[2] Now was come the season when
Phoebus had narrowed the daylight,
Shortening his journey, while sleep’s dim hours were left to grow longer;
Now victorious Cynthia was widening the bounds of her kingdom;
Ugly-faced Winter was snatching away the rich glories of Autumn,
So that the tardy vintager, seeing that Bacchus was
aging,
Hastily, here and there, was plucking the clusters forgotten.
I presume I shall be better understood if I day that the month was October and
the day October thirteenth; the exact hour I cannot tell you—it’s easier to get
philosophers to agree than timepieces—but it was between noon and one o’clock.
“Too clumsily put!” you will say. “All the poets are unsatisfied to describe
sunrises and sunsets, so that they are even tackling the middle of the day: are
you going to neglect so good an hour?”
Phoebus already had passed the highest point of his circuit,
Wearily shaking the reins as his car drew nearer the evening,
Leading away the half-spent light on is down-dipping pathway.
|