[2]
Now had the sun with shorter course drawn in his risen light,
And by equivalent degrees grew the dark hours of night:
Victorious Cynthia now held sway over a wider space,
Grim winter drove rich autumn out, and now usurped his place;
And now the fiat had gone forth that Bacchus must grow old,
The few last clusters of the vine were gathered ere the cold:
I shall make myself better understood, if I say the month was October, the
day was the thirteenth. What hour it was I cannot certainly tell; philosophers will
agree more often than clocks; but it was between midday and one after noon.
“Clumsy creature!” you say. “The poets are not content to
describe sunrise and sunset, and now they even disturb the midday siesta. Will
you thus neglect so good an hour?”
Now the sun's chariot had gone by the middle of his way;
Half wearily he shook the reins, nearer to night than day,
And led the light along the slope that down before him lay.
