Venetian Epigrams I
Venetian Epigrams I - form Summary
Epigram Celebrates Vivid Immortality
This short epigram compresses a vivid image of funerary sculpture into a single ironic, life-affirming turn. Marble sarcophagi etched with dancing fauns, music, and feeding birds are read as evidence that love and festive life outlast death. In a compact closing line the speaker wishes his own tomb to bear the same exuberant ornament, turning elegy into a witty, self-aware assertion of poetic immortality.
Read Complete AnalysesSarcophagi, urns, were all covered with lifelike scenes, Fauns dancing with girls from a Bacchanalian choir, Paired-off, goat-footed creatures puffing their cheeks, Forcing ear-splitting notes from blaring horns. Cymbals and drumbeats, the marble is seen and heard. How delightful the fruit in the beaks of fluttering birds! No startling noise can scare them, or scare away love, Amor, whose torch waves more gladly in this happy throng. So fullness overcomes death, and the ashes within Seem still, in their silent house, to feel love’s delight. So may the Poet’s sarcophagus be adorned, With this book the writer has filled with the beauty of life.
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