Smooth Thallus, inly softer you than any furry rabbit,
Or glossy goose's oily plumes, or velvet earlap yielding,
Or feeble age's heavy thighs, or flimsy filthy cobweb;
And Thallus, hungry rascal you, as hurricane rapacious,
5 When winks occasion on the stroke, the gulls agape declaring:
Return the mantle home to me, you watch'd your hour to pilfer,
The fleecy napkin and the rings from Thynia quaintly graven,
Whatever you parade as yours, vain fool, a sham reversion:
Unglue the nails adroit to steal, unclench the spoil, deliver,
10 Lest yet that haunch voluptuous, those tender hands caressant,
Should take an ugly print severe, the scourge's heavy branding;
And strange to bruises you should heave, as heaves in open Ocean,
Some little hoy surprised adrift, when wails the windy water.
XXVI.
Draughts, dear Furius, if my villa faces,
'Tis not showery south, nor airy wester,
North's grim fury, nor east; 'tis only fifteen
Thousand sesterces, add two hundred over.
5 Draft unspeakable, icy, pestilential!
XXVII.
Boy, young caterer of Falernian olden,
Brim me cups of a fiercer harsher essence;
So Postumia, queen of healths presiding,
Bids, less thirsty the thirsty grape, the toper.
5 But dull water, avaunt. Away the wine-cup's
Sullen enemy; seek the sour, the solemn!
Here Thyonius hails his own elixir.