Ode to Ambivalence
I.
To limn the poet's plight, the Muse, youth, love,
things longed for, inspire this crossed, lofty rhyme,
melodic ode! From heavenward above,
immortal, they sing since man's early time.
If love be life, why stalkest thou, O Death?
How briefly spring lasts, if too short its youth?
And what the Muses, if they withhold pleasure?
How might Joy reign, if sorrow kills its truth?
Divine impulse: enter, breathe, bestow thy breath!
and sanctify this dark lyric's measure.
II.
O, Misery! If fresh springs dry up joy,
then the dark dregs of weary life remain.
When bodies bloom and grow in girl and boy,
the adolescent heat inflames the brain;
youth, when gone, fades away in dusky twilight,
and sensual pleasures of once lusty years,
grow more flaccid, milder, as old age begins,
when Cupid's arrows, those feathered, wanton spears,
miss their target when fall descends. Tonight,
O soul! Let youth be buried with time's boffins.
III.
When passion’s tender bloom rises no more,
true love endures, unblemished and profound.
Together life and love, as ancient lore,
compose the one eternal law unbound.
For love, when true, is love that fashions life:
the teeming shoals that throng the ocean’s span.
Yet nets cast wildly by unguarded hearts,
where pleasure reigns unruled by thought or plan:
debase the sacred bond of man and wife,
and mock the noble covenant of man.
IV.
Eternal is love! The Muses, however,
will dash the poet's bosom, tender heart.
The Muses, disloyal, cheating forever,
adulterously guard their Pierian art.
No loftier or higher purpose have the Muses,
than to jealously conceal the sacrament
of the oracles of Mt. Helicon,
whose sacred, weighty, epic strains are meant,
for grandiose and ceremonial uses,
that only Homer, inspired, can sing upon.
V.
If Homer sung of Helen and of Troy,
he lavished all upon the frigid Muse.
So, I shall dare to seize his epic joy,
to steer my bark on Homer's Trojan cruise!
For me, youth's fullness has already passed.
And hope of love in life is like the Dead Sea;
only love of rhyme and measure, and old age,
remain. Life disappoints, whilst time flies fast:
but I endure, writing living Poesy,
to boldly view myself in the Word's image!?
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