Alcaics to Horatio F. Brown

Brave lads in olden musical centuries, / Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, / Sat late by alehouse doors in April / Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising: / Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises, / Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables; / Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted; / Love and Apollo were there to chorus.

Now these, the songs, remain to eternity, / Those, only those, the bountiful choristers / Gone -- those are gone, those unremembered / Sleep and are silent in earth forever.

So man himself appears and evanishes, / So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at / Some green-embowered house, play their music, / Play and are gone on the windy highway; / Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memory / Long after they departed eternally, / Forth-faring tow'rd far mountain summits, / Cities of men on the sounding Ocean.

Youth sang the song in years immemorial; / Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful; / Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in springtime / Heard and were pleased by the voice of singing; / Youth goes, and leaves behind him a prodigy --

Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian / Sea-grey lagoons, sea-paven highways, / Dear to me here in my Alpine exile.

Davos, Spring 1881.