The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils

Let th' Goth his strongest chaines prepare, The Scythians hence mee captive teare, My mind being free with you, I'le stare The Tyrants in the face....

Then let fierce Goths their strongest chains prepare; Grim Scythians me their slave declare; My soul being free, those tyrants in the face I'll stare.

Casimire's greatest achievement was in the field of the philosophic lyric, and in a number of cases he anticipated poetic techniques and motifs which later grew popular also with the English poets. Thus, long before Denham and Marvell, he practised the technique of investing the scenes of nature with a moral or spiritual significance. A comparison of Casimire's loco-descriptive first epode on the estate of the Duke of Bracciano with Denham's Cooper's Hill (1642) reveals that the Polish poet was the first to mix description with moral reflection, and to choose the gentle hills, the calmly flowing river, and a retired country life as symbols of the Horatian golden mean.

Some of Casimire's richest imagery is found in his paraphrases of Canticles, and particularly in Ode IV, 21. Parts of this ode provide a striking parallel to the famous fifth stanza of Marvell's "The Garden." In it Horace and Virgil meet with Solomon, the hortus conclusus of the Hebrew poet merging with the landscape of retirement as we find it in Virgil's eclogues or in Horace's second and sixteenth epodes. Much of Casimire's poetry, is indeed best understood as a conscious effort to apply the allegorical technique of Canticles to the classical _beatus ille_-themes,[5] just as his thought presents an interesting combination of Stoic and Platonic ideas.

The Polish poet, who was a university professor and a doctor of theology, may easily have learned from the Hermetic writers how to combine these great classical traditions. There is direct proof of Casimire's familiarity with the Hermetic tradition in his Ode II, 5 ("E Rebus Humanis Excessus"), which is a paraphrase of Libellus I, sections 25 and 26.[6] Since Henry Vaughan was familiar with Casimire's poetry, it is reasonable to suspect that Vaughan's own treatment of Hermetic motifs owed much to this influence. If one compares Vaughan's religious nature lyrics and Casimire's odes, a number of common poetical motifs are easily found, and so we are here again faced with the fact that themes which became popular in England in the mid-seventeenth century were anticipated in the Latin odes of Casimire.[7]

Hermetic ideas are also encountered in Casimire's third epode, which combines a Horatian Stoicism with a neo-Platonlc or Hermetic interpretation of the classical landscape of retirement. An avowed reply to Horace's second epode, it expands the Horatian philosophy through the addition of three new themes: the theme of solitude, the theme of the Earthly Paradise, and the theme of Nature as a divine hieroglyph. Its presentation of the garden ecstasy of the retired beatus vir thus strikes the same note to which we know from Mildmay Fane's "To Retiredness" and Andrew Marvell's "The Garden." In slightly adapted form, these themes were to flourish in the poetry of the Countess of Winchilsea, Isaac Watts, John Hughes, and a number of early eighteenth-century nature poets.

In the Romantic period Casimire's fame was again revived. While still a young man, Coleridge planned a complete translation of Casimire's odes, but never finished more than the ode "Ad Lyram." It was also Coleridge who said that with the exception of Lucretius and Statius he knew no Latin poet, ancient or modern, who could be said to equal Casimire in boldness of conception, opulence of fancy, or beauty of versification.[8] A knowledge of the themes and techniques of this Latin poet should therefore be of interest to all students of English poetry.