English

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,

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.

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!

Fair were the pageants given in days of yore,
To Caesar owe we deeper obligations;
Our eyes confess they owe him much, far more
Our grateful ears — he banned the recitations!

" UNPOLISHED " — so that scribbler sneers,
While he that reads and he that hears,
Approve my little books;
I do not care a single jot,
My fame is for my guests and not
To please my rival cooks.

Seven husbands she got,
Made away with the lot,
And has buried them all — but I know
That as you're number eight,
She has not long to wait
Before she rejoins them — below.

P RISCUS describes with learned zest
The sort of feast he holds the best
In pages full of interest
And erudition;

But, if you ask my private view,
The best of all is that where you
Are not required to listen to
A damned musician.

No flint, no ashlar, here are seen,
No brick like that wherewith her Queen
Built Babylon's great wall;
It is of timber, planks, and lath,
This cooling room in Tucca's bath
That is not cool at all;
So closely all the timbers fit
That if he chose to sail in it
'Twould make a perfect boat.
The hot room's rich with pillars wrought
By Phrygian quarrymen or brought
From Afric lands remote,
Though Sparta sent her marbles rare,
Though rich Euboea's gems are there
Perfect in hue and form,

Here may we trace the aspect that he wore
In childhood's hour, the bud but not the flower;
His sire forbore to paint his manhood's grace,
Lest evermore grief should renew her power
Standing before that loved and silent face.