The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems

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Title: The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q"
Author: Q
(AKA: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch)
Release Date: November 19, 2003 [EBook #10133]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIGIL OF
VENUS ***
Produced by Ted Garvin, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE VIGIL OF VENUS
AND OTHER POEMS BY
"Q"
1912
TO MAURICE HEWLETT
HEWLETT! as ship to ship
Let us the ensign dip.
There may be
who despise
For dross our merchandise,
Our balladries, our bales

Of woven tales;
Yet, Hewlett, the glad gales
Favonian! And what
spray
Our dolphins toss'd in play,
Full in old Triton's beard, on Iris'
shimmering veils!

Scant tho' the freight of gold
Commercial in our hold,
Pæstum,
Eridanus
Perchance have barter'd us
'Bove chrematistic care
CONTENTS
THE VIGIL OF VENUS
PERVIGILIUM VENERIS
THE
REGENT--A DRAMA IN ONE ACT
POEMS
EXMOOR
VERSES
VASHTI'S SONG
SATURN
DERELICTION

TWO FOLK SONGS
THE SOLDIER
THE MARINE
MARY
LESLIE
JENIFER'S LOVE
TWO DUETS
THE STATUES
AND THE TEAR
NUPTIAL NIGHT
HESPERUS
CHANT
ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE
ENVOY
CORONATION HYMN

THREE MEN OF TRURO
ALMA MATER
CHRISTMAS
EVE
THE ROOT
TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF
VIOLETS
OF THREE CHILDREN CHOOSING A CHAPLET
OF VERSE
EPILOGUE: TO A MOTHER, ON SEEING HER
SMILE REPEATED
IN HER DAUGHTER'S EYES
THE VIGIL OF VENUS
The Pervigilium Veneris--of unknown authorship, but clearly belonging
to the late literature of the Roman Empire--has survived in two MSS.,
both preserved at Paris in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_.
Of these two MSS. the better written may be assigned (at earliest) to
the close of the seventh century; the other (again at earliest) to the close
of the ninth. Both are corrupt; the work of two illiterate copyists
who--strange to say--were both smatterers enough to betray their little
knowledge by converting Pervigilium_ into _Per Virgilium (scilicet,
"by Virgil"): thus helping us to follow the process of thought by which
the Middle Ages turned Virgil into a wizard. Here and there the texts
become quite silly, separately or in consent; and just where they agree
in the most surprising way--i.e. in the arrangement of the lines--the
conjectural emendator is invited to do his worst by a note at the head of
the older Codex, "Sunt vero versus xxii"--"There are rightly twenty-two
lines."

This has started much ingenious guess-work. But no really convincing
rearrangement has been achieved as yet; and I have been content to
take the text pretty well as it stands, with a few corrections upon which
most scholars agree. With a poem of "paratactic structure" the best of
us may easily go astray by transposing lines, or blocks of lines, to
correspond with our sequence of thought; and I shall be content if,
following the only texts to which appeal can be made,[1] my translation
be generally intelligible.
It runs pretty closely, line for line, with the original; because one may
love and emulate classical terseness even while despairing to rival it.
But it does not attempt to be literal; for even were it worth doing, I
doubt if it be possible for anyone in our day to hit precisely the note
intended by an author or heard by a reader in the eighth century. Men
change subtly as nations succeed to nations, religions to religions,
philosophies to philosophies; and it is a property of immortal poetry to
shift its appeal. It does not live by continuing to mean the some thing. It
grows as we grow. We smile, for instance, when some interlocutor in a
dialogue of Plato takes a line from the Iliad and applies it seriously au
pied de la lettre. We can hardly conceive what the great line conveyed
to him; but it may mean something equally serious to us, though in a
different way.
[1] Facsimiles of the two Codices can be studied in a careful edition of
the Pervigilum by Mr Cecil Clementi, published by Mr B.H. Blackwell
of Oxford, 1911.
PERVIGILIUM VENERIS
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet.
Ver
novum, ver jam canorurn, vere natus orbis est;
Vere concordant
amores, vere nubunt alites,
Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis
imbribus.
Cras amorum copulatrix inter umbras arborum 5
Inplicat
casas virentes de flagello myrteo:
Cras Dione jura dicit fulta sublimi
throno.
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet.
_To-morrow--What news of to-morrow?
Now learn ye to love who

loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew_! It is Spring, it is
chorussing Spring; 'tis the birthday of Earth, and
for you!
It is Spring; and the Loves and the birds wing together and
woo to accord Where the bough to the rain has unbraided her locks as a
bride to
her lord.
For she walks--she our Lady, our Mistress of Wedlock--the
woodlands