WORKS.
81
Men, too, may sail in spring[1]: when first the crow
Imprinting with light steps the sands below,
As many thinly-scatter'd leaves are seen
To clothe the fig-tree's top with tender green.
This vernal voyage practicable seems,
And pervious are the boundless ocean-streams:
I praise it not: for thou with anxious mind
Must hasty snatch th' occasion of the wind.
The drear event may baffle all thy care;
Yet thus, even thus, will human folly dare.
Of wretched mortals lo! the soul is gain:
But death is dreadful midst the whelming main.
These counsels lay to heart; and, warn'd by me,
Trust not thy whole precarious wealth to sea,
Tost in the hollow keel: a portion send;
Thy larger substance let the shore defend.
Wretched the losses of the ocean fall,
When on a fragile plank embark'd thy all:
And wretched when thy sheaves o'erload the wain,
And the crash'd axle spoils the scatter'd grain.
Imprinting with light steps the sands below,
As many thinly-scatter'd leaves are seen
To clothe the fig-tree's top with tender green.
This vernal voyage practicable seems,
And pervious are the boundless ocean-streams:
I praise it not: for thou with anxious mind
Must hasty snatch th' occasion of the wind.
The drear event may baffle all thy care;
Yet thus, even thus, will human folly dare.
Of wretched mortals lo! the soul is gain:
But death is dreadful midst the whelming main.
These counsels lay to heart; and, warn'd by me,
Trust not thy whole precarious wealth to sea,
Tost in the hollow keel: a portion send;
Thy larger substance let the shore defend.
Wretched the losses of the ocean fall,
When on a fragile plank embark'd thy all:
And wretched when thy sheaves o'erload the wain,
And the crash'd axle spoils the scatter'd grain.
- ↑ Men, too, may sail in spring.] What the poet says here of a spring voyage, I understand of that which may be made in the month of April: which is not much less liable to gales and storms than even the winter months. Certainly it was in April that the fig-tree began to be in leaf. Le Clerc.
