HORACE TO LEUCONOË
THOMAS HOOD
THE man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
God never gave to look with common eyea
Upon a world of anguish and of sin:
His brother was the branded man of Lynn;
And there are woven with his jollities
The nameless and eternal tragedies
That render hope and hopelessness akin.
We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel
A still chord sorrow-swept, a weird unrest;
And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal,
As if the very ghost of mirth were dead
As if the joys of time to dreams had fled,
Or sailed away with Ines to the West.
HORACE TO LEUCONOË
I pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore
With unpermitted eyes on what may be
Appointed by the gods for you and me,
Nor on Chaldean figures any more.
'T were infinitely better to implore
The present only:—whether Jove decree
More winters yet to come, or whether he
Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore
Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last
Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill
Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing,
The envious close of time is narrowing;
So seize the day, or ever it be past,
And let the morrow come for what it will
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