ilosophic
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