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The
Brownstone Journal >>
Issues
"Love
the God of Peace" by Sextus Aurelius Propertius
Derek Haddad (CAS '06) is majoring in
Ancient Greek and Latin. He is the co-President of the Undergraduate
Classics Association, and will begin the Masters Program at
Fordham University in Fall 2006.
Peace has Love as its god – we
Lovers praise peace.
Fights with my girlfriend are more than enough for me.
I have no estate in the Hamptons,
Nor do I slake my thirst with sterling silver;
Yet my heart is not imprisoned by gold bars,
Nor do I profit off the
Ruin of jewels.
O wretched Eden, in whose dust God fashioned
Adam and Eve!
A day was not enough to build a heart;
With bodies prone, the mind He overlooked:
The path of the mind should have been straightened first.
So now we’re tossed about by winds into the deep,
Any enemy we crave, and link old wounds to new wars so the pain
Does not cease.
No way will you carry any wealth with you
In death; fool,
You will lie naked beneath the earth.
Together the “just” mix with “unjust” in death:
Lincoln and Booth sit side be side,
Tyrant and patriot in shadow collide.
That death is best which falls when one’s life is
First freshly squeezed.
I myself far from the rotting brambles
Prefer my roots:
The pleasure in youth of song, wine and girls;
The hard work of prime maturity with family;
The contemplation in old age of all that is
And is not.
May I leave life amidst so grand a feast.
But you who’d rather war, go to the Middle East.
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