THE VIGIL OF VENUS AND OTHER POEMS BY "Q" 1912 TO MAURICE HEWLETT HEWLETT! as ship to ship Let us the ensign dip. There may be who despise For dross our merchandise, Our balladries, our bales Of woven tales; Yet, Hewlett, the glad gales Favonian! And what spray Our dolphins toss'd in play, Full in old Triton's beard, on Iris' shimmering veils! Scant tho' the freight of gold Commercial in our hold, Pæstum, Eridanus Perchance have barter'd us 'Bove chrematistic care CONTENTS THE VIGIL OF VENUS PERVIGILIUM VENERIS THE REGENT--A DRAMA IN ONE ACT POEMS EXMOOR VERSES VASHTI'S SONG SATURN DERELICTION TWO FOLK SONGS THE SOLDIER THE MARINE MARY LESLIE JENIFER'S LOVE TWO DUETS THE STATUES AND THE TEAR NUPTIAL NIGHT HESPERUS CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE ENVOY CORONATION HYMN THREE MEN OF TRURO ALMA MATER CHRISTMAS EVE THE ROOT TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF VIOLETS OF THREE CHILDREN CHOOSING A CHAPLET OF VERSE EPILOGUE: TO A MOTHER, ON SEEING HER SMILE REPEATED IN HER DAUGHTER'S EYES THE VIGIL OF VENUS The _Pervigilium Veneris_--of unknown authorship, but clearly belonging to the late literature of the Roman Empire--has survived in two MSS., both preserved at Paris in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. Of these two MSS. the better written may be assigned (at earliest) to the close of the seventh century; the other (again at earliest) to the close of the ninth. Both are corrupt; the work of two illiterate copyists who--strange to say--were both smatterers enough to betray their little knowledge by converting _Pervigilium_ into _Per Virgilium_ (_scilicet_, "by Virgil"): thus helping us to follow the process of thought by which the Middle Ages turned Virgil into a wizard. Here and there the texts become quite silly, separately or in consent; and just where they agree in the most surprising way--_i.e._ in the arrangement of the lines--the conjectural emendator is invited to do his worst by a note at the head of the older Codex, "Sunt vero versus xxii"--"There are rightly twenty-two lines." This has started much ingenious guess-work. But no really convincing rearrangement has been achieved as yet; and I have been content to take the text pretty well as it stands, with a few corrections upon which most scholars agree. With a poem of "paratactic structure" the best of us may easily go astray by transposing lines, or blocks of lines, to correspond with _our_ sequence of thought; and I shall be content if, following the only texts to which appeal can be made,[1] my translation be generally intelligible.