How To Live, Part Nineteen: The New Year

I am not one for making New Year's resolutions.  But I am willing to listen to advice.  Perhaps the best-known piece of advice on How to Live was given by Horace:  carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.  In The Oxford Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases (1998) the phrase is translated as follows:  "seize the day, trusting as little as possible to the morrow."  Yes, of course:  carpe diem.  We've all heard it before.  Like most well-meaning advice, easier said than done.

The phrase appears in Ode 11 of Book One of Horace's Odes.  As one might expect, the poem has been translated into English numerous times, with varying degrees of fidelity to the original.  The following version is by Derek Mahon.

                              How to Live

Don't waste your time, Leuconoe, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisible future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens.  Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,
decant your wine.  The days are more fun than the years
which pass us by while we discuss them.  Act with zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest.

Derek Mahon, Selected Poems (Viking/The Gallery Press 1991).

          Osmund Caine, "Wedding at Twickenham Parish Church" (1948)

Louis MacNeice also tried his hand at it:

Do not, Leuconoe, seek to inquire what is forbidden, what
End the gods have assigned to you or to me; nor do you meddle with
Astrological numbers.  What shall arise count to your balance if
God marks down to you more winters -- or perhaps this very one is the
Last which now on the rocks wears out the fierce Mediterranean
Sea; but be wise and have wine, wine on the board, prune to a minimum
Long-drawn hopes.  While we chat, envious time threatens to give us the
Slip; so gather the day, never an inch trusting futurity.

E. R. Dodds (editor), Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (Faber and Faber 1966).

                            Osmund Caine, "Washing at No. 25, Kingston"

I have a soft spot for the following version by Sir Thomas Hawkins (from 1625):

Strive not, Leuconoe, to know what end
The gods above to me or thee will send;
Nor with astrologers consult at all,
That thou mayst better know what can befall;
Whether thou liv'st more winters, or thy last
Be this, which Tyrrhen waves 'gainst rocks do cast.
Be wise!  drink free, and in so short a space
Do not protracted hopes of life embrace,
Whilst we are talking, envious time doth slide:
This day's thine own; the next may be denied.

Horace, The Odes, Epodes, Satires, and Epistles, Translated by the Most Eminent English Scholars and Poets (1889).

The Elizabethans, though oftentimes flowery, were pretty good at getting to the heart of the matter in a pithy, lovely fashion when they wanted to.  I am put in mind of, for instance, Robert Devereux's "Happy were he could finish forth his fate/In some unhaunted desert," which I have posted here previously.

There was something about the intrigue and the danger of the time which, I think, tended to concentrate the mind (to borrow from Samuel Johnson in another context).  I am reminded of, say, Walter Raleigh and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, writing poetry in their dungeons as they awaited their beheadings.  (A fate shared by Devereux as well.)

                      Osmund Caine, "The Hoby Effigies, Bisham Church"

Life Explained, Part Five: "A Type Of Human Life This Forest Old"

Charles Whitehead (1804-1862) had some early literary success in London, where one of his friends was a young Charles Dickens.  When Whitehead was asked by the publishing firm of Chapman & Hall to provide the text for sketches produced by the illustrator Robert Seymour, Whitehead declined the offer, but suggested that the firm use Dickens.  The result of this recommendation was The Pickwick Papers.

According to his discreet Victorian biographer, Whitehead was "a man of singularly nervous temperament" whose "career [was] irreparably marred by one fatal propensity -- a propensity which he acquired early in life, perchance at the Grotto tavern."  H. T. Mackenzie Bell, A Forgotten Genius: Charles Whitehead (1884).  The Grotto was "much frequented by young literary men, artists, and some few actors," and Whitehead was "the leading spirit of the place, being there every night."  Due to his "one pernicious habit, the influence of which he could never throw off," Whitehead migrated to Australia, where he hoped to make a fresh start.  Unfortunately, he died in Melbourne from (according to hospital records) "the effects of destitution."

Given this biographical background, one might well expect that a sonnet by Whitehead providing an Explanation of Life would not be, say, cheery.  And one would be right.  That being said, I think that it is a fine poem.  It sounds almost Elizabethan -- like something that could have been written by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, or Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, as they awaited their beheadings.

A type of human life this forest old;
All leafy, wither'd, blooming, teeming, blasted;
Bloom that the reign of summer hath outlasted,
And early sere, and blight that flaunts in gold;
And grass, like sorrow, springing from the mould,
Choking the wholesome tree; and verdure wasted,
Like peace; and berries, like our bliss, untasted;
And thorns, like adverse chances, uncontroll'd.
These flowers are joy that ne'er shall form a wreath;
These lilies are unsure affection crown'd
Above neglect, the water; underneath,
Reeds, which are hope, still sadly standing, drown'd.
This hoary sedge is age of noteless years,
This pool, epitome of human tears!

                     Laurits Andersen Ring, "Trunks of Alders" (1893)