Classic Poem

Lordly descendant of a royal line,
Whose love and honored patronage is mine,
Know you not how the varied types of men
Struggle, each with his own desires, and then
Count themselves kings—yes, gods are not more blessed—
If by some trick of fate they pass the rest.

This man exults if fortune sweep him high
Where he may swagger in the public eye;
Another hopes to magnify his stores
With grain swept from the Libyan threshing-floors.
He who delights to till his fertile fields
Is most concerned with what the farming yields
And would not change for things more hazardous,
Though tempted with the wealth of Attalus.
The merchant, dreading winds and angry seas,
Commends tranquillity and rural ease;
Another one (you may have heard of such)
Is not averse to Massic, and will touch
The lips of jars that hold it while he may;
Draining and dreaming through the longest day.
One quaffs it lying by some sacred stream,
Another stretched on roses loved to dream. . . .

The camp, the sound of trumpets as they blend
With clarions and cries, with wars that rend
A thousand mothers' hearts with fresh despair,
Are things for which a nation seems to care.
The huntsman, deaf to his neglected spouse,
Creeps in the cold and shuns his own warm house,
Whether by dogs a hart is held to view,
Or some wild Marsian boar has broken through
The fine-wrought net which he has torn askew.

For me the ivy, emblem that I love,
Ranks me an equal with the gods above.
For me the placid groves and cool retreats
Where never throngs disturb the woodland streets,
But where the Nymphs and Satyrs dancing light
Add a new glory to the splendid night.
These will I sing until my battered lute
Is still and Polyhymnia's lyre is mute.
Thus will I seek for favor in your eyes,
And if with lyric bards you say I rise
My head shall grow until it scrapes the skies.