“I am the poet who once tuned his song
On a slender reed and then leaving the woods
Compelled the fields to obey the hungry farmer,
A pleasing work. But now War's grim and savage …”
Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
Carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi
Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,
Gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis ...
Spurious opening lines of the Aeneid (tr. Stanley Lombardo), not found in the earliest manuscripts. Attributed to Virgil on the authority of "the grammarian Nisus", who claimed to have "heard from older men" that Varius had "emended the beginning of the first book by striking out" the four introductory lines, as reported in Suetonius' Life of Vergil http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/de_Poetis/Vergil*.html, 42 (Loeb translation). John Conington, in his Commentary on Vergil's Aeneid, remarks: "The external evidence of such a story it is impossible to estimate, but its existence suspiciously indicates that the lines were felt to require apology" (Vol. II, p. 30).
Attributed
Original
Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena Carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono, Gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis<!-- Arma virumque cano--> ...
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Virgil 138
Ancient Roman poet -70–-19 BCRelated quotes
“Such were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung,
Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.”
"Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" preface to Thomas Parnell's Poems on Several Occasions (1721).
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.
To Major Winrich Behr in the early morning hours of April 21, 1945. Quoted in "Battle for the Ruhr" - Page 378 - by Derek S. Zumbro - 2006
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1843/feb/17/distress-of-the-country-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (17 February 1843).
1840s
Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm
"Winter", p. 5
The Land (1926)
Context: The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun,
As each man knows the life that fits him best,
The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone,
And after ranging on a tentative flight
Stoops like the merlin to the constant lure.
Cracklin' Rosie
Song lyrics, Tap Root Manuscript (1970)
“Lean, hungry, savage anti-everythings.”
A modest Request; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Every field, every tree is now budding; now the woods are green, now the year is at its loveliest.”
Nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbor;
Nunc frondent sylvae, nunc formosissimus annus.
Nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbor;
Nunc frondent sylvae, nunc formosissimus annus.
Book III, lines 56–57 (tr. Fairclough)
Eclogues (37 BC)