he, Youngest, loveliest, leads with glee, And the cycle closes.

From the honours of the rose They decline, the rose abuse, Who, when roses red unclose, Seek not their own sweets to use; 'Tis with largess, liberal dues, That the rose discloses.

Taught to wanton, taught to play, By the young year's wanton flower, We will take no heed to-day, Have no thought for thrift this hour; Thrift, whose uncongenial power Laws on youth imposes.

Another song, blending the praises of spring with a little pagan vow to Cupid, has in the original Latin a distinction and purity of outline which might be almost called Horatian.

THE VOW TO CUPID.

No. 10.

Winter, now thy spite is spent, Frost and ice and branches bent!

Fogs and furious storms are o'er, Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore, Pallid wrath, lean discontent.

Comes the graceful band of May!

Cloudless s.h.i.+nes the limpid day, s.h.i.+ne by night the Pleiades; While a grateful summer breeze Makes the season soft and gay.

Golden Love I s.h.i.+ne forth to view!

Souls of stubborn men subdue!

See me bend! what is thy mind?

Make the girl thou givest kind, And a leaping ram's thy due!

O the jocund face of earth, Breathing with young gra.s.sy birth!

Every tree with foliage clad, Singing birds in greenwood glad, Flowering fields for lovers' mirth!

Nor is the next far below it in the same qualities of neatness and artistic brevity.

A-MAYING.

No. 11.

Now the fields are laughing; now the maids Take their pastime; laugh the leafy glades: Now the summer days are blooming, And the flowers their chaliced lamps for love illuming.

Fruit-trees blossom; woods grow green again; Winter's rage is past: O ye young men, With the May-bloom shake off sadness!

Love is luring you to join the maidens' gladness.

Let us then together sport and play; Cytherea bids the young be gay: Laughter soft and happy voices, Hope and love invite to mirth when May rejoices.

All the spring is in the lyric next upon my list.

THE RETURN OF SPRING:

No. 12.

Spring returns, the glad new-comer, Bringing pleasure, banning pain: Meadows bloom with early summer, And the sun s.h.i.+nes out again: All sad thoughts and pa.s.sions vanish; Plenteous Summer comes to banish Winter with his starveling train.

Hails and snows and frosts together Melt and thaw like dews away; While the spring in cloudless weather Sucks the breast of jocund May; Sad's the man and born for sorrow Who can live not, dares not borrow Gladness from a summer's day.

Full of joy and jubilation, Drunk with honey of delight, Are the lads whose aspiration Is the palm of Cupid's fight!

Youths, we'll keep the laws of Venus, And with joy and mirth between us Live and love like Paris wight!

The next has the same accent of gladness, though it is tuned to a somewhat softer and more meditative note of feeling.

THE SWEETNESS OF THE SPRING.

No. 13.

Vernal hours are sweet as clover, With love's honey running over; Every heart on this earth burning Finds new birth with spring's returning.

In the spring-time blossoms flourish, Fields drink moisture, heaven's dews nourish; Now the griefs of maidens, after Dark days, turn to love and laughter.

Whoso love, are loved, together Seek their pastime in spring weather; And, with time and place agreeing, Clasp, kiss, frolic, far from seeing.

Gradually the form of the one girl whom the lyrist loves emerges from this wealth of description.

THE SUIT TO PHYLLIS.