Unknit your brow; the silent man is sure
To pass for crabbed, the modest for obscure.
Meantime, while thoughts like these your mind engage,
Neglect not books nor converse with the sage;
Ply them with questions; lead them on to tell
What things make life go happily and well;
How cure desire, the soul’s perpetual dearth?
How moderate care for things of trifling worth?
Is virtue raised by culture or self-sown?
What soothes annoy, and makes your heart your own?
Is peace procured by honours, pickings, gains,
Or, sought in highways, is she found in lanes?
For me, when freshened by my spring’s pure cold
Which makes my villagers look pinched and old,
What prayers are mine? “O may I yet possess
The goods I have, or, if Heaven pleases, less!
Let the few years that Fate may grant me still
Be all my own, not held at others’ will!
Let me have books, and stores for one year hence,
Nor make my life one flutter of suspense!”
But I forbear: sufficient ’tis to pray
To Jove for what he gives and takes away:
Grant life, grant fortune, for myself I’ll find
That best of blessings, a contented mind.
XIX. TO MAECENAS.
PRISCO SI CREDIS.
If truth there be in old Cratinus’ song,
No verse, you know, Maecenas, can live long
Writ by a water-drinker. Since the day
When Bacchus took us poets into pay
With fauns and satyrs, the celestial Nine
Have smelt each morning of last evening’s wine.
The praises heaped by Homer on the bowl
At once convict him as a thirsty soul:
And father Ennius ne’er could be provoked
To sing of battles till his lips were soaked.
“Let temperate folk write verses in the hall
Where bonds change hands, abstainers not at all;”
So ran my edict: now the clan drinks hard,
And vinous breath distinguishes a bard.
What if a man appeared with gown cut short,
Bare feet, grim visage, after Cato’s sort?
Would you respect him, hail him from henceforth
The heir of Cato’s mind, of Cato’s worth?
The wretched Moor, who matched himself in wit
With keen Timagenes, in sunder split.
Faults are soon copied: should my colour fail,
Our bards drink cummin, hoping to look pale.
Mean, miserable apes! the coil you make
Oft gives my heart, and oft my sides, an ache.
Erect and free I walk the virgin sod,
Too proud to tread the paths by others trod.
The man who trusts himself, and dares step out,
Soon sets the fashion to the inferior rout.
’Tis I who first to Italy have shown
Iambics, quarried from the Parian stone;
Following Archilochus in rhythm and stave,
But not the words that dug Lycambes’ grave.
Yet think not that I merit scantier bays,
Because in form I reproduce his lays:
Strong Sappho now and then adopts a tone
From that same lyre, to qualify her own;
So does Alcaeus, though in all beside,
Style, order, thought, the difference is wide;
‘Gainst no false fair he turns his angry Muse,
Nor for her guilty father twists the noose.
Aye, and Alcaeus’ name, before unheard,
My Latian harp has made a household word.
Well may the bard feel proud, whose pen supplies
Unhackneyed strains to gentle hands and eyes.
Ask you what makes the uncourteous reader laud
My works at home, but run them down abroad?
I stoop not, I, to catch the rabble’s votes
By cheap refreshments or by cast-off coats,
Nor haunt the benches where your pedants swarm,
Prepared by turns to listen and perform.
That’s what this whimpering means.
Suppose I say “Your theatres have ne’er been in my way,
Nor I in theirs: large audiences require
Some heavier metal than my thin-drawn wire:”
“You put me off,” he answers, “with a sneer:
Your works are kept for Jove’s imperial ear:
Yes, you’re a paragon of bards, you think,
And no one else brews nectar fit to drink.”
What can I do? ’tis an unequal match;
For if my nose can sniff, his nails can scratch:
I say the place won’t snit me, and cry shame;
“E’en fencers get a break ‘twixt game and game.
“ Games oft have ugly issue: they beget
Unhealthy competition, fume and fret:
And fume and fret engender in their turn
Battles that bleed, and enmities that burn.
XX. TO HIS BOOK.
VERTUMNUM JANUMQUE.
To street and market-place I see you look
With wistful longing, my adventurous book,
That on the stalls for sale you may be seen,
Rubbed by the binder’s pumice smooth and clean.
You chafe at look and key, and court the view
Of all the world, disdainful of the few.
Was this your breeding? go where you would go;
When once sent out, you won’t come back, you know.
“What mischief have I done?” I hear you whine,
When some one hurts those feelings, now so fine;
For hurt you’re sure to be; when people pall
Of reading you, they’ll crush and fold you small.
If my prophetic soul be not at fault
From indignation at your rude revolt,
Your doom, methinks, is easy to foretell:
While you’ve your gloss on, Rome will like you well:
Then, when you’re thumbed and soiled by vulgar hands,
You’ll feed the moths, or go to distant lands.
Ah, then you’ll mind your monitor too late,
While he looks on and chuckles at your fate,
Like him who, pestered by his donkey’s vice,
Got off and pushed it down the precipice;
For who would lose his temper and his breath
To keep a brute alive that’s bent on death?
Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach
In some suburban school the parts of speech,
And, maundering over grammar day by day,
Lisp, prattle, drawl, grow childish, and decay.
Well, when in summer afternoons you see
Men fain to listen, tell them about me:
Tell them that, born a freedman’s son, possessed
Of slender means, I soared beyond my nest,
That so whate’er’s deducted for my birth
May count as assets on the score of worth;
Say that I pleased the greatest of my day:
Then draw my picture; — prematurely grey,
Of little person, fond of sunny ease,
Lightly provoked, but easy to appease.
Last, if my age they ask you, let them know
That I was forty-four not long ago,
In the December of last year, the same
That goes by Lepidus’ and Lollius’ name.
BOOK II.
I. TO AUGUSTUS.
CUM TOT SUSTINEAS.
Since you, great Caesar, singly wield the charge
Of Rome’s concerns, so manifold and large,
With sword and shield the commonwealth protect,
With morals grace it, and with laws correct,
The bard, methinks, would do a public wrong
Quirinus, Bacchus, and the Jove-born pair,
Though now invoked with in cense, gifts, and prayer,
While yet on earth they civilized their kind,
Tilled lands, built cities, properties assigned,
Oft mourned for man’s ingratitude, and found
The race they served less thankful than the ground.
The prince whose fated vassalage subdued
Fell Hydra’s power and all the monster brood,
Soon found that envy, worse than all beside,
Could only be extinguished when he died.
He that outshines his age is like a torch,
Which, when it blazes high, is apt to scorch:
Men hate him while he lives: at last, no doubt,
He wins affection — when his light is out.
You, while in life, are honoured as divine,
And vows and oaths are taken at your shrine;
So Rome pays homage to her man of men,
Ne’er seen on earth before, ne’er to be seen again.
But this wise nation, which for once thinks true,
That nought in Greece or here can rival you,
To all things else a different test applies,
And looks on living worth with jaundiced eyes:
While, as for ancient models, take the code
Which to the ten wise men our fathers owed,
The treaties made ‘twixt Gabii’s kings and Home’s,
The pontiffs’ books, the bards’ forgotten tomes,
They’ll swear the Muses framed them every one
In close divan on Alba’s Helicon.
But what’s the argument? the bards of Greece
And those of Rome must needs be of a piece;
As there the oldest hold the foremost place,
So here, ’twould seem, the same will be the case.
Is this their reasoning? they may prove as well
An olive has no stone, a nut no shell.
Soon, flattered by such dexterous logic, we
Shall think we’ve gained the summit of the tree;
In art, in song our rivals we outdo,
And, spite of all their oil, in wrestling too.
Or is it said that poetry’s like wine
Which age, we know, will mellow and refine?
Well, let me grant the parallel, and ask
How many years a work must be in cask.
A bard who died a hundred years ago,
With whom should he be reckoned, I would know?
The priceless early or the worthless late?
Come, draw a line which may preclude debate.
“The bard who makes his century up has stood
The test: we call him sterling, old, and good.”
Well, here’s a poet now, whose dying day
Fell one month later, or a twelvemonth, say:
Whom does he count with? with the old, or them
Whom we and future times alike contemn?
“Aye, call him old, by favour of the court,
Who falls a month, or e’en a twelvemonth short.”
Thanks for the kind permission! I go on,
And pull out years, like horse-hairs, one by one,
While all forlorn the baffled critic stands,
Fumbling a naked stump between his hands,
Who looks for worth in registers, and knows
No inspiration but what death bestows.
Ennius, the stout and wise, in critic phrase
The analogue of Homer in these days,
Enjoys his ease, nor cares how he redeems
The gorgeous promise of his peacock dreams.
Who reads not Naevius? still he lives enshrined
A household god in every Roman mind.
So as we reckon o’er the heroic band
We call Pacuvius learned, Accius grand;
Afranius wears Menander’s robe with grace;
Plautus moves on at Epicharmus’ pace;
In force and weight Caecilius bears the palm;
While Terence — aye, refinement is his charm.
These are Rome’s classics; these to see and hear
She throngs the bursting playhouse year by year:
’Tis these she musters, counts, reviews, displays,
From Livius’ time to our degenerate days.
Sometimes the public sees like any lynx;
Sometimes, if ’tis not blind, at least it blinks.
If it extols the ancient sous of song
As though they were unrivalled, it goes wrong:
If it allows there’s much that’s obsolete,
Much hasty work, much rough and incomplete,
’Tis just my view; ’tis judging as one ought;
And Jove was present when that thought was thought.
Not that I’d act the zealot, and desire
To fling the works of Livius on the fire,
Which once Orbilius, old and not too mild,
Made me repeat by whipping when a child;
But when I find them deemed high art, and praised
As only not perfection, I’m amazed,
That here and there a thought not ill expressed,
A verse well turned, should carry off the rest;
Just as an unfair sample, set to catch
The heedless customer, will sell the batch.
I chafe to hear a poem called third-rate
Not as ill written, but as written late;
To hear your critics for their ancients claim
Not charity, but honour and high fame.
Suppose I doubt if Atta’s humorous show
Moves o’er the boards with best leg first or no,
The fathers of the city all declare
That shame has fled from Rome, and gone elsewhere;
“What! show no reverence to his sacred shade
Whose scenes great Roscius and Aesopus played?”
Perhaps with selfish prejudice they deem
That nought but what they like deserves esteem,
Or, jealous of their juniors, won’t allow
That what they learnt in youth is rubbish now.
As for the pedant whose preposterous whim
Finds poetry in Numa’s Salian hymn,
Who would be thought to have explored alone
A land to him and me alike unknown,
’Tis not that buried genius he regards:
No; ’tis mere spleen and spite to living bards.
Had Greece but been as carping and as cold
To new productions, what would now be old?
What standard works would there have been, to come
Beneath the public eye, the public thumb?
When, having done with fighting, Greece began
To care for trifles that refine the man,
And, borne aloft on Fortune’s full flood-tide,
Went drifting on to luxury and pride,
Of athletes and of steeds by turns she raved,
Loved ivory, bronze, and marble deftly graved,
Hung raptured on a painting, mind and eye,
Now leant to music, now to tragedy,
Like a young child that hankers for a toy,
Then throws it down when it begins to cloy.
With change of fortune nations change their minds:
So much for happy peace and prosperous winds.
At Rome erewhile men rose by day-break, saw
Their clients at their homes, laid down the law,
Put money at good interest out to loan
Secured by names responsible and known,
Explained to younger folk, or learned from old,
How wealth might be increased, expense controlled.
Now our good town has taken a new fit:
Each man you meet by poetry is bit;
Pert boys, prim fathers dine in, wreaths of bay,
And ‘twixt the courses warble out their lay.
&nb
sp; E’en I, who vow I never write a verse,
Am found as false as Parthia, maybe worse;
Before the dawn I rouse myself, and call
For pens and parchment, writing-desk and all.
None dares be pilot who ne’er steered a craft;
No untrained nurse administers a draught;
None but skilled workmen handle workmen’s tools:
But verses all men scribble, wise or fools.
And yet this scribbling is a harmless craze,
And boasts in fact some few redeeming traits.
Avarice will scarce find lodging in a heart
Whose every thought is centred on its art;
He lays no subtle schemes, your dreamy bard,
To circumvent his partner or his ward;
Content with pulse and bread of ration corn,
Mres, losses, runaways he laughs to scorn;
Useless in camp, at home he serves the state,
That is, if small can minister to great.
His lessons form the child’s young lips, and wean
The boyish ear from words and tales unclean;
As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind,
And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind;
He tells of worthy precedents, displays
The example of the past to after days,
Consoles affliction, and disease allays.
Had Rome no poets, who would teach the train
Of maids and spotless youths their ritual strain?
Schooled by the bard, they lift their voice to heaven,
And feel the wished-for aid already given,
Prom brazen skies call down abundant showers,
Are heard when sickness threats or danger lowers,
Win for a war-worn land the smiles of peace,
And crown the year with plentiful increase.
Song checks the hand of Jove in act to smite;
Song soothes the dwellers in abysmal night.
Our rustic forefathers in days of yore,
Robust though frugal, and content though poor,
When, after harvest done, they sought repair
From toils which hope of respite made them bear,
Were wont their hard-earned leisure to enjoy
With those who shared their labour, wife and boy;
With porker’s blood the Earth they would appease,
With milk Silvanus, guardian of their trees,
With flowers and wine the Genius, who repeats
Complete Works of Horace (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) Page 46