Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Alexander Brome (1620 – June 30, 1666), was an English poet.
He was by profession an attorney, and was the author of many drinking songs and of satirical verses in favor of the Royalists and in opposition to the Rump Parliament. In 1661, following the Restoration, he published Songs and other Poems, containing songs on various subjects, followed by a series of political songs; ballads, epistles, elegies and epitaphs; epigrams and translations. Izaak Walton wrote an introductory eclogue for this volume in praise of the writer, and his gaiety and wit won for him the title of the English Anacreon in Edward Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum.
Brome published in 1666 a translation of Horace by himself and others, and was the author of a comedy entitled The Cunning Lovers (1654). He also edited two volumes of Richard Brome's plays.
Alexander Brome (1620 – June 30, 1666), was an English poet.
“He was by profession an attorney, and was the author of many drinking songs and of satirical verses in favor of the Royalists and in opposition to the Rump Parliament. In 1661, following the Restoration, he published Songs and other Poems, containing songs on various subjects, followed by a series of political songs; ballads, epistles, elegies and epitaphs; epigrams and translations. Izaak Walton wrote an introductory eclogue for this volume in praise of the writer, and his gaiety and wit won for him the title of the English Anacreon in Edward Phillips’s Theatrum Poetarum.
“Brome published in 1666 a translation of Horace by himself and others, and was the author of a comedy entitled The Cunning Lovers (1654). He also edited two volumes of Richard Brome’s plays.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Brome
Selected poems:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/brome01.html
“The Mad Lover” a must read for all those that suffer spring, vino and credit cards.
“Courtship” clearly inspired by Catullus:
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum seueriorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis.
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love,
and all the words of the old, and so moral,
may they be worth less than nothing to us!
Suns may set, and suns may rise again:
but when our brief light has set,
night is one long everlasting sleep.
Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more,
another thousand, and another hundred,
and, when we’ve counted up the many thousands,
confuse them so as not to know them all,
so that no enemy may cast an evil eye,
by knowing that there were so many kisses.
Transl.: (c) 2001 A.S.Kline
http://www.adkline.freeuk.com/Catullus.htm#_Toc531846733
Another title of works by his hand: “Loyal Songs and Madrigals”. A bit of a spoiler: Sam records his death in the Diary on 3rd July 1666.