With your teeth you were wont on old leather to bite,
And stretch out a sole that was mud-rotten quite,
But now you have got your dead patron's estate,
Who did not possess e'en a garret of late,
And in his bright crystal your hot drink enjoy
While you wanton at ease with his favourite boy.
Oh what a mistake that my fond parents taught
Me my letters, and tutors and schoolmasters sought!
If these are the profits from mending old shoes,
Good-bye books and pens, and adieu to the Muse.

A CHAMPION in the craft that Pollux knew,
A Greek in skill, Roman in might and thew,
You share the name of Bacchus — yet 'tis true
That in the basket I received from you
No jar I found the viands to bedew
Of — you know what — your name should give the clue.

An African lion has partner become
With a jolly old ram, and they live in one home.
You may see them yourself, for together they're tied
And like trusty friends take their meals side by side.
They don't feed on acorns, nor does grass suffice;
A tender young lamb seems to both very nice.
The Nemean terror and Helli's old ram
Compared with these two were a fraud and a sham.
If a place in the stars should to creatures be given,
Our goat and our lion are worthy of heaven.

Of old " O Times, O Manners," Tully cried,
In Catiline's foul days with treason rife,
When swords were red with parricidal strife,
And mourning Rome with civic blood was dyed.
Why mock our times to-day, and why deride
Our manners? Is not ours a happy life
That fears nor maddened chief nor murderous knife?
No degradation this our age doth rue,
No leprous taint of shame — excepting you.

Accursed Pedagogue, why plague me so?
Your girls and boys abhor you — and no wonder —
Before the crested cocks begin to crow
Your savage howls and blows resound like thunder.

The clanging figure noisy blacksmiths fit
On a bronze horse with rivet and with hammer,
The howling mob that greets the favourite
In the arena cannot match your clamour.

A broken night is naught: to lie awake
The whole night through is really appalling;
Shut up the school or tell me if you'll take
As much for silence as you get for bawling.

L ASCIUAM tota possedi nocte puellam,
Cuius nequitias uincere nulla potest.
Fessus mille modis illud puerile poposci:
Ante preces totas primaque uerba dedit.
Inprobius quiddam ridensque rubensque rogaui:
Pollicitast nulla luxuriosa mora.
Sed mihi pura fuit: tibi non erit, Aeschyle, si uis
Accipere hoc munus condicione mala.

Although your wife is young and fair,
You want a father's right to share,
And that by legal fiction;
But what you want of Caesar might
Be yours of ordinary right
Beyond all contradiction.

A LCIDES , now as our fair Caesar seen,
Most welcome to the Latin Jove, I ween,
If such had been thy visage in men's sight
What time the monsters yielded to thy might,
They had not seen thee bear thy cruel thrall,
Nor as a slave to Argive monarch fall.
Ne'er hadst thou wool for Omphali unwound,
Or viewed the Styx and the Tartarean hound;
Eurystheus would have bowed to thy behest,
Nor Lichas brought the Centaur's guileful vest;
Unvexed by Oeta thou hadst reached the heaven
Which by the pyre at last to thee was given.

Our Caesar deigns to take Alcides' face
And with new shrine the Latin Road to grace,
Just where the traveller to Diana's home
Sees by the stone he is eight miles from Rome.
Here Hercules with vows and victims' blood
Was worshipped once: now there's a greater god
Whom men beseech for rank and wealth each day,
And from the other only trifles pray.

'T IS strange that Phoebus dines night after night
With knaves whose deeds could never bear the light!