[peterjb]

A couple of years ago I was browsing some translations of Horace’s Odes by Prof. Steven Willett .

Having minimal Latin, I’m unable to appreciate the original meters or comment on the fidelity of the translations. But some of the results in English seemed pleasing, and I was interested in the effects achieved using accentual templates to transpose the original quantitative meter. One that appealed to me was Willett’s version of the Third Asclepiad, the meter used for Odes C1.5, C1.14, C1.21, C1.23 and others. Here is his C1.5:


Lapped in masses of rose, Pyrrha, what slender boy
slick with fluent perfume presses you now beneath
....some agreeable grotto?
........Whose your honey-gold hair drawn back,

unpretentiously smart? Oh often enough her faith
he'll lament and the gods' changeable word and watch
....waters roughen with dark winds
........all amazed in his innocence,

who delights in you now golden to credulous eyes,
who expects you unowned always, and always fair,
....ignorant of insidious
........breezes. Lost are those you, untried,

dazzle glaringly bright. I, as the temple wall
indicates by its plaque, have in thanksgiving hung
....up my garments still dripping
........to that powerful god of seas.


I don’t know of any modern poems in this meter, apart from Willett’s translations and one I subsequently attempted myself. Since my theme was “A picture is a poem without words” — which is attributed to Horace — I thought it might be appropriate to try one of these “Englished” Horatian meters. (On investigation, the exact source of the quote turns out to be elusive. I assumed the Ars Poetica but couldn’t find it there.)


POEM WITHOUT WORDS

Seek no emptiness here, caged in a vacancy,
no conundrum of air slipping through bars unheard,
....no non-music that, absent,
........baffles, silent in mystery.

Seek no paradox here, words about wordlessness
undermining themselves. Quintus Horatius
....spoke of paintings, not verses,
........yet his words were for poets too.

Most who strive to create feel the connections that
link each art with the next. Under them all lies a
....common substrate: not only
........sculptors hew at the rockface there.

Soul’s the basis of art. Horace intuited
how it all comes to one, poets and painters and
....music-makers all fed by
........springs that flow from the infinite.
....

This was posted in The Deep End metrical forum. The reference to Cage in L1 went unnoticed, I think!

Does anyone know of other modern English poems (not translations of Horace) in this or other Asclepiadic meter? (For explanations of them, with their English accentual templates, follow the link above, then go to <u>A Note on the Meters</u>....)




[This message has been edited by peterjb (edited July 11, 2004).]

[Chris Childers]

Peter,

Swinburne introduced the Greater Aesclepiadic into English under the name of "Choriambics" (see my discussion of choriambs on the Sapphics thread), & Rupert Brooke has apparently tried it as well. The first two here are Brooke's:

Choriambics I

Ah! not now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring
Light-foot dance in the woods, whisper of life, woo me to wayfaring;
Ah! not now should you come, now when the road beckons, and good friends call,
Where are songs to be sung, fights to be fought, yea! and the best of all,
Love, on myriad lips fairer than yours, kisses you could not give! . . .
Dearest, why should I mourn, whimper, and whine, I that have yet to live?
Sorrow will I forget, tears for the best, love on the lips of you,
Now, when dawn in the blood wakes, and the sun laughs up the eastern blue;
I'll forget and be glad!
Only at length, dear, when the great day ends,
When love dies with the last light, and the last song has been sung, and friends
All are perished, and gloom strides on the heaven: then, as alone I lie,
'Mid Death's gathering winds, frightened and dumb, sick for the past, may I
Feel you suddenly there, cool at my brow; then may I hear the peace
Of your voice at the last, whispering love, calling, ere all can cease
In the silence of death; then may I see dimly, and know, a space,
Bending over me, last light in the dark, once, as of old, your face.

Choriambics II

Here the flame that was ash, shrine that was void, lost in the haunted wood,
I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitude
Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleam
Glowed and went through the wood. Still I abode strong in a golden dream,
Unrecaptured.
For I, I that had faith, knew that a face would glance
One day, white in the dim woods, and a voice call, and a radiance
Fill the grove, and the fire suddenly leap . . . and, in the heart of it,
End of labouring, you! Therefore I kept ready the altar, lit
The flame, burning apart.
Face of my dreams vainly in vision white
Gleaming down to me, lo! hopeless I rise now. For about midnight
Whispers grew through the wood suddenly, strange cries in the boughs above
Grated, cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred grove
Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length.
I knew
Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you
Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth,
White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth,
God, immortal and dead!
Therefore I go; never to rest, or win
Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb wood and the shrine therein.

& Here is Swinburne's:

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love?
What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?

What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave,
Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

Ah, thy luminous eyes! once was their light fed with the fire of day;
Now their shadowy lids cover them close, hush them and hide away.

Ah, thy snow-coloured hands! once were they chains, mighty to bind me fast;
Now no blood in them burns, mindless of love, senseless of passion past.

Ah, thy beautiful hair! so was it once braided for me, for me;
Now for death is it crowned, only for death, lover and lord of thee.

Sweet, the kisses of death set on thy lips, colder are they than mine;
Colder surely than past kisses that love poured for thy lips as wine.

Lov'st thou death? is his face fairer than love's, brighter to look upon?
Seest thou light in his eyes, light by which love's pales and is overshone?

Lo the roses of death, grey as the dust, chiller of leaf than snow!
Why let fall from thy hand love's that were thine, roses that loved thee so?

Large red lilies of love, sceptral and tall, lovely for eyes to see;
Thornless blossom of love, full of the sun, fruits that were reared for thee.

Now death's poppies alone circle thy hair, girdle thy breasts as white;
Bloodless blossoms of death, leaves that have sprung never against the light.

Nay then, sleep if thou wilt; love is content; what should he do to weep?
Sweet was love to thee once; now in thine eyes sweeter than love is sleep.

[Hugh Clary]

This one by Auden is said to be in accentual asclepiads:

IN DUE SEASON


Springtime, Summer and Fall: days to behold a world
Antecedent to our knowing, where flowers think
Theirs concretely in scent-colors and beasts, the same
Age all over, pursue dumb horizontal lives
On one level of conduct and so cannot be
Secretary to man's plot to become divine.


Lodged in all is a set metronome: thus, in May
Bird-babies still in the egg click to each other Hatch!;
June-struck cuckoos go off-pitch; when obese July
Turns earth's heating up, unknotting their poisoned ropes,
Vipers move into play; warned by October's nip,
Younger leaves to the old give the releasing draught.


Winter, though, has the right tense for a look indoors
At ourselves, and with First Names to sit face-to-face,
Time for reading of thoughts, time for the trying-out
Of new metres and new recipes, proper time
To reflect on events noted in warmer months
Till, transmuted, they take part in a human tale.


There, responding to our cry for intelligence,
Nature's mask is relaxed into a mobile grin,
Stones, old shoes, come alive, born sacramental signs,
Nod to us in the First Person of mysteries
They know nothing about, bearing a message from
The invisible sole Source of specific things.


From http://www.lovenpoetry.com/terms%20a.htm :


Asclepiad:

A Classical metrical line made up of a spondee, two or three choriambs, and one iamb or spondee, i.e., / '' / ' ~~ ' / ' ~ ~ ' / ~ ' / (named after the Greek poet Asclepiades, ca. 290 B.C.). Examples of accentual asclepiads in English include Sir Philip Sidney's "O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness" from Arcadia, and W. H. Auden's "In Due Season."

[peterjb]

Thanks, Chris. I must admit it hadn’t occurred to me that Swinburne’s Choriambics were in Greater Asclepiads, and I don’t recall seeing the Brooke pieces before.

And Hugh, thanks for the further info and the Auden. “Asclepiad” refers to a line with the metrical pattern you give at the end of your post, but also to stanza forms constructed with lines in that and/or other meters. The Asclepiadic meters are as follows (if we consider these patterns as English accentual templates, then / represents stressed, v unstressed, x either, | | a caesura):

Asclepiad: / v / v v / | | / v v / v x
Greater Asclepiad: / v / v v / | | / v v / | | / v v / v x
Glyconic: / v / v v / v x
Pherecratean: / v / v v / x

And lines on these patterns are put together in various ways to make the Asclepiadic stanza forms. For example, the First Asclepiad just repeats Asclepiad lines ad lib (this is the pattern for the Auden), the Second Asclepiad is a stanza of three Asclepiads followed by a Glyconic. The Third Asclepiad consists of two Asclepiads, a Pherecratean and a Glyconic, and is the stanza pattern of my original example.... The Fifth repeats Greater Asclepiad lines ad lib, and is the basis for the Brooke and Swinburne examples above — though Brooke varies his with an occasional short line in no particular pattern.

Again, for more on the meters and stanza forms, see the site I referenced before:
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/horawillmet.shtml

Peter

[Chris Childers]

Peter,

The short lines in the Brooke are actually all pieces of lines, I just haven't formatted it right. Put them together & they make a whole line.

Chris

[peterjb]

Of course. Duh!