Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

  [p67]

Farewell to court

Farewell, court! Why do you trick me with deceptive shades, why do you destroy my mind with foolish credulity? Now twice bound by freezing frosts the earth has lain still, inactive across Winter's long delay:  [p68]twice softened by the Zephyr a it has released its sacred offspring in a new birth, and abounded in Spring's riches, since you used to bid me hope for reward for my stay, and fortunes not unworthy of my merits. Yet now nothing remains for me in my misery except a crowd of woes, after the long weariness of an unhappy stay. The swift years have fled, the quick-passing season has turned its back on the altered leaves and cannot be recalled. And what grieves me more, the sad Muses have fled me, and they refuse to be present amid my forsaken duties. How often I have experienced kindly and willing Muses; and now unkindly fortune has made them unwilling for me. This happens to the extent that, when the festivities of Janus come around, and the season demands gifts in the customary fashion, scarely until my nails have been lacerated by a hundred bites does a single verse emanate from my worn-out heart. b Moreover, the court redoubles the opportunities for just complaint, and makes you complicit in an established crime. I who, upon my arrival, had been received with friendly acclaim, now find out-of-joint noses hissing their contempt at me. Clearly, as is the fashion, virtue begins to be shunned, and is more vile than vile filth; unless attendant fortune, who stands by with a favouring gaze, would place it high in an exalted rank. Clearly, as is the fashion, virtue must serve, and must pretend and at the same time dissemble, or must wander lacerated through the streets, and covered in rags must shovel food obtained by begging into its mouth. Wherever there is a higher place for virtue, it picks at the meagre scraps from the rich tables of the nobles. Nevertheless, never will a blind passion for either money or too many an honour turn me from the right path. Yet although I stand obscure and without honour in the middle of court, as I have tended to virtue, I shall continue to tend to it as much as I can. And whenever the gracious fates will perhaps allow me to arrange my life according to my own desire, I should prefer to live in seclusion, oblivious to court, where a little retreat will be built in an obscure location, and, free from Phoebus, and from the fervour of Phoebus,  [p69]pass my days free from all ambition, than to proceed to be seen in gold and purple amid the chiefs of court. Meanwhile, you will be a witness (you, in whose mouth Persuasion sits, in whose hand Mars sits, and in whose heart Minerva sits) c that I bore poorly in my soul all the days and however much of fleeting time the court has thus far deprived from my studies - not because the bitter harvest of the unwelcome stay tricked me in my studipity with empty promises, but rather because I was not allowed to be able fully to be worthy of you; you who were filled with such a love for me. But since, through the troubles of iniquitous fortune, it was not allowed for me to provide a firm token of my grateful mind, therefore I provide that which is the flower of the knights, the golden sun of the court, the lover of the king, and the delight of its fatherland; that which always looked upon me in such a pleasant light, and alone of my muses was ready to serve.