Light and Lyric

aperfectcommotion:

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

It gives a lovely light.


— Edna St. Vincent Millay

(indigenousdialogues)

                 Campus et areae
 lenesque sub noctem susurri
   composita repetanture hora,

nunc et latentis proditor intimo
gratus puellae rusus ab angulo
 pignusque dereptum lacertis
   aut digito male pertinaci.

- Horace, Odes I, 9

(The translation is rather awful.)

Thou, how my back was beam-wise laid,
    And raft’ring of my ribs, dost know;
            Know’st every point
            Of bone and joint,
    How to this whole these parts did grow,
In brave embroid’ry fair arrayed,
    Though wrought in shop both dark and low.

Psalm 139

postquam arma dei ad Vulcania ventum est
mortalis mucro, glacies ceu futtilis, ictu
dissiluit; fulva resplendent fragmina harena.

- Virgil, Aeneid, Book XII.740-742

Someone said once to me that Virgil may have been Augustan and may indeed have written an apologetic for this new Roman-ness, but that the Aeneid faced the sadness of empire directly.  Glittering fragments of a sword on the sand.