Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), "Alcaics to H.F. Brown," lines 1-12:

Brave lads in olden musical centuries
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,
    Sat late by alehouse doors in April
    Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising:

Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises,
Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables;
    Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted,
    Love and Apollo were there to chorus.

Now these, the songs, remain to eternity,
Those, only those, the bountiful choristers
    Gone—those are gone, those unremembered
    Sleep and are silent in earth for ever.

Clayton Hamilton, in The Bookman (February, 1915) 623-624:

The author of Life on the Lagoons, Horatio F. Brown, who was a friend of John Addington Symonds, became intimate with Stevenson at Davos in 1881. The intimacy is attested by the fact that Louis gave to Brown his favourite copy of the Fruits of Solitude of William Penn. After returning to Venice, Brown sent to Louis some translations from old Venetian boat-songs; and the gift was acknowledged with the poem beginning...