Amo, amas, I love a lass
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip's grace is her nominative case,
And she's of the feminine gender.
Rorum, corum, sunt divorum!
Harum, scarum divo!
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band,
Hic hoc horum genitivo!
Can I decline a Nymph divine?
Her voice as a flute is dulcis!
Her oculus bright, her manus white!
And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is!
Rorum, corum, sunt divorum!
Harum, scarum divo!
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band,
Hic hoc horum genitivo!
O, how bella my puella,
I'll kiss saecula saeculorum!
If I've luck, sir, she's my uxor!
O, dies benedictorum!
Rorum, corum, sunt divorum!
Harum, scarum divo!
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band,
Hic hoc horum genitivo!
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Latin Morphology
John O'Keefe (1747-1833), Agreeable Surprise, II, 2: