Henry Livingston, Jr.
Henry Livingston's Poetry




The IX ode of Horace


For the Poughkeepsie Advertiser.
The IX ode of Horace.

Julius Caesar Scaliger declared, that to
enjoy the felicity of having written
this little ode, he would have declined
the crown of Arragon. R--.

HORACE.
While I was pleasing to your arms,
Nor any youth, of happier charms,
Thy snowy bosom blissful prest,
Not Persia's king like me was blest.

LYDIA.
While for no other fair you burn'd,
Nor Lydia was for Chloe scorn'd
What maid was then so blest as thine?
Not Ilia's flame could equal mine.

HORACE.
Me Chloe now possesses whole,
Her voice her lyre command my soul;
For whom Ill gladly die, to save
Her dearer beauties from the grave.

LYDIA.
My heart young Calais inspires,
Whose bosom glows with mutual fires,
For whom I twice would die with joy,
If death would spare the charming boy.

HORACE.
Yet what if love, whose bands we broke,
Again should tame us to the yoke;
Should I shake off bright Chloe's chain,
And take my Lydia home again?--

LYDIA.
Though he exceed in beauty far
The rising lustre of a star;
Though light as cork thy fancy strays,
Thy passions wild as angry seas,
When vex'd with storms; yet gladly I
With thee would live, with thee would die.

The Poetics of Scaliger, which was an "attempt to reconcile Aristotle's Poetics, not only with the precepts of Horace
and the definitions of the Latin grammarians, but with the whole practice of Latin tragedy, comedy,
and epic poetry," is a long, erudite and dogmatic treatise in which the canons of Aristotle are narrowed
and confined to rules of the strictest sort.





        
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