Oh! heavens—whileTHUShoarse Codrus perseveresTo force his Theseid on my tortured ears,Shall I notONCEattempt "to quit the score,"Alwaysan auditor, and nothing more!Forever at my side, shall this rehearse5His elegiac, that his comic verse,Unpunished? shall huge Telephus, at will,The livelong day consume, or, huger still,Orestes, closely written, written, too,Down the broad marge, and yet—no end in view!10Away, away!—None knows his home so wellAs I the grove of Mars, and Vulcan's cell,Fast by the Æolian rocks!—How the Winds roar,How ghosts are tortured on the Stygian shore,How Jason stole the golden fleece, and how15The Centaurs fought on Othrys' shaggy brow;The walks of Fronto echo round and round—The columns trembling with the eternal sound,While high and low, as the mad fit invades,Bellow the same trite nonsense through the shades.20I, too, can write—and, at a pedant's frown,Oncepoured my fustian rhetoric on the town:And idly proved that Sylla, far from power,Had passed, unknown to fear, the tranquil hour:—Now I resume my pen; for, since we meet25Such swarms of desperate bards in every street,'Tis vicious clemency to spare the oil,And hapless paper they are sure to spoil.But why I choose, adventurous, to retraceThe Auruncan's route, and, in the arduous race,30Follow his burning wheels, attentive hear,If leisure serve, and truth be worth your ear.When the soft eunuch weds, and the bold fairTilts at the Tuscan boar, with bosom bare;When one that oft, since manhood first appeared,35Has trimmed the exuberance of this sounding beard,In wealth outvies the senate; when a vile,A slave-born, slave-bred, vagabond of Nile,Crispinus, while he gathers now, now flingsHis purple open, fans his summer rings;40And, as his fingers sweat beneath the freight,Cries, "Save me—from a gem of greater weight!"'Tis hard a less adventurous course to choose,While folly plagues, and vice inflames the Muse.For who so slow of heart, so dull of brain,45So patient of the town, as to containHis bursting spleen, when, full before his eye,Swings the new chair of lawyer Matho by,Crammed with himself! then, with no less parade,That caitiff's, who his noble friend betrayed,50Who now, in fancy, prostrate greatness tears,And preys on what the imperial vulture spares!Whom Massa dreads, Latinus, trembling, pliesWith a fair wife, and anxious Carus buys!When those supplant thee in thy dearest rights,55Who earn rich legacies by active nights;Those, whom (the shortest, surest way to rise)The widow's itch advances to the skies!—Not that an equal rank her minions hold;Just to their various powers, she metes her gold,60And Proculeius mourns his scanty share,While Gillo triumphs, hers and nature's heir!And let him triumph! 'tis the price of blood:While, thus defrauded of the generous flood.The color flies his cheek, as though he prest,65With unsuspecting foot, a serpent's crest;Or stood engaged at Lyons to declaim,Where the least peril is the loss of fame.Ye gods!—what rage, what phrensy fires my brain,When that false guardian, with his splendid train,70Crowds the long street, and leaves his orphan chargeTo prostitution, and the world at large!When, by a juggling sentence damned in vain,(For who, that holds the plunder, heeds the pain?)Marius to wine devotes his morning hours,75And laughs, in exile, at the offended Powers:While, sighing o'er the victory she won,The Province finds herself but more undone!And shall I feel, that crimes like these requireThe avenging strains of the Venusian lyre,80And not pursue them? I shall I still repeatThe legendary tales of Troy and Crete;The toils of Hercules, the horses fedOn human flesh by savage Diomed,The lowing labyrinth, the builder's flight,85And the rash boy, hurl'd from his airy height?When, what the law forbids the wife to heir,The adulterer's Will may to the wittol bear,Who gave, with wand'ring eye and vacant face,A tacit sanction to his own disgrace;90And, while at every turn a look he stole,Snored, unsuspected, o'er the treacherous bowl!When he presumes to ask a troop's command,Who spent on horses all his father's land,While, proud the experienced driver to display,95His glowing wheels smoked o'er the Appian way:—For there our young Automedon first triedHis powers, there loved the rapid car to guide;While great Pelides sought superior bliss,And toyed and wantoned with his master-miss.100Who would not, reckless of the swarm he meets,Fill his wide tablets, in the public streets,With angry verse? when, through the midday glare,Borne by six slaves, and in an open chair,The forger comes, who owes this blaze of state105To a wet seal and a fictitious date;Comes, like the soft Mæcenas, lolling by,And impudently braves the public eye!Or the rich dame, who stanched her husband's thirstWith generous wine, but—drugged it deeply first!110And now, more dext'rous than Locusta, showsHer country friends the beverage to compose,And, midst the curses of the indignant throng,Bear, in broad day, the spotted corpse along.Dare nobly, man! if greatness be thy aim,115And practice what may chains and exile claim:On Guilt's broad base thy towering fortunes raise,For virtue starves on—universal praise!While crimes, in scorn of niggard fate, affordThe ivory couches, and the citron board,120The goblet high-embossed, the antique plate,The lordly mansion, and the fair estate!O! who can rest—who taste the sweets of life,When sires debauch the son's too greedy wife;When males to males, abjuring shame, are wed,125And beardless boys pollute the nuptial bed!No:Indignation, kindling as she views,Shall, in each breast, a generous warmth infuse,And pour, in Nature and the Nine's despite,Such strains as I, or Cluvienus, write!130E'er since Deucalion, while, on every side,The bursting clouds upraised the whelming tide,Reached, in his little skiff, the forked hill,And sought, at Themis' shrine, the Immortals' will;When softening stones grew warm with gradual life,135And Pyrrha brought each male a virgin wife;Whatever, passions have the soul possest,Whatever wild desires inflamed the breast,Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Love, Hatred, Transport, Rage,Shall form the motley subject of my page.140And when could Satire boast so fair a field?Say, when did Vice a richer harvest yield?When did fell Avarice so engross the mind?Or when the lust of play so curse mankind?—No longer, now, the pocket's stores supply145The boundless charges of the desperate die:The chest is staked!—muttering the steward stands,And scarce resigns it, at his lord's commands.Is it aSIMPLE MADNESS,—I would know,To venture countless thousands on a throw,150Yet want the soul, a single piece to spare,To clothe the slave, that shivering stands and bare!Who called, of old, so many seats his own,Or on seven sumptuous dishes supped alone?—Then plain and open was the cheerful feast,155And every client was a bidden guest;Now, at the gate, a paltry largess lies,And eager hands and tongues dispute the prize.But first (lest some false claimant should be found),The wary steward takes his anxious round,160And pries in every face; then calls aloud,"Come forth, ye great Dardanians, from the crowd!"For, mixed with us, e'en these besiege the door,And scramble for—the pittance of the poor!"Dispatch the Prætor first," the master cries,165"And next the Tribune." "No, not so;" repliesThe Freedman, bustling through, "first come is, still,First served; and I may claim my right, and will!—Though born a slave ('tis bootless to deny,What these bored ears betray to every eye),170On my own rents, in splendor, now I live,On five fair freeholds! Can thePURPLEgiveTheir Honors, more? when, to Laurentum sped,NobleCorvinus tends a flock for bread!—Pallas and the Licinii, in estate,175Must yield to me: let, then, the Tribunes wait."Yes, let them wait! thine, Riches, be the field!—It is not meet, that he to Honor yield,Tosacred Honor, who, with whitened feet,Was hawked for sale, so lately, through the street.180O gold! though Rome beholds no altars flame,No temples rise to thy pernicious name,Such as to Victory, Virtue, Faith are reared,And Concord, where the clamorous stork is heard,Yet is thy full divinity confest,185Thy shrine established here, in every breast.But while, with anxious eyes, the great exploreHow much the dole augments their annual store,What misery must the poor dependent dread,Whom this small pittance clothed, and lodged, and fed?190Wedged in thick ranks before the donor's gates,A phalanx firm, of chairs and litters, waits:Thither one husband, at the risk of life,Hurries his teeming, or his bedrid wife;Another, practiced in the gainful art,195With deeper cunning tops the beggar's part;Plants at his side a close and empty chair:"My Galla, master;—give me Galla's share.""Galla!" the porter cries; "let her look out.""Sir, she's asleep. Nay, give me;—can you doubt!"200What rare pursuits employ the clients' day!First to the patron's door their court to pay,Next to the forum, to support his cause,Thence to Apollo, learned in the laws,And the triumphal statues; where some Jew,205Some mongrel Arab, some—I know not who—Has impudently dared a niche to seize,Fit to be p—— against, or—what you please.—Returning home, he drops them at the gate:And now the weary clients, wise too late,210Resign their hopes, and supperless retire,To spend the paltry dole in herbs and fire.Meanwhile, their patron sees his palace storedWith every dainty earth and sea afford:Stretched on th' unsocial couch, he rolls his eyes215O'er many an orb of matchless form and size,Selects the fairest to receive his plate,And, at one meal, devours a whole estate!—But who (for not a parasite is there)The selfishness of luxury can bear?220See! the lone glutton craves whole boars! a beastDesigned, by nature, for the social feast!—But speedy wrath o'ertakes him: gorged with food,And swollen and fretted by the peacock crude,He seeks the bath, his feverish pulse to still,225Hence sudden death, and age without a Will!Swift flies the tale, by witty spleen increast,And furnishes a laugh at every feast;The laugh, his friends not undelighted hear,And, fallen from all their hopes, insult his bier.230Nothingis left,NOTHING, for future timesTo add to the full catalogue of crimes;The baffled sons must feel the same desires,And act the same mad follies, as their sires.Vice has attained its zenith:—Then set sail,235Spread all thy canvas, Satire, to the gale—But where the powers so vast a theme requires?Where the plain times, the simple, when our siresEnjoyed a freedom, which I dare not name,And gave the public sin to public shame,240Heedless who smiled or frowned?—Now, let a lineBut glance at Tigellinus, and you shine,Chained to a stake, in pitchy robes, and light,Lugubrious torch, the deepening shades of night;Or, writhing on a hook, are dragged around,245And, with your mangled members, plow the ground.What, shall the wretch of hard, unpitying soul,Who forTHREEuncles mixed the deadly bowl,Propped on his plumy couch, that all may see,Tower by triumphant, and look down on me!250Yes; let him look. He comes! avoid his way,And on your lip your cautious finger lay;Crowds of informers linger in his rear,And, if a whisper pass, will overhear.Bring, if you please, Æneas on the stage,255Fierce war, with the Rutulian prince, to wage;Subdue the stern Achilles; and once more,With Hylas! Hylas! fill the echoing shore;Harmless, nay pleasant, shall the tale be found,It bares no ulcer, and it probes no wound.260But when Lucilius, fired with virtuous rage,Waves his keen falchion o'er a guilty age,The conscious villain shudders at his sin,And burning blushes speak the pangs within;Cold drops of sweat from every member roll,265And growing terrors harrow up his soul:Then tears of shame, and dire revenge succeed—Say, have you pondered well the advent'rous deed?Now—ere the trumpet sounds—your strength debate;The soldier, once engaged, repents too late.270J. Yet IMUSTwrite: and since these iron times,From living knaves preclude my angry rhymes,I point my pen against the guilty dead,And pour its gall on each obnoxious head.
Oh! heavens—whileTHUShoarse Codrus perseveresTo force his Theseid on my tortured ears,Shall I notONCEattempt "to quit the score,"Alwaysan auditor, and nothing more!Forever at my side, shall this rehearse5His elegiac, that his comic verse,Unpunished? shall huge Telephus, at will,The livelong day consume, or, huger still,Orestes, closely written, written, too,Down the broad marge, and yet—no end in view!10Away, away!—None knows his home so wellAs I the grove of Mars, and Vulcan's cell,Fast by the Æolian rocks!—How the Winds roar,How ghosts are tortured on the Stygian shore,How Jason stole the golden fleece, and how15The Centaurs fought on Othrys' shaggy brow;The walks of Fronto echo round and round—The columns trembling with the eternal sound,While high and low, as the mad fit invades,Bellow the same trite nonsense through the shades.20I, too, can write—and, at a pedant's frown,Oncepoured my fustian rhetoric on the town:And idly proved that Sylla, far from power,Had passed, unknown to fear, the tranquil hour:—Now I resume my pen; for, since we meet25Such swarms of desperate bards in every street,'Tis vicious clemency to spare the oil,And hapless paper they are sure to spoil.But why I choose, adventurous, to retraceThe Auruncan's route, and, in the arduous race,30Follow his burning wheels, attentive hear,If leisure serve, and truth be worth your ear.When the soft eunuch weds, and the bold fairTilts at the Tuscan boar, with bosom bare;When one that oft, since manhood first appeared,35Has trimmed the exuberance of this sounding beard,In wealth outvies the senate; when a vile,A slave-born, slave-bred, vagabond of Nile,Crispinus, while he gathers now, now flingsHis purple open, fans his summer rings;40And, as his fingers sweat beneath the freight,Cries, "Save me—from a gem of greater weight!"'Tis hard a less adventurous course to choose,While folly plagues, and vice inflames the Muse.For who so slow of heart, so dull of brain,45So patient of the town, as to containHis bursting spleen, when, full before his eye,Swings the new chair of lawyer Matho by,Crammed with himself! then, with no less parade,That caitiff's, who his noble friend betrayed,50Who now, in fancy, prostrate greatness tears,And preys on what the imperial vulture spares!Whom Massa dreads, Latinus, trembling, pliesWith a fair wife, and anxious Carus buys!When those supplant thee in thy dearest rights,55Who earn rich legacies by active nights;Those, whom (the shortest, surest way to rise)The widow's itch advances to the skies!—Not that an equal rank her minions hold;Just to their various powers, she metes her gold,60And Proculeius mourns his scanty share,While Gillo triumphs, hers and nature's heir!And let him triumph! 'tis the price of blood:While, thus defrauded of the generous flood.The color flies his cheek, as though he prest,65With unsuspecting foot, a serpent's crest;Or stood engaged at Lyons to declaim,Where the least peril is the loss of fame.Ye gods!—what rage, what phrensy fires my brain,When that false guardian, with his splendid train,70Crowds the long street, and leaves his orphan chargeTo prostitution, and the world at large!When, by a juggling sentence damned in vain,(For who, that holds the plunder, heeds the pain?)Marius to wine devotes his morning hours,75And laughs, in exile, at the offended Powers:While, sighing o'er the victory she won,The Province finds herself but more undone!And shall I feel, that crimes like these requireThe avenging strains of the Venusian lyre,80And not pursue them? I shall I still repeatThe legendary tales of Troy and Crete;The toils of Hercules, the horses fedOn human flesh by savage Diomed,The lowing labyrinth, the builder's flight,85And the rash boy, hurl'd from his airy height?When, what the law forbids the wife to heir,The adulterer's Will may to the wittol bear,Who gave, with wand'ring eye and vacant face,A tacit sanction to his own disgrace;90And, while at every turn a look he stole,Snored, unsuspected, o'er the treacherous bowl!When he presumes to ask a troop's command,Who spent on horses all his father's land,While, proud the experienced driver to display,95His glowing wheels smoked o'er the Appian way:—For there our young Automedon first triedHis powers, there loved the rapid car to guide;While great Pelides sought superior bliss,And toyed and wantoned with his master-miss.100Who would not, reckless of the swarm he meets,Fill his wide tablets, in the public streets,With angry verse? when, through the midday glare,Borne by six slaves, and in an open chair,The forger comes, who owes this blaze of state105To a wet seal and a fictitious date;Comes, like the soft Mæcenas, lolling by,And impudently braves the public eye!Or the rich dame, who stanched her husband's thirstWith generous wine, but—drugged it deeply first!110And now, more dext'rous than Locusta, showsHer country friends the beverage to compose,And, midst the curses of the indignant throng,Bear, in broad day, the spotted corpse along.Dare nobly, man! if greatness be thy aim,115And practice what may chains and exile claim:On Guilt's broad base thy towering fortunes raise,For virtue starves on—universal praise!While crimes, in scorn of niggard fate, affordThe ivory couches, and the citron board,120The goblet high-embossed, the antique plate,The lordly mansion, and the fair estate!O! who can rest—who taste the sweets of life,When sires debauch the son's too greedy wife;When males to males, abjuring shame, are wed,125And beardless boys pollute the nuptial bed!No:Indignation, kindling as she views,Shall, in each breast, a generous warmth infuse,And pour, in Nature and the Nine's despite,Such strains as I, or Cluvienus, write!130E'er since Deucalion, while, on every side,The bursting clouds upraised the whelming tide,Reached, in his little skiff, the forked hill,And sought, at Themis' shrine, the Immortals' will;When softening stones grew warm with gradual life,135And Pyrrha brought each male a virgin wife;Whatever, passions have the soul possest,Whatever wild desires inflamed the breast,Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Love, Hatred, Transport, Rage,Shall form the motley subject of my page.140And when could Satire boast so fair a field?Say, when did Vice a richer harvest yield?When did fell Avarice so engross the mind?Or when the lust of play so curse mankind?—No longer, now, the pocket's stores supply145The boundless charges of the desperate die:The chest is staked!—muttering the steward stands,And scarce resigns it, at his lord's commands.Is it aSIMPLE MADNESS,—I would know,To venture countless thousands on a throw,150Yet want the soul, a single piece to spare,To clothe the slave, that shivering stands and bare!Who called, of old, so many seats his own,Or on seven sumptuous dishes supped alone?—Then plain and open was the cheerful feast,155And every client was a bidden guest;Now, at the gate, a paltry largess lies,And eager hands and tongues dispute the prize.But first (lest some false claimant should be found),The wary steward takes his anxious round,160And pries in every face; then calls aloud,"Come forth, ye great Dardanians, from the crowd!"For, mixed with us, e'en these besiege the door,And scramble for—the pittance of the poor!"Dispatch the Prætor first," the master cries,165"And next the Tribune." "No, not so;" repliesThe Freedman, bustling through, "first come is, still,First served; and I may claim my right, and will!—Though born a slave ('tis bootless to deny,What these bored ears betray to every eye),170On my own rents, in splendor, now I live,On five fair freeholds! Can thePURPLEgiveTheir Honors, more? when, to Laurentum sped,NobleCorvinus tends a flock for bread!—Pallas and the Licinii, in estate,175Must yield to me: let, then, the Tribunes wait."Yes, let them wait! thine, Riches, be the field!—It is not meet, that he to Honor yield,Tosacred Honor, who, with whitened feet,Was hawked for sale, so lately, through the street.180O gold! though Rome beholds no altars flame,No temples rise to thy pernicious name,Such as to Victory, Virtue, Faith are reared,And Concord, where the clamorous stork is heard,Yet is thy full divinity confest,185Thy shrine established here, in every breast.But while, with anxious eyes, the great exploreHow much the dole augments their annual store,What misery must the poor dependent dread,Whom this small pittance clothed, and lodged, and fed?190Wedged in thick ranks before the donor's gates,A phalanx firm, of chairs and litters, waits:Thither one husband, at the risk of life,Hurries his teeming, or his bedrid wife;Another, practiced in the gainful art,195With deeper cunning tops the beggar's part;Plants at his side a close and empty chair:"My Galla, master;—give me Galla's share.""Galla!" the porter cries; "let her look out.""Sir, she's asleep. Nay, give me;—can you doubt!"200What rare pursuits employ the clients' day!First to the patron's door their court to pay,Next to the forum, to support his cause,Thence to Apollo, learned in the laws,And the triumphal statues; where some Jew,205Some mongrel Arab, some—I know not who—Has impudently dared a niche to seize,Fit to be p—— against, or—what you please.—Returning home, he drops them at the gate:And now the weary clients, wise too late,210Resign their hopes, and supperless retire,To spend the paltry dole in herbs and fire.Meanwhile, their patron sees his palace storedWith every dainty earth and sea afford:Stretched on th' unsocial couch, he rolls his eyes215O'er many an orb of matchless form and size,Selects the fairest to receive his plate,And, at one meal, devours a whole estate!—But who (for not a parasite is there)The selfishness of luxury can bear?220See! the lone glutton craves whole boars! a beastDesigned, by nature, for the social feast!—But speedy wrath o'ertakes him: gorged with food,And swollen and fretted by the peacock crude,He seeks the bath, his feverish pulse to still,225Hence sudden death, and age without a Will!Swift flies the tale, by witty spleen increast,And furnishes a laugh at every feast;The laugh, his friends not undelighted hear,And, fallen from all their hopes, insult his bier.230Nothingis left,NOTHING, for future timesTo add to the full catalogue of crimes;The baffled sons must feel the same desires,And act the same mad follies, as their sires.Vice has attained its zenith:—Then set sail,235Spread all thy canvas, Satire, to the gale—But where the powers so vast a theme requires?Where the plain times, the simple, when our siresEnjoyed a freedom, which I dare not name,And gave the public sin to public shame,240Heedless who smiled or frowned?—Now, let a lineBut glance at Tigellinus, and you shine,Chained to a stake, in pitchy robes, and light,Lugubrious torch, the deepening shades of night;Or, writhing on a hook, are dragged around,245And, with your mangled members, plow the ground.What, shall the wretch of hard, unpitying soul,Who forTHREEuncles mixed the deadly bowl,Propped on his plumy couch, that all may see,Tower by triumphant, and look down on me!250Yes; let him look. He comes! avoid his way,And on your lip your cautious finger lay;Crowds of informers linger in his rear,And, if a whisper pass, will overhear.Bring, if you please, Æneas on the stage,255Fierce war, with the Rutulian prince, to wage;Subdue the stern Achilles; and once more,With Hylas! Hylas! fill the echoing shore;Harmless, nay pleasant, shall the tale be found,It bares no ulcer, and it probes no wound.260But when Lucilius, fired with virtuous rage,Waves his keen falchion o'er a guilty age,The conscious villain shudders at his sin,And burning blushes speak the pangs within;Cold drops of sweat from every member roll,265And growing terrors harrow up his soul:Then tears of shame, and dire revenge succeed—Say, have you pondered well the advent'rous deed?Now—ere the trumpet sounds—your strength debate;The soldier, once engaged, repents too late.270J. Yet IMUSTwrite: and since these iron times,From living knaves preclude my angry rhymes,I point my pen against the guilty dead,And pour its gall on each obnoxious head.
O foran eagle's wings! that I might flyTo the bleak regions of the polar sky,When from their lips the cant of virtue falls,Who preach like Curii, live like Bacchanals!Devoid of knowledge, as of worth, they thrust,5In every nook, some philosophic bust;For he, among them, counts himself most wise,Who most old sages of the sculptor buys;Sets most true Zenos, or Cleanthes' heads,To guard the volumes which he—never reads!10Trust not to outward show: in every streetObscenity, in formal garb, we meet.—And dost thou, hypocrite, our lusts arraign,Thou! of Socratic catamites the drain!Nature thy rough and shaggy limbs designed15To mark a stern, inexorable mind;But all's so smooth below!—"the surgeon smiles,And scarcely can, for laughter, lance the piles."Gravely demure, in wisdom's awful chair,His beetling eyebrows longer than his hair,20In solemn state, the affected Stoic sits,And drops his maxims on the crowd by fits!—Yon Peribomius, whose emaciate air,And tottering gait, his foul disease declare,With patience I can view; he braves disgrace,25Not skulks behind a sanctimonious face:Him may his folly, or his fate excuse—But whip me those, who Virtue's name abuse,And, soiled with all the vices of the times,Thunder damnation on their neighbor's crimes!30"Shrink at the pathic Sextus! Can I be,Whate'er my guilt, more infamous than he?"Varillus cries: Let those who tread aright,Deride the halt; the swarthy Moor, the white;This we might bear; but who his spleen could rein,35And hear the Gracchi of the mob complain?Who would not mingle earth, and sea, and sky,Should Milo murder, Verres theft, decry,Clodius adultery? Catiline accuseCethegus, Lentulus, of factious views,40Or Sylla's pupils, soil'd with deeper guilt,Arraign their master for the blood he spilt?Yet have we seen—O shame, for ever fled!—A barbarous judge start from the incestuous bed,And, with stern voice, those rigid laws awake,45At which the powers of War and Beauty quake,What time his drugs were speeding to the tombThe abortive fruit of Julia's teeming womb!—And must not, now, the most debased and vile,Hear these false Scauri with a scornful smile;50And, while the hypocrites their crimes arraign,Turn, like the trampled asp, and bite again!They must; they do:—When late, amid the crowd,A zealot of the sect exclaimed aloud,Where sleeps the Julian law? Laronia eyed55The scowling Stoicide, and taunting, cried,"Blest be the age that such a censor gave,The groaning world to chasten and to save!Blush, Rome, and from the sink of sin arise—Lo! athird Cato, sent thee from the skies!60But—tell me yet—What shop the balm supplied,Which, from your brawny neck and bristly hide,Such potent fragrance breathes? nor let it shameYour gravity, to show the vender's name."If ancient laws must reassume their course,65Give the Scantinian first its proper force.Look, look at home; the ways of men explore—Our faults, you say, are many; theirs are more:Yet safe from censure, as from fear, they stand,A firm, compact, impenetrable band!70We know your monstrous leagues; but can you findOne proof in us, of this detested kind?Pure days and nights with Cluvia, Flora led,And Tedia chastely shared Catulla's bed;While Hippo's brutal itch both sexes tried,75And proved, by turns, the bridegroom and the bride!We ne'er, with misspent zeal, explore the laws,We throng no forum, and we plead no cause:Some few, perhaps, may wrestle, some be fed,To aid their breath, with strong athletic bread.80Ye fling the shuttle with a female grace,And spin more subtly than Arachne's race;Cowered o'er your labor, like the squalid jade,That plies the distaff, to a block belayed."Why Hister's freedman heired his wealth, and why85His consort, while he lived, was bribed so high,I spare to tell; the wife that, swayed by gain,Can make a third in bed, and near complain,Must ever thrive: on secrets jewels wait:Then wed, my girls; be silent, and—be great!"90"Yet these are they, who, fierce in Virtue's cause,Consign our venial frailties to the laws;And, while with partial aim their censure moves,Acquit the vultures, and condemn the doves!"She paused: the unmanly zealots felt the sway95Of conscious truth, and slunk, abashed, away.But how shall vice be shamed, when, loosely drest,In the light texture of a cobweb vest,You, Creticus, amid the indignant crowdAt Procla and Pollinea rail aloud?—100These, he rejoins, are "daughters of the game."Strike, then;—yet know, though lost to honest fame,The wantons would reject a veil so thin,And blush, while suffering, to display their skin."But Sirius glows; I burn." Then, quit your dress;105'Twill thus be madness, and the scandal less.O! could our legions, with fresh laurels crowned,And smarting still from many a glorious wound,Our rustic mountaineers (the plow laid by,For city cares), a judge so drest descry,110What thoughts would rise? Lo! robes which misbecomeA witness, deck the awful bench of Rome;And Creticus, stern champion of the laws,Gleams through the tissue of pellucid gauze!Anon from you, as from its fountain-head,115Wide and more wide the flagrant pest will spread;As swine take measles from distempered swine,And one infected grape pollutes the vine.Yes, Rome shall see you, lewdlier clad, erewhile,(For none become, at once, completely vile,)120In some opprobrious den of shame, combinedWith that vile herd, the horror of their kind,Who twine gay fillets round the forehead; deckWith strings of orient pearl the breast and neck;Soothe theGood Goddesswith large bowls of wine,125And the soft belly of a pregnant swine.—No female, foul perversion! dares appear,For males, and males alone, officiate here;"Far hence," they cry, "unholy sex, retire,Our purer rites no lowing horn require!"130—At Athens thus, involved in thickest gloom,Cotytto's priests her secret torch illume;And to such orgies give the lustful night,That e'en Cotytto sickens at the sight.With tiring-pins, these spread the sooty dye,135Arch the full brow, and tinge the trembling eye;Those bind their flowing locks in cawls of gold,Swill from huge glasses of immodest mould,Light, filmy robes of azure net-work wear;And, by their Juno, hark! the attendants swear!140This grasps a mirror—pathic Otho's boast(Auruncan Actor's spoil), where, while his host,With shouts, the signal of the fight required,He viewed his mailed form; viewed, and admired!Lo, a new subject for the historic page,145AMIRROR, midst the arms of civil rage!—To murder Galba, was—a general's part!A stern republican's—to dress with art!The empire of the world in arms to seek,And spread—a softening poultice o'er the cheek!150Preposterous vanity! and never seen,Or in the Assyrian or Egyptian queen,Though one in arms near old Euphrates stood,And one the doubtful fight at Actium viewed.Nor reverence for the table here is found;155But brutal mirth and jests obscene go round:They lisp, they squeal, and the rank language useOf Cybele's lewd votaries, or the stews:Some wild enthusiast, silvered o'er with age,Yet fired by lust's ungovernable rage,160Of most insatiate throat, is named the priest,And sits fit umpire of th' unhallowed feast;Why pause they here? Phrygians long since in heart,Whence this delay to lop a useless part?Gracchus admired a cornet or a fife,165And, with an ample dower, became his wife.The contract signed, the wonted bliss implored,A costly supper decks the nuptial board;And the new bride, amid the wondering room,Lies in the bosom of the accursed groom!—170Say now, ye nobles, claims this monstrous deed,The Aruspex or the Censor? Can we needMore expiations?—sacrifices?—vows?For calving women, or for lambing cows?The lusty priest, whose limbs dissolved with heat,175What time he danced beneath the Ancilia's weight,Now flings the ensigns of his god aside,And takes the stole and flammea of a bride!Father of Rome! from what pernicious clime,Did Latian swains derive so foul a crime?180Tell where the poisonous nettle first arose,Whose baneful juice through all thy offspring flows.Behold! a man for rank and power renowned,Marries a man!—and yet, with thundering sound,Thy brazen helmet shakes not! earth yet stands,185Fixed on its base, nor feels thy wrathful hands!Is thy arm shortened? Raise to Jove thy prayer—But Rome no longer knows thy guardian care;Quit, then, the charge to some severer Power,Of strength to punish in the obnoxious hour.190"To-morrow, with the dawn, I must attendIn yonder valley!" Why so soon? "A friendTakesHIMa husband there, and bids a few"—Few, yet: but wait awhile; and we shall viewSuch contracts formed without or shame or fear,195And entered onTHE RECORDS OF THE YEAR!Meanwhile, one pang these passive monsters find,One ceaseless pang, that preys upon the mind;They can not shift their sex, and pregnant proveWith the dear pledges of a husband's love:200Wisely confined by Nature's steady plan,Which counteracts the wild desires of man.For them, no drugs prolific powers retain,And the Luperci strike their palms in vain.And yet these prodigies of vice appear,205Less monstrous, Gracchus, than the net and spear,With which equipped, you urged the unequal fight,And fled, dishonored, in a nation's sight;Though nobler far than each illustrious nameThat thronged the pit (spectators of your shame),210Nay, than the Prætor, who theShowsupplied,At which your base dexterity was tried.That angry Justice formed a dreadful hell,That ghosts in subterraneous regions dwell,That hateful Styx his sable current rolls,215And Charon ferries o'er unbodied souls,Are now as tales or idle fables prized;By children questioned, and by men despised:Yet these, do thou believe. What thoughts, declare,Ye Scipios, once the thunderbolts of war!220Fabricius, Curius, great Camillus' ghost!Ye valiant Fabii, in yourselves an host!Ye dauntless youths at fatal Cannæ slain!Spirits of many a brave and bloody plain!What thoughts are yours, whene'er, with feet unblest,225AnUNBELIEVING SHADEinvades your rest?—Ye fly, to expiate the blasting view;}Fling on the pine-tree torch the sulphur blue,}And from the dripping bay, dash round the lustral dew.}And yet—to these abodes we all must come,230Believe, or not, these are our final home;Though now Iërne tremble at our sway,And Britain, boastful of her length of day;Though the blue Orcades receive our chain,And isles that slumber in the frozen main.235But why of conquest boast? the conquered climesAre free, O Rome, from thy detested crimes.No;—one Armenian all our youth outgoes,And, with cursed fires, for a base tribune glows.True: such thy power, Example! He was brought240An hostage hither, and the infection caught.—O, bid the striplings flee! for sensual artHere lurks to snare the unsuspecting heart;Then farewell, simple nature!—Pleased no more,With knives, whips, bridles (all they prized of yore),245Thus taught, and thus debauched, they hasten home,To spread the morals of Imperial Rome!
O foran eagle's wings! that I might flyTo the bleak regions of the polar sky,When from their lips the cant of virtue falls,Who preach like Curii, live like Bacchanals!Devoid of knowledge, as of worth, they thrust,5In every nook, some philosophic bust;For he, among them, counts himself most wise,Who most old sages of the sculptor buys;Sets most true Zenos, or Cleanthes' heads,To guard the volumes which he—never reads!10Trust not to outward show: in every streetObscenity, in formal garb, we meet.—And dost thou, hypocrite, our lusts arraign,Thou! of Socratic catamites the drain!Nature thy rough and shaggy limbs designed15To mark a stern, inexorable mind;But all's so smooth below!—"the surgeon smiles,And scarcely can, for laughter, lance the piles."Gravely demure, in wisdom's awful chair,His beetling eyebrows longer than his hair,20In solemn state, the affected Stoic sits,And drops his maxims on the crowd by fits!—Yon Peribomius, whose emaciate air,And tottering gait, his foul disease declare,With patience I can view; he braves disgrace,25Not skulks behind a sanctimonious face:Him may his folly, or his fate excuse—But whip me those, who Virtue's name abuse,And, soiled with all the vices of the times,Thunder damnation on their neighbor's crimes!30"Shrink at the pathic Sextus! Can I be,Whate'er my guilt, more infamous than he?"Varillus cries: Let those who tread aright,Deride the halt; the swarthy Moor, the white;This we might bear; but who his spleen could rein,35And hear the Gracchi of the mob complain?Who would not mingle earth, and sea, and sky,Should Milo murder, Verres theft, decry,Clodius adultery? Catiline accuseCethegus, Lentulus, of factious views,40Or Sylla's pupils, soil'd with deeper guilt,Arraign their master for the blood he spilt?Yet have we seen—O shame, for ever fled!—A barbarous judge start from the incestuous bed,And, with stern voice, those rigid laws awake,45At which the powers of War and Beauty quake,What time his drugs were speeding to the tombThe abortive fruit of Julia's teeming womb!—And must not, now, the most debased and vile,Hear these false Scauri with a scornful smile;50And, while the hypocrites their crimes arraign,Turn, like the trampled asp, and bite again!They must; they do:—When late, amid the crowd,A zealot of the sect exclaimed aloud,Where sleeps the Julian law? Laronia eyed55The scowling Stoicide, and taunting, cried,"Blest be the age that such a censor gave,The groaning world to chasten and to save!Blush, Rome, and from the sink of sin arise—Lo! athird Cato, sent thee from the skies!60But—tell me yet—What shop the balm supplied,Which, from your brawny neck and bristly hide,Such potent fragrance breathes? nor let it shameYour gravity, to show the vender's name."If ancient laws must reassume their course,65Give the Scantinian first its proper force.Look, look at home; the ways of men explore—Our faults, you say, are many; theirs are more:Yet safe from censure, as from fear, they stand,A firm, compact, impenetrable band!70We know your monstrous leagues; but can you findOne proof in us, of this detested kind?Pure days and nights with Cluvia, Flora led,And Tedia chastely shared Catulla's bed;While Hippo's brutal itch both sexes tried,75And proved, by turns, the bridegroom and the bride!We ne'er, with misspent zeal, explore the laws,We throng no forum, and we plead no cause:Some few, perhaps, may wrestle, some be fed,To aid their breath, with strong athletic bread.80Ye fling the shuttle with a female grace,And spin more subtly than Arachne's race;Cowered o'er your labor, like the squalid jade,That plies the distaff, to a block belayed."Why Hister's freedman heired his wealth, and why85His consort, while he lived, was bribed so high,I spare to tell; the wife that, swayed by gain,Can make a third in bed, and near complain,Must ever thrive: on secrets jewels wait:Then wed, my girls; be silent, and—be great!"90"Yet these are they, who, fierce in Virtue's cause,Consign our venial frailties to the laws;And, while with partial aim their censure moves,Acquit the vultures, and condemn the doves!"She paused: the unmanly zealots felt the sway95Of conscious truth, and slunk, abashed, away.But how shall vice be shamed, when, loosely drest,In the light texture of a cobweb vest,You, Creticus, amid the indignant crowdAt Procla and Pollinea rail aloud?—100These, he rejoins, are "daughters of the game."Strike, then;—yet know, though lost to honest fame,The wantons would reject a veil so thin,And blush, while suffering, to display their skin."But Sirius glows; I burn." Then, quit your dress;105'Twill thus be madness, and the scandal less.O! could our legions, with fresh laurels crowned,And smarting still from many a glorious wound,Our rustic mountaineers (the plow laid by,For city cares), a judge so drest descry,110What thoughts would rise? Lo! robes which misbecomeA witness, deck the awful bench of Rome;And Creticus, stern champion of the laws,Gleams through the tissue of pellucid gauze!Anon from you, as from its fountain-head,115Wide and more wide the flagrant pest will spread;As swine take measles from distempered swine,And one infected grape pollutes the vine.Yes, Rome shall see you, lewdlier clad, erewhile,(For none become, at once, completely vile,)120In some opprobrious den of shame, combinedWith that vile herd, the horror of their kind,Who twine gay fillets round the forehead; deckWith strings of orient pearl the breast and neck;Soothe theGood Goddesswith large bowls of wine,125And the soft belly of a pregnant swine.—No female, foul perversion! dares appear,For males, and males alone, officiate here;"Far hence," they cry, "unholy sex, retire,Our purer rites no lowing horn require!"130—At Athens thus, involved in thickest gloom,Cotytto's priests her secret torch illume;And to such orgies give the lustful night,That e'en Cotytto sickens at the sight.With tiring-pins, these spread the sooty dye,135Arch the full brow, and tinge the trembling eye;Those bind their flowing locks in cawls of gold,Swill from huge glasses of immodest mould,Light, filmy robes of azure net-work wear;And, by their Juno, hark! the attendants swear!140This grasps a mirror—pathic Otho's boast(Auruncan Actor's spoil), where, while his host,With shouts, the signal of the fight required,He viewed his mailed form; viewed, and admired!Lo, a new subject for the historic page,145AMIRROR, midst the arms of civil rage!—To murder Galba, was—a general's part!A stern republican's—to dress with art!The empire of the world in arms to seek,And spread—a softening poultice o'er the cheek!150Preposterous vanity! and never seen,Or in the Assyrian or Egyptian queen,Though one in arms near old Euphrates stood,And one the doubtful fight at Actium viewed.Nor reverence for the table here is found;155But brutal mirth and jests obscene go round:They lisp, they squeal, and the rank language useOf Cybele's lewd votaries, or the stews:Some wild enthusiast, silvered o'er with age,Yet fired by lust's ungovernable rage,160Of most insatiate throat, is named the priest,And sits fit umpire of th' unhallowed feast;Why pause they here? Phrygians long since in heart,Whence this delay to lop a useless part?Gracchus admired a cornet or a fife,165And, with an ample dower, became his wife.The contract signed, the wonted bliss implored,A costly supper decks the nuptial board;And the new bride, amid the wondering room,Lies in the bosom of the accursed groom!—170Say now, ye nobles, claims this monstrous deed,The Aruspex or the Censor? Can we needMore expiations?—sacrifices?—vows?For calving women, or for lambing cows?The lusty priest, whose limbs dissolved with heat,175What time he danced beneath the Ancilia's weight,Now flings the ensigns of his god aside,And takes the stole and flammea of a bride!Father of Rome! from what pernicious clime,Did Latian swains derive so foul a crime?180Tell where the poisonous nettle first arose,Whose baneful juice through all thy offspring flows.Behold! a man for rank and power renowned,Marries a man!—and yet, with thundering sound,Thy brazen helmet shakes not! earth yet stands,185Fixed on its base, nor feels thy wrathful hands!Is thy arm shortened? Raise to Jove thy prayer—But Rome no longer knows thy guardian care;Quit, then, the charge to some severer Power,Of strength to punish in the obnoxious hour.190"To-morrow, with the dawn, I must attendIn yonder valley!" Why so soon? "A friendTakesHIMa husband there, and bids a few"—Few, yet: but wait awhile; and we shall viewSuch contracts formed without or shame or fear,195And entered onTHE RECORDS OF THE YEAR!Meanwhile, one pang these passive monsters find,One ceaseless pang, that preys upon the mind;They can not shift their sex, and pregnant proveWith the dear pledges of a husband's love:200Wisely confined by Nature's steady plan,Which counteracts the wild desires of man.For them, no drugs prolific powers retain,And the Luperci strike their palms in vain.And yet these prodigies of vice appear,205Less monstrous, Gracchus, than the net and spear,With which equipped, you urged the unequal fight,And fled, dishonored, in a nation's sight;Though nobler far than each illustrious nameThat thronged the pit (spectators of your shame),210Nay, than the Prætor, who theShowsupplied,At which your base dexterity was tried.That angry Justice formed a dreadful hell,That ghosts in subterraneous regions dwell,That hateful Styx his sable current rolls,215And Charon ferries o'er unbodied souls,Are now as tales or idle fables prized;By children questioned, and by men despised:Yet these, do thou believe. What thoughts, declare,Ye Scipios, once the thunderbolts of war!220Fabricius, Curius, great Camillus' ghost!Ye valiant Fabii, in yourselves an host!Ye dauntless youths at fatal Cannæ slain!Spirits of many a brave and bloody plain!What thoughts are yours, whene'er, with feet unblest,225AnUNBELIEVING SHADEinvades your rest?—Ye fly, to expiate the blasting view;}Fling on the pine-tree torch the sulphur blue,}And from the dripping bay, dash round the lustral dew.}And yet—to these abodes we all must come,230Believe, or not, these are our final home;Though now Iërne tremble at our sway,And Britain, boastful of her length of day;Though the blue Orcades receive our chain,And isles that slumber in the frozen main.235But why of conquest boast? the conquered climesAre free, O Rome, from thy detested crimes.No;—one Armenian all our youth outgoes,And, with cursed fires, for a base tribune glows.True: such thy power, Example! He was brought240An hostage hither, and the infection caught.—O, bid the striplings flee! for sensual artHere lurks to snare the unsuspecting heart;Then farewell, simple nature!—Pleased no more,With knives, whips, bridles (all they prized of yore),245Thus taught, and thus debauched, they hasten home,To spread the morals of Imperial Rome!
Grieved though I am to see the man depart,Who long has shared, and still must share, my heart,Yet (when I call my better judgment home)I praise his purpose; to retire from Rome,And give, on Cumæ's solitary coast,5The Sibyl—one inhabitant to boast!Full on the road to Baiæ, Cumæ lies,And many a sweet retreat her shore supplies—Though I prefer ev'n Prochyta's bare strandTo the Suburra:—for, what desert land,10What wild, uncultured spot, can more affright,Than fires, wide blazing through the gloom of night,Houses, with ceaseless ruin, thundering down,And all the horrors of this hateful town?Where poets, while the dog-star glows, rehearse,15To gasping multitudes, their barbarous verse!Now had my friend, impatient to depart,Consigned his little all to one poor cart:For this, without the town he chose to wait;But stopped a moment at the Conduit-gate.—20Here Numa erst his nightly visits paid,And held high converse with the Egerian maid:Now the once-hallowed fountain, grove, and fane,Are let to Jews, a wretched, wandering train,Whose furniture's a basket filled with hay—25For every tree is forced a tax to pay;And while the heaven-born Nine in exile rove,The beggar rents their consecrated grove!Thence slowly winding down the vale, we viewThe Egerian grots—ah, how unlike the true!30Nymph of the Spring; more honored hadst thou been,If, free from art, an edge of living green,Thy bubbling fount had circumscribed alone,And marble ne'er profaned the native stone.Umbritius here his sullen silence broke,35And turned on Rome, indignant, as he spoke.Since virtue droops, he cried, without regard,And honest toil scarce hopes a poor reward;Since every morrow sees my means decay,And still makes less the little of to-day;40I go, where Dædalus, as poets sing,First checked his flight, and closed his weary wing:While something yet of health and strength remains,And yet no staff my faltering step sustains;While few gray hairs upon my head are seen,45And my old age is vigorous still, and green.Here, then, I bid my much-loved home farewell—Ah, mine no more!—there let Arturius dwell,And Catulus; knaves, who, in truth's despite,Can white to black transform, and black to white,50Build temples, furnish funerals, auctions hold,Farm rivers, ports, and scour the drains for gold!Oncethey were trumpeters, and always found,With strolling fencers, in their annual round,While their puffed cheeks, which every village knew,55Called to "high feats of arms" the rustic crew:Now they giveShowsthemselves; and, at the willOf the base rabble, raise the sign—to kill,Ambitious of their voice: then turn, once more,To their vile gains, and farm the common shore!60And why not every thing?—since Fortune throwsHer more peculiar smiles on such as those,Whene'er, to wanton merriment inclined,She lifts to thrones the dregs of human kind!But why, my friend, should I at Rome remain?65I can not teach my stubborn lips to feign;Nor, when I hear a great man's verses, smile,And beg a copy, if I think them vile.A sublunary wight, I have no skillTo read the stars; I neither can, nor will,70Presage a father's death; I never pried,In toads, for poison, nor—in aught beside.Others may aid the adulterer's vile design,And bear the insidious gift, and melting line,Seduction's agents! I such deeds detest;75And, honest, let no thief partake my breast.For this, without a friend, the world I quit;A palsied limb, for every use unfit.Who now is loved, but he whose conscious breastSwells with dark deeds, still, still to be supprest?80He pays, he owes, thee nothing (strictly just),Who gives an honest secret to thy trust;But, a dishonest!—there, he feels thy power,And buys thy friendship high from hour to hour.But let not all the wealth which Tagus pours85In Ocean's lap, not all his glittering stores,Be deemed a bribe, sufficient to requiteThe loss of peace by day, of sleep by night:—Oh take not, take not, what thy soul rejects,Nor sell the faith, which he, who buys, suspects!90The nation, by theGREAT, admired, carest,And hated, shunned byMe, above the rest,No longer, now, restrained by wounded pride,I haste to show (nor thou my warmth deride),I can not rule my spleen, and calmly see,95A Grecian capital, in Italy!Grecian? O no! with this vast sewer compared,The dregs of Greece are scarcely worth regard:Long since, the stream that wanton Syria lavesHas disembogued its filth in Tiber's waves,100Its language, arts; o'erwhelmed us with the scumOf Antioch's streets, its minstrel, harp, and drum.Hie to the Circus! ye who pant to proveA barbarous mistress, an outlandish love;Hie to the Circus! there, in crowds they stand,105Tires on their head, and timbrels in their hand.Thy rustic, Mars, the trechedipna wears,And on his breast, smeared with ceroma, bearsA paltry prize, well-pleased; while every land,Sicyon, and Amydos, and Alaband,110Tralles, and Samos, and a thousand more,Thrive on his indolence, and daily pourTheir starving myriads forth: hither they come,}And batten on the genial soil of Rome;}Minions, then lords, of every princely dome!}115A flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race,Of torrent tongue, and never-blushing face;A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,Which shifts to every form, and shines in all:Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,120Rope-dancer, conjurer, fiddler, and physician,All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts;And bid him mount the sky—the sky he mounts!You smile—was't a barbarian, then, that flew?No, 'twas a Greek! 'twas anAthenian, too!125—Bear with their state who will: for I disdainTo feed their upstart pride, or swell their train:Slaves, that in Syrian lighters stowed, so late,With figs and prunes (an inauspicious freight),Already see their faith preferred to mine,130And sit above me! and before me sign!—That on the Aventine I first drew air,And, from the womb, was nursed on Sabine fare,Avails me not! our birthright now is lost,And all our privilege, an empty boast!135For lo! where versed in every soothing art,The wily Greek assails his patron's heart,Finds in each dull harangue an air, a grace,And all Adonis in a Gorgon face;Admires the voice that grates upon the ear,140Like the shrill scream of amorous chanticleer;And equals the crane neck, and narrow chest,To Hercules, when, straining to his breastThe giant son of Earth, his every veinSwells with the toil, and more than mortal pain.145We too can cringe as low, and praise as warm,But flattery from the Greeks alone can charm.See! they step forth, and figure to the life,The naked nymph, the mistress, or the wife,So just, you view the very woman there,150And fancy all beneath the girdle bare!No longer now, the favorites of the stageBoast their exclusive power to charm the age:The happy art with them a nation shares,Greece is a theatre, where all are players.155For lo! their patron smiles,—they burst with mirth;He weeps—they droop, the saddest souls on earth;He calls for fire—they court the mantle's heat;'Tis warm, he cries—and they dissolve in sweat.Ill-matched!—secure of victory they start,160Who, taught from youth to play a borrowed part,Can, with a glance, the rising passion trace,And mould their own, to suit their patron's face;At deeds of shame their hands admiring raise,And mad debauchery's worst excesses praise.165Besides, no mound their raging lust restrains,All ties it breaks, all sanctity profanes;Wife, virgin-daughter, son unstained before—And, where these fail, they tempt the grandam hoar:They notice every word, haunt every ear,170Your secrets learn, and fix you theirs from fear.Turn to their schools:—yon gray professor see,Smeared with the sanguine stains of perfidy!That tutor most accursed his pupil sold!That Stoic sacrificed his friend to gold!175A true-born Grecian! littered on the coast,Where the Gorgonian hack a pinion lost.Hence, Romans, hence! no place for you remains,Where Diphilus, where Erimanthus reigns;Miscreants, who, faithful to their native art,180Admit no rival in a patron's heart:For let them fasten on his easy ear,And drop one hint, one secret slander there,Sucked from their country's venom, or their own,That instant they possess the man alone;185While we are spurned, contemptuous, from the door,Our long, long slavery thought upon no more.'Tis but a client lost!—and that, we find,Sits wondrous lightly on a patron's mind:And (not to flatter our poor pride, my friend)190What merit with the great can we pretend,Though, in our duty we prevent the day,And, darkling, run our humble court to pay;When the brisk prætor, long before, is gone,And hastening, with stern voice, his lictors on,195Lest his colleagues o'erpass him in the street,And first the rich and childless matrons greet,Alba and Modia, who impatient wait,And think the morning homage comes too late!Here freeborn youths wait the rich servant's call,200And, if they walk beside him, yield the wall;And wherefore? this, forsooth, can fling away,On one voluptuous night, a legion's pay,While those, when some Calvina, sweeping by,Inflames the fancy, check their roving eye,205And frugal of their scanty means, forbear,To tempt the wanton from her splendid chair.Produce, at Rome, your witness: let him boast,The sanctity of Berecynthia's host,Of Numa, or of him, whose zeal divine210Snatched pale Minerva from her blazing shrine:To search his rent-roll, first the bench prepares,His honesty employs their latest cares:What table does he keep, what slaves maintain,And what, they ask, and where, is his domain?215These weighty matters known, his faith they rate,And square his probity to his estate.The poor may swear by all the immortal Powers,By the Great Gods of Samothrace, and ours,His oaths are false, they cry; he scoffs at heaven,220And all its thunders; scoffs—and is forgiven!Add, that the wretch is still the theme of scorn,If the soiled cloak be patched, the gown o'erworn;If, through the bursting shoe, the foot be seen,Or the coarse seam tell where the rent has been.225O Poverty, thy thousand ills combined}Sink not so deep into the generous mind,}As the contempt and laughter of mankind!}"Up! up! these cushioned benches," Lectius cries,"Befit not your estates: for shame! arise."230For "shame!"—but you say well: the pander's heir,The spawn of bulks and stews, is seated there;The crier's spruce son, fresh from the fencer's school,And prompt the taste to settle and to rule.—So Otho fixed it, whose preposterous pride235First dared to chase us from their Honors' side.In these cursed walls, devote alone to gain,When do the poor a wealthy wife obtain?When are they named in Wills? when called to shareThe Ædile's council, and assist the chair?—240Long since should they have risen, thus slighted, spurned,And left their home, but—not to have returned!Depressed by indigence, the good and wise,In every clime, by painful efforts rise;Here, by more painful still, where scanty cheer,245Poor lodging, mean attendance—all is dear.In earthen-wareHEscorns, at Rome, to eat,Who, called abruptly to the Marsian's seat,From such, well pleased, would take his simple food,Nor blush to wear the cheap Venetian hood.250There's many a part of Italy, 'tis said,Where none assume the toga but the dead:There, when the toil foregone and annual play,Mark, from the rest, some high and solemn day,To theatres of turf the rustics throng,255Charmed with the farce that charmed their sires so long;While the pale infant, of the mask in dread,Hides, in his mother's breast, his little head.No modes of dress high birth distinguishTHERE;All ranks, all orders, the same habit wear,260And the dread Ædile's dignity is known,O sacred badge! by his white vest alone.ButHERE, beyond our power arrayed we go,In all the gay varieties of show;And when our purse supplies the charge no more,265Borrow, unblushing, from our neighbor's store:Such is the reigning vice; and so we flaunt,Proud in distress, and prodigal in want!Briefly, my friend, here all are slaves to gold,And words, and smiles, and every thing is sold.270What will you give for Cossus' nod? how highThe silent notice of Veiento buy?—One favorite youth is shaved, another shorn;And, while to Jove the precious spoil is borne,Clients are taxed for offerings, and, (yet more275To gall their patience), from their little store,Constrained to swell the minion's ample hoard,And bribe the page, for leave to bribe his lord.Who fears the crash of houses in retreat?At simple Gabii, bleak Præneste's seat,280Volsinium's craggy heights, embowered in wood,Or Tibur, beetling o'er prone Anio's flood?While half the city here by shores is staid,And feeble cramps, that lend a treacherous aid:For thus the stewards patch the riven wall,285Thus prop the mansion, tottering to its fall;Then bid the tenant court secure repose,While the pile nods to every blast that blows.O! may I live where no such fears molest,No midnight fires burst on my hour of rest!290For here 'tis terror all; mid the loud cryOf "water! water!" the scared neighbors fly,With all their haste can seize—the flames aspire,And the third floor is wrapt in smoke and fire,While you, unconscious, doze: Up, ho! and know,295The impetuous blaze which spreads dismay below,By swift degrees will reach the aerial cell,Where, crouching, underneath the tiles you dwell,Where your tame doves their golden couplets rear,"And you could no mischance, but drowning, fear!"300"Codrus had but one bed, and that too shortFor his short wife;" his goods, of every sort,Were else but few:—six little pipkins gracedHis cupboard head, a little can was placedOn a snug shelf beneath, and near it lay305A Chiron, of the same cheap marble—clay.And was this all? O no: he yet possestA few Greek books, shrined in an ancient chest,Where barbarous mice through many an inlet crept,And fed on heavenly numbers, while he slept.—310"Codrus, in short, had nothing." You say true;And yet poor Codrus lost that nothing too!One curse alone was wanting, to completeHis woes: that, cold and hungry, through the street,The wretch should beg, and, in the hour of need,315Find none to lodge, to clothe him, or to feed!But should the raging flames on grandeur prey,And low in dust Asturius' palace lay,The squalid matron sighs, the senate mourns,The pleaders cease, the judge the court adjourns;320All join to wail the city's hapless fate,And rail at fire with more than common hate.Lo! while it burns, the obsequious courtiers haste,With rich materials, to repair the waste:This, brings him marble, that, a finished piece,325The far-famed boast of Polyclete and Greece;This, ornaments, which graced of old the faneOf Asia's gods; that, figured plate and plain;This, cases, books, and busts the shelves to grace,And piles of coin his specie to replace—330So much the childless Persian swells his store,(Though deemed the richest of the rich before,)That all ascribe the flames to thirst of pelf,And swear, Asturius fired his house himself.O, had you, from the Circus, power to fly,335In many a halcyon village might you buySome elegant retreat, for what will, here,Scarce hire a gloomy dungeon through the year!There wells, by nature formed, which need no rope,No laboring arm, to crane their waters up,340Around your lawn their facile streams shall shower,And cheer the springing plant and opening flower.There live, delighted with the rustic's lot,And till, with your own hands, the little spot;The little spot shall yield you large amends,345And glad, with many a feast, your Samian friends.And, sure,—in any corner we can get,To call one lizard ours, is something yet!Flushed with a mass of indigested food,Which clogs the stomach and inflames the blood,350What crowds, with watching wearied and o'erprest,Curse the slow hours, and die for want of rest!For who can hope his languid lids to close,Where brawling taverns banish all repose?Sleep, to the rich alone, "his visits pays:"355And hence the seeds of many a dire disease.The carts loud rumbling through the narrow way,The drivers' clamors at each casual stay,From drowsy Drusus would his slumber take,And keep the calves of Proteus broad awake!360If business call, obsequious crowds divide.While o'er their heads the rich securely ride,By tall Illyrians borne, and read, or write,}Or (should the early hour to rest invite),}Close the soft litter, and enjoy the night.}365Yet reach they first the goal; while, by the throngElbowed and jostled, scarce we creep along;Sharp strokes from poles, tubs, rafters, doomed to feel;And plastered o'er with mud, from head to heel:While the rude soldier gores us as he goes,370Or marks, in blood, his progress on our toes!See, from the Dole, a vast tumultuous throng,Each followed by his kitchen, pours along!Huge pans, which Corbulo could scarce uprear,With steady neck a puny slave must bear,375And, lest amid the way the flames expire,Glide nimbly on, and gliding, fan the fire;Through the close press with sinuous efforts wind,And, piece by piece, leave his botched rags behind.Hark! groaning on, the unwieldy wagon spreads380Its cumbrous load, tremendous! o'er our heads,Projecting elm or pine, that nods on high,And threatens death to every passer by.Heavens! should the axle crack, which bears a weightOf huge Ligurian stone, and pour the freight385On the pale crowd beneath, what would remain,What joint, what bone, what atom of the slain?The body, with the soul, would vanish quite,Invisible as air, to mortal sight!—Meanwhile, unconscious of their fellow's fate,390At home, they heat the water, scour the plate,Arrange the strigils, fill the cruse with oil,And ply their several tasks with fruitless toil:For he who bore the dole, poor mangled ghost,Sits pale and trembling on the Stygian coast,395Scared at the horrors of the novel scene,At Charon's threatening voice, and scowling mien;Nor hopes a passage, thus abruptly hurled,Without his farthing, to the nether world.Pass we these fearful dangers, and survey400What other evils threat our nightly way.And first, behold the mansion's towering size,Where floors on floors to the tenth story rise;Whence heedless garreteers their potsherds throw,And crush the unwary wretch that walks below!405Clattering the storm descends from heights unknown.Plows up the street, and wounds the flinty stone!'Tis madness, dire improvidence of ill,To sup abroad, before you sign your Will;Since fate in ambush lies, and marks his prey,410From every wakeful window in the way:Pray, then—and count your humble prayer well sped,If pots be only—emptied on your head.The drunken bully, ere his man be slain,Frets through the night, and courts repose in vain;415And while the thirst of blood his bosom burns,From side to side, in restless anguish, turns,Like Peleus' son, when, quelled by Hector's hand,His loved Patroclus prest the Phrygian strand.There are, who murder as an opiate take,420And only when no brawls await them wake:Yet even these heroes, flushed with youth and wine,All contest with the purple robe decline;Securely give the lengthened train to pass,The sun-bright flambeaux, and the lamps of brass.—425Me, whom the moon, or candle's paler gleam,Whose wick I husband to the last extreme,Guides through the gloom, he braves, devoid of fear:The prelude to our doughty quarrel hear,If that be deemed a quarrel, where, heaven knows,430He only gives, and I receive, the blows!Across my path he strides, and bids meStand!I bow, obsequious to the dread command;What else remains, where madness, rage, combineWith youth, and strength superior far to mine?435"Whence come you, rogue?" he cries; "whose beans to-nightHave stuffed you thus? what cobbler clubbed his mite,For leeks and sheep's-head porridge? Dumb! quite dumb!Speak, or be kicked.—Yet, once again! your home?Where shall I find you? At what beggar's stand440(Temple, or bridge) whimp'ring with outstretched hand?"Whether I strive some humble plea to frame,Or steal in silence by, 'tis just the same;I'm beaten first, then dragged in rage away:Bound to the peace, or punished for the fray!445Mark here the boasted freedom of the poor!Beaten and bruised, that goodness to adore,Which, at their humble prayer, suspends its ire,And sends them home, with yet a bone entire!Nor this the worst; for when deep midnight reigns,450And bolts secure our doors, and massy chains,When noisy inns a transient silence keep,And harassed nature woos the balm of sleep,Then, thieves and murderers ply their dreadful trade;With stealthy steps our secret couch invade:—455Roused from the treacherous calm, aghast we start,And the fleshed sword—is buried in our heart!Hither from bogs, from rocks, and caves pursued(The Pontine marsh, and Gallinarian wood),The dark assassins flock, as to their home,460And fill with dire alarms the streets of Rome.Such countless multitudes our peace annoy,That bolts and shackles every forge employ,And cause so wide a waste, the country fearsA want of ore for mattocks, rakes, and shares.465O! happy were our sires, estranged from crimes;And happy, happy, were the good old times,Which saw, beneath their kings', their tribunes' reign,One cell the nation's criminals contain!Much could I add, more reasons could I cite,470If time were ours, to justify my flight;But see! the impatient team is moving on,The sun declining; and I must be gone:Long since, the driver murmured at my stay,And jerked his whip, to beckon me away.475Farewell, my friend! with this embrace we part!Cherish my memory ever in your heart;And when, from crowds and business, you repair,To breathe at your Aquinum freer air,Fail not to draw me from my loved retreat,480To Elvine Ceres, and Diana's seat:For your bleak hills my Cumæ I'll resign,And (if you blush not at such aid as mine)Come well equipped, to wage, in angry rhymes,Fierce war, with you, on follies and on crimes.485
Grieved though I am to see the man depart,Who long has shared, and still must share, my heart,Yet (when I call my better judgment home)I praise his purpose; to retire from Rome,And give, on Cumæ's solitary coast,5The Sibyl—one inhabitant to boast!Full on the road to Baiæ, Cumæ lies,And many a sweet retreat her shore supplies—Though I prefer ev'n Prochyta's bare strandTo the Suburra:—for, what desert land,10What wild, uncultured spot, can more affright,Than fires, wide blazing through the gloom of night,Houses, with ceaseless ruin, thundering down,And all the horrors of this hateful town?Where poets, while the dog-star glows, rehearse,15To gasping multitudes, their barbarous verse!Now had my friend, impatient to depart,Consigned his little all to one poor cart:For this, without the town he chose to wait;But stopped a moment at the Conduit-gate.—20Here Numa erst his nightly visits paid,And held high converse with the Egerian maid:Now the once-hallowed fountain, grove, and fane,Are let to Jews, a wretched, wandering train,Whose furniture's a basket filled with hay—25For every tree is forced a tax to pay;And while the heaven-born Nine in exile rove,The beggar rents their consecrated grove!Thence slowly winding down the vale, we viewThe Egerian grots—ah, how unlike the true!30Nymph of the Spring; more honored hadst thou been,If, free from art, an edge of living green,Thy bubbling fount had circumscribed alone,And marble ne'er profaned the native stone.Umbritius here his sullen silence broke,35And turned on Rome, indignant, as he spoke.Since virtue droops, he cried, without regard,And honest toil scarce hopes a poor reward;Since every morrow sees my means decay,And still makes less the little of to-day;40I go, where Dædalus, as poets sing,First checked his flight, and closed his weary wing:While something yet of health and strength remains,And yet no staff my faltering step sustains;While few gray hairs upon my head are seen,45And my old age is vigorous still, and green.Here, then, I bid my much-loved home farewell—Ah, mine no more!—there let Arturius dwell,And Catulus; knaves, who, in truth's despite,Can white to black transform, and black to white,50Build temples, furnish funerals, auctions hold,Farm rivers, ports, and scour the drains for gold!Oncethey were trumpeters, and always found,With strolling fencers, in their annual round,While their puffed cheeks, which every village knew,55Called to "high feats of arms" the rustic crew:Now they giveShowsthemselves; and, at the willOf the base rabble, raise the sign—to kill,Ambitious of their voice: then turn, once more,To their vile gains, and farm the common shore!60And why not every thing?—since Fortune throwsHer more peculiar smiles on such as those,Whene'er, to wanton merriment inclined,She lifts to thrones the dregs of human kind!But why, my friend, should I at Rome remain?65I can not teach my stubborn lips to feign;Nor, when I hear a great man's verses, smile,And beg a copy, if I think them vile.A sublunary wight, I have no skillTo read the stars; I neither can, nor will,70Presage a father's death; I never pried,In toads, for poison, nor—in aught beside.Others may aid the adulterer's vile design,And bear the insidious gift, and melting line,Seduction's agents! I such deeds detest;75And, honest, let no thief partake my breast.For this, without a friend, the world I quit;A palsied limb, for every use unfit.Who now is loved, but he whose conscious breastSwells with dark deeds, still, still to be supprest?80He pays, he owes, thee nothing (strictly just),Who gives an honest secret to thy trust;But, a dishonest!—there, he feels thy power,And buys thy friendship high from hour to hour.But let not all the wealth which Tagus pours85In Ocean's lap, not all his glittering stores,Be deemed a bribe, sufficient to requiteThe loss of peace by day, of sleep by night:—Oh take not, take not, what thy soul rejects,Nor sell the faith, which he, who buys, suspects!90The nation, by theGREAT, admired, carest,And hated, shunned byMe, above the rest,No longer, now, restrained by wounded pride,I haste to show (nor thou my warmth deride),I can not rule my spleen, and calmly see,95A Grecian capital, in Italy!Grecian? O no! with this vast sewer compared,The dregs of Greece are scarcely worth regard:Long since, the stream that wanton Syria lavesHas disembogued its filth in Tiber's waves,100Its language, arts; o'erwhelmed us with the scumOf Antioch's streets, its minstrel, harp, and drum.Hie to the Circus! ye who pant to proveA barbarous mistress, an outlandish love;Hie to the Circus! there, in crowds they stand,105Tires on their head, and timbrels in their hand.Thy rustic, Mars, the trechedipna wears,And on his breast, smeared with ceroma, bearsA paltry prize, well-pleased; while every land,Sicyon, and Amydos, and Alaband,110Tralles, and Samos, and a thousand more,Thrive on his indolence, and daily pourTheir starving myriads forth: hither they come,}And batten on the genial soil of Rome;}Minions, then lords, of every princely dome!}115A flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race,Of torrent tongue, and never-blushing face;A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,Which shifts to every form, and shines in all:Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,120Rope-dancer, conjurer, fiddler, and physician,All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts;And bid him mount the sky—the sky he mounts!You smile—was't a barbarian, then, that flew?No, 'twas a Greek! 'twas anAthenian, too!125—Bear with their state who will: for I disdainTo feed their upstart pride, or swell their train:Slaves, that in Syrian lighters stowed, so late,With figs and prunes (an inauspicious freight),Already see their faith preferred to mine,130And sit above me! and before me sign!—That on the Aventine I first drew air,And, from the womb, was nursed on Sabine fare,Avails me not! our birthright now is lost,And all our privilege, an empty boast!135For lo! where versed in every soothing art,The wily Greek assails his patron's heart,Finds in each dull harangue an air, a grace,And all Adonis in a Gorgon face;Admires the voice that grates upon the ear,140Like the shrill scream of amorous chanticleer;And equals the crane neck, and narrow chest,To Hercules, when, straining to his breastThe giant son of Earth, his every veinSwells with the toil, and more than mortal pain.145We too can cringe as low, and praise as warm,But flattery from the Greeks alone can charm.See! they step forth, and figure to the life,The naked nymph, the mistress, or the wife,So just, you view the very woman there,150And fancy all beneath the girdle bare!No longer now, the favorites of the stageBoast their exclusive power to charm the age:The happy art with them a nation shares,Greece is a theatre, where all are players.155For lo! their patron smiles,—they burst with mirth;He weeps—they droop, the saddest souls on earth;He calls for fire—they court the mantle's heat;'Tis warm, he cries—and they dissolve in sweat.Ill-matched!—secure of victory they start,160Who, taught from youth to play a borrowed part,Can, with a glance, the rising passion trace,And mould their own, to suit their patron's face;At deeds of shame their hands admiring raise,And mad debauchery's worst excesses praise.165Besides, no mound their raging lust restrains,All ties it breaks, all sanctity profanes;Wife, virgin-daughter, son unstained before—And, where these fail, they tempt the grandam hoar:They notice every word, haunt every ear,170Your secrets learn, and fix you theirs from fear.Turn to their schools:—yon gray professor see,Smeared with the sanguine stains of perfidy!That tutor most accursed his pupil sold!That Stoic sacrificed his friend to gold!175A true-born Grecian! littered on the coast,Where the Gorgonian hack a pinion lost.Hence, Romans, hence! no place for you remains,Where Diphilus, where Erimanthus reigns;Miscreants, who, faithful to their native art,180Admit no rival in a patron's heart:For let them fasten on his easy ear,And drop one hint, one secret slander there,Sucked from their country's venom, or their own,That instant they possess the man alone;185While we are spurned, contemptuous, from the door,Our long, long slavery thought upon no more.'Tis but a client lost!—and that, we find,Sits wondrous lightly on a patron's mind:And (not to flatter our poor pride, my friend)190What merit with the great can we pretend,Though, in our duty we prevent the day,And, darkling, run our humble court to pay;When the brisk prætor, long before, is gone,And hastening, with stern voice, his lictors on,195Lest his colleagues o'erpass him in the street,And first the rich and childless matrons greet,Alba and Modia, who impatient wait,And think the morning homage comes too late!Here freeborn youths wait the rich servant's call,200And, if they walk beside him, yield the wall;And wherefore? this, forsooth, can fling away,On one voluptuous night, a legion's pay,While those, when some Calvina, sweeping by,Inflames the fancy, check their roving eye,205And frugal of their scanty means, forbear,To tempt the wanton from her splendid chair.Produce, at Rome, your witness: let him boast,The sanctity of Berecynthia's host,Of Numa, or of him, whose zeal divine210Snatched pale Minerva from her blazing shrine:To search his rent-roll, first the bench prepares,His honesty employs their latest cares:What table does he keep, what slaves maintain,And what, they ask, and where, is his domain?215These weighty matters known, his faith they rate,And square his probity to his estate.The poor may swear by all the immortal Powers,By the Great Gods of Samothrace, and ours,His oaths are false, they cry; he scoffs at heaven,220And all its thunders; scoffs—and is forgiven!Add, that the wretch is still the theme of scorn,If the soiled cloak be patched, the gown o'erworn;If, through the bursting shoe, the foot be seen,Or the coarse seam tell where the rent has been.225O Poverty, thy thousand ills combined}Sink not so deep into the generous mind,}As the contempt and laughter of mankind!}"Up! up! these cushioned benches," Lectius cries,"Befit not your estates: for shame! arise."230For "shame!"—but you say well: the pander's heir,The spawn of bulks and stews, is seated there;The crier's spruce son, fresh from the fencer's school,And prompt the taste to settle and to rule.—So Otho fixed it, whose preposterous pride235First dared to chase us from their Honors' side.In these cursed walls, devote alone to gain,When do the poor a wealthy wife obtain?When are they named in Wills? when called to shareThe Ædile's council, and assist the chair?—240Long since should they have risen, thus slighted, spurned,And left their home, but—not to have returned!Depressed by indigence, the good and wise,In every clime, by painful efforts rise;Here, by more painful still, where scanty cheer,245Poor lodging, mean attendance—all is dear.In earthen-wareHEscorns, at Rome, to eat,Who, called abruptly to the Marsian's seat,From such, well pleased, would take his simple food,Nor blush to wear the cheap Venetian hood.250There's many a part of Italy, 'tis said,Where none assume the toga but the dead:There, when the toil foregone and annual play,Mark, from the rest, some high and solemn day,To theatres of turf the rustics throng,255Charmed with the farce that charmed their sires so long;While the pale infant, of the mask in dread,Hides, in his mother's breast, his little head.No modes of dress high birth distinguishTHERE;All ranks, all orders, the same habit wear,260And the dread Ædile's dignity is known,O sacred badge! by his white vest alone.ButHERE, beyond our power arrayed we go,In all the gay varieties of show;And when our purse supplies the charge no more,265Borrow, unblushing, from our neighbor's store:Such is the reigning vice; and so we flaunt,Proud in distress, and prodigal in want!Briefly, my friend, here all are slaves to gold,And words, and smiles, and every thing is sold.270What will you give for Cossus' nod? how highThe silent notice of Veiento buy?—One favorite youth is shaved, another shorn;And, while to Jove the precious spoil is borne,Clients are taxed for offerings, and, (yet more275To gall their patience), from their little store,Constrained to swell the minion's ample hoard,And bribe the page, for leave to bribe his lord.Who fears the crash of houses in retreat?At simple Gabii, bleak Præneste's seat,280Volsinium's craggy heights, embowered in wood,Or Tibur, beetling o'er prone Anio's flood?While half the city here by shores is staid,And feeble cramps, that lend a treacherous aid:For thus the stewards patch the riven wall,285Thus prop the mansion, tottering to its fall;Then bid the tenant court secure repose,While the pile nods to every blast that blows.O! may I live where no such fears molest,No midnight fires burst on my hour of rest!290For here 'tis terror all; mid the loud cryOf "water! water!" the scared neighbors fly,With all their haste can seize—the flames aspire,And the third floor is wrapt in smoke and fire,While you, unconscious, doze: Up, ho! and know,295The impetuous blaze which spreads dismay below,By swift degrees will reach the aerial cell,Where, crouching, underneath the tiles you dwell,Where your tame doves their golden couplets rear,"And you could no mischance, but drowning, fear!"300"Codrus had but one bed, and that too shortFor his short wife;" his goods, of every sort,Were else but few:—six little pipkins gracedHis cupboard head, a little can was placedOn a snug shelf beneath, and near it lay305A Chiron, of the same cheap marble—clay.And was this all? O no: he yet possestA few Greek books, shrined in an ancient chest,Where barbarous mice through many an inlet crept,And fed on heavenly numbers, while he slept.—310"Codrus, in short, had nothing." You say true;And yet poor Codrus lost that nothing too!One curse alone was wanting, to completeHis woes: that, cold and hungry, through the street,The wretch should beg, and, in the hour of need,315Find none to lodge, to clothe him, or to feed!But should the raging flames on grandeur prey,And low in dust Asturius' palace lay,The squalid matron sighs, the senate mourns,The pleaders cease, the judge the court adjourns;320All join to wail the city's hapless fate,And rail at fire with more than common hate.Lo! while it burns, the obsequious courtiers haste,With rich materials, to repair the waste:This, brings him marble, that, a finished piece,325The far-famed boast of Polyclete and Greece;This, ornaments, which graced of old the faneOf Asia's gods; that, figured plate and plain;This, cases, books, and busts the shelves to grace,And piles of coin his specie to replace—330So much the childless Persian swells his store,(Though deemed the richest of the rich before,)That all ascribe the flames to thirst of pelf,And swear, Asturius fired his house himself.O, had you, from the Circus, power to fly,335In many a halcyon village might you buySome elegant retreat, for what will, here,Scarce hire a gloomy dungeon through the year!There wells, by nature formed, which need no rope,No laboring arm, to crane their waters up,340Around your lawn their facile streams shall shower,And cheer the springing plant and opening flower.There live, delighted with the rustic's lot,And till, with your own hands, the little spot;The little spot shall yield you large amends,345And glad, with many a feast, your Samian friends.And, sure,—in any corner we can get,To call one lizard ours, is something yet!Flushed with a mass of indigested food,Which clogs the stomach and inflames the blood,350What crowds, with watching wearied and o'erprest,Curse the slow hours, and die for want of rest!For who can hope his languid lids to close,Where brawling taverns banish all repose?Sleep, to the rich alone, "his visits pays:"355And hence the seeds of many a dire disease.The carts loud rumbling through the narrow way,The drivers' clamors at each casual stay,From drowsy Drusus would his slumber take,And keep the calves of Proteus broad awake!360If business call, obsequious crowds divide.While o'er their heads the rich securely ride,By tall Illyrians borne, and read, or write,}Or (should the early hour to rest invite),}Close the soft litter, and enjoy the night.}365Yet reach they first the goal; while, by the throngElbowed and jostled, scarce we creep along;Sharp strokes from poles, tubs, rafters, doomed to feel;And plastered o'er with mud, from head to heel:While the rude soldier gores us as he goes,370Or marks, in blood, his progress on our toes!See, from the Dole, a vast tumultuous throng,Each followed by his kitchen, pours along!Huge pans, which Corbulo could scarce uprear,With steady neck a puny slave must bear,375And, lest amid the way the flames expire,Glide nimbly on, and gliding, fan the fire;Through the close press with sinuous efforts wind,And, piece by piece, leave his botched rags behind.Hark! groaning on, the unwieldy wagon spreads380Its cumbrous load, tremendous! o'er our heads,Projecting elm or pine, that nods on high,And threatens death to every passer by.Heavens! should the axle crack, which bears a weightOf huge Ligurian stone, and pour the freight385On the pale crowd beneath, what would remain,What joint, what bone, what atom of the slain?The body, with the soul, would vanish quite,Invisible as air, to mortal sight!—Meanwhile, unconscious of their fellow's fate,390At home, they heat the water, scour the plate,Arrange the strigils, fill the cruse with oil,And ply their several tasks with fruitless toil:For he who bore the dole, poor mangled ghost,Sits pale and trembling on the Stygian coast,395Scared at the horrors of the novel scene,At Charon's threatening voice, and scowling mien;Nor hopes a passage, thus abruptly hurled,Without his farthing, to the nether world.Pass we these fearful dangers, and survey400What other evils threat our nightly way.And first, behold the mansion's towering size,Where floors on floors to the tenth story rise;Whence heedless garreteers their potsherds throw,And crush the unwary wretch that walks below!405Clattering the storm descends from heights unknown.Plows up the street, and wounds the flinty stone!'Tis madness, dire improvidence of ill,To sup abroad, before you sign your Will;Since fate in ambush lies, and marks his prey,410From every wakeful window in the way:Pray, then—and count your humble prayer well sped,If pots be only—emptied on your head.The drunken bully, ere his man be slain,Frets through the night, and courts repose in vain;415And while the thirst of blood his bosom burns,From side to side, in restless anguish, turns,Like Peleus' son, when, quelled by Hector's hand,His loved Patroclus prest the Phrygian strand.There are, who murder as an opiate take,420And only when no brawls await them wake:Yet even these heroes, flushed with youth and wine,All contest with the purple robe decline;Securely give the lengthened train to pass,The sun-bright flambeaux, and the lamps of brass.—425Me, whom the moon, or candle's paler gleam,Whose wick I husband to the last extreme,Guides through the gloom, he braves, devoid of fear:The prelude to our doughty quarrel hear,If that be deemed a quarrel, where, heaven knows,430He only gives, and I receive, the blows!Across my path he strides, and bids meStand!I bow, obsequious to the dread command;What else remains, where madness, rage, combineWith youth, and strength superior far to mine?435"Whence come you, rogue?" he cries; "whose beans to-nightHave stuffed you thus? what cobbler clubbed his mite,For leeks and sheep's-head porridge? Dumb! quite dumb!Speak, or be kicked.—Yet, once again! your home?Where shall I find you? At what beggar's stand440(Temple, or bridge) whimp'ring with outstretched hand?"Whether I strive some humble plea to frame,Or steal in silence by, 'tis just the same;I'm beaten first, then dragged in rage away:Bound to the peace, or punished for the fray!445Mark here the boasted freedom of the poor!Beaten and bruised, that goodness to adore,Which, at their humble prayer, suspends its ire,And sends them home, with yet a bone entire!Nor this the worst; for when deep midnight reigns,450And bolts secure our doors, and massy chains,When noisy inns a transient silence keep,And harassed nature woos the balm of sleep,Then, thieves and murderers ply their dreadful trade;With stealthy steps our secret couch invade:—455Roused from the treacherous calm, aghast we start,And the fleshed sword—is buried in our heart!Hither from bogs, from rocks, and caves pursued(The Pontine marsh, and Gallinarian wood),The dark assassins flock, as to their home,460And fill with dire alarms the streets of Rome.Such countless multitudes our peace annoy,That bolts and shackles every forge employ,And cause so wide a waste, the country fearsA want of ore for mattocks, rakes, and shares.465O! happy were our sires, estranged from crimes;And happy, happy, were the good old times,Which saw, beneath their kings', their tribunes' reign,One cell the nation's criminals contain!Much could I add, more reasons could I cite,470If time were ours, to justify my flight;But see! the impatient team is moving on,The sun declining; and I must be gone:Long since, the driver murmured at my stay,And jerked his whip, to beckon me away.475Farewell, my friend! with this embrace we part!Cherish my memory ever in your heart;And when, from crowds and business, you repair,To breathe at your Aquinum freer air,Fail not to draw me from my loved retreat,480To Elvine Ceres, and Diana's seat:For your bleak hills my Cumæ I'll resign,And (if you blush not at such aid as mine)Come well equipped, to wage, in angry rhymes,Fierce war, with you, on follies and on crimes.485