Pour out six measures from the older cask;
Why dally so? Nay, pour the deathless wine.
" What holy name has letters six, you ask,
Save Caesar"? Aye my thought you can divine;
So in my wreath ten lovely roses twine
For him the builder of the Flavian fane
And give me kisses ten to be a sign
That as a god Sarmaticus doth reign.

" How easy live the free," you say, and brood
Upon your long but easy servitude.
See Gaius tossing on his downy bed;
Your sleep's unbroken tho' the couch be rude;
He pays his call ere chilly dawn be red,
You need not call on him, you sleep instead;
He's deep in debt, hears many a summons grim
From creditors that you need never dread,
You might be tortured at your master's whim;
Far worse the gout that racks his every limb;
Think of the morning qualms, his vicious moods,
Would you for thrice his freedom change with him?

If I were called to diverse feasts above,
This way by Caesar and that way by Jove,
Though heaven were near, the palace far away,
These were the words that to the gods I'ld say —
" Seek some one else to be the Thunderer's guest.
I have my Jove on earth: je suis, je reste ."

In flowery meadows may you lie
With pebbly streamlets rippling by
Whose banks with blossoms are aglow:
No care or sorrow may you know.
Cool be your cups of mellow wine
And sweet the chaplets that you twine.
Yours be a love who's all your own,
A maid who pines for you alone.
This, Flaccus, is mine earnest prayer,
But, friend, shun Cyprus and her glare
What time they thresh the parching grain
And flame doth glow in Leo's mane.
O Paphian Queen, my wish fulfil,
Restore the youth untouched of ill,
So hallowed shall thy Kalends be

Your guests must write you rhymes
Before they may fall to:
It's very hard sometimes —
" Well, any stuff will do."

You used to send me gifts, now having won
My favour, as you think, you send me none;
'Tis best to feed a captive now and then,
The boar ill-fed is like to force his den.

Seven goblets of Opimian, a bumper full was each,
I quaffed, and that will make a man a trifle thick of speech.
You chose this hour to come and say, " My Nasta I have freed,
He was my father's servant, pray just sign and seal the deed."
My seal is busy: if you call to-morrow 'twill be right,
The seal upon a cork is all that it can mark to-night.

When Silius, twofold lord of Latin tongue,
The fate untimely of Severus sung,
I to the Muses made my mournful cry
And thus did great Apollo give reply —
" I wept for Linus, and Calliopi
Who stands hard by, has borne like grief with me.
Yea, cruel Fate has ventured e'en to move
With bitter grief the heart of either Jove,
The Thunderer in his Tarpeian shrine
And the great dweller on the Palatine.
Since then e'en they to fate relentless bow,
Forbear to charge the gods with envy now."

He is ill he states,
But he violates
All medical orthodoxy,
And so to atone
He gorges alone
And fasts as it were by proxy.
On the evidence
It is all pretence,
So quickly the illness rose up;
But I see it quite
In a serious light,
For my dinner has turned its toes up!

While for our lord with loyalty unstained
The rage of lawless foemen you restrained,
I who your love have e'er my glory made,
Was sporting safely in the Muses' shade.
But when to Rhaetia my poems came.
And the far north was busy with my name,
Never did you our friendship then deny
But " He's my own, my comrade," oft would cry.
Soon may the author read to your kind ears
All you have heard about in these six years.