HORACE.

(Epode XIV.)

You ask me, friend,
Why I don't send
The long since due-and-paid-for numbers—
Why, songless, I
As drunken lie
Abandoned to Lethæan slumbers.
Long time ago
(As well you know)
I started in upon that carmen;
My work was vain—
But why complain?
When gods forbid, how helpless are men!
Some ages back,
The sage Anack
Courted a frisky Samian body,
Singing her praise
In metered phrase
As flowing as his bowls of toddy.
'Till I was hoarse
Might I discourse
Upon the cruelties of Venus—
'Twere waste of time
As well of rhyme,
For you've been there yourself, Maecenas!
Perfect your bliss,
If some fair miss
Love you yourself and not your minæ;
I, fortune's sport,
All vainly court
The beauteous, polyandrous Phryne!

HORACE I, 23.

Chloe, you shun me like a hind
That, seeking vainly for her mother,
Hears danger in each breath of wind
And wildly darts this way and t'other.
Whether the breezes sway the wood
Or lizards scuttle through the brambles,
She starts, and off, as though pursued,
The foolish, frightened creature scrambles.
But, Chloe, you're no infant thing
That should esteem a man an ogre—
Let go your mother's apron-string
And pin your faith upon a toga!