The Complete Poems by Ben Jonson7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() His student in the London cafe, maybe the Cheshire Cheese down the road from the other Johnson's house,Robert Herrick, mastered Jonson's colloquial touch with Latin. ![]() And Jonson fits the Latin lyric into his play, "Cannot we delude the eyes / Of a few poor household spies ?" Catullus simply colludes, two youths against the gossiping geezer censurer-Rumoresque senum severiorum. "Come, my Celia, let us prove / While we may, the fruits of love./ Time will not be ours forever,/ It at length our goods will sever/ Spend not then love's gifts in vain / Suns that set will rise again, / But when once we lose this light / 'Tis with us perpetual night." Catullus put this line, "Nox est una perpetua dormienda." A resonant cave of sounds, to Jonson's light, urbane touch. Many fine translators of the epic, like Dryden and Pope, but many fewer of Horace, Catullus, Ovid.Oh, and the epigram, Martial. And along with Robert Herrick, the best translator of Latin verse, especially the lyric. England's greatest playwright.except for one intruder, the Upstart Crow. ![]()
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