Virgile et Lucrèce

Keep watch and ward, Day’s Lord, Lady of Night! Be Peace throughout! hold your breath, Thunders above, fires beneath! Born! you lie, Babe, lapped in the calm, warm air; Earth laughs with blissfulness to see you there. Goats fain would suckle you; while you are near, They feel they have nought from wild beasts to fear. Snakes die; nightshade bids its root Nurture no fair traitor fruit. Touch the ground; flowers of all hues will spring; Of sweetest scent, and with no thorns to sting; Such as the common wayside thickets know, Or nowhere but in palace gardens blow. Ivy, Assyrian nard Sue alike for your regard; And grateful you for each; the mean, the rare To your frank childishness as welcome are. Tossing your naked limbs on the glad sod You know not you will be—perhaps are—a God! Yea, Child, who, than you all love, More Divine in Heav’n above! Ev’n when babyhood becomes boyhood, still Nature spreads her bounty in sheer good-will. Honey from the sturdy oak, like dew, drips; Briers press purple grapes on thirsting lips; And from unploughed fields are borne Yellow sheaves of beardless corn. But stifle human wants with plenty, lust Of unneighbourliness creeps from the dust. Merchants here and there about ocean roam, Snatching subsistence given free at home; Robbers build forts whence to spoil; Shares rend the protesting soil. Germs, mixed—crude, human restlessness—its need For peril and adventure—or rank greed, That had hid underground, from shame to break “God’s Truce,” and keep the wondrous Babe awake, Had been struggling to survive; The spell is lifted; they live. A fresh Argo will seek another Fleece; Sin of a second Paris murder peace; A new Achilles set streams in wroth flood Rushing to the sea red with Trojan blood. No more, Boy, know ye of it Than in brave tales poets writ.…