ELEGY X.
He tells Venus that he now ceases to write Elegies.
Seek a new Poet, mother of the tender Loves; here the extreme turning-place is grazed [674] by my Elegies, which I, a foster-child of the Pelignian fields, have composed; nor have my sportive lays disgraced me. Me, I say, who, if that is aught, am the heir to my rank, [675] even through a long line of ancestors, and not lately made a Knight in the hurly-burly of warfare. Mantua delights in Virgil, Verona in Catullus; I shall be called the glory of the Pelignian race; which its own liberties summon to glorious arms, [676] when trembling Rome dreaded [677] the allied bands. And some stranger will say, as he looks on the walls of the watery Sulmo, which occupy but a few acres of land, "Small as you are, I will call you great, who were able to produce a Poet so great." Beauteous boy, and thou, Amathusian parent [678] of the beauteous boy, raise your golden standard from my fields. The horned [679] Lyæus [680] has struck me with a thyrsus more potent; with mighty steeds must a more extended plain be paced. Unwarlike Elegies, my sportive [681] Muse, farewell; a work destined to survive long after I am dead and gone.——