Quintus Horatius Flaccus

“ Your sire's and mine, and keep it back nine years.
What's kept at home you cancel by a stroke:
What's sent abroad you never can revoke.
Orpheus, the priest and harper, pure and good,
Weaned savage tribes from deeds and feasts of blood,
Whence he was said to tame the monsters of the wood.
Amphion too, men said, at his desire
Moved massy stones, obedient to the lyre,
And Thebes arose. 'Twas wisdom's province then
To judge 'twixt states and subjects, gods and men,
Check vagrant lust, give rules to wedded folk,
Build cities up, and grave a code in oak. ”

“ That wretched art to genius must give way,
Stands at the gate of Helicon, and guards
Its precinct against all but crazy bards,
Our witlings keep long nails and untrimmed hair,
Much in brown studies, in the bath-room rare. ”

“ Save them by violence, you as good as kill.
'Tis not his first attempt: if saved to-day,
He's sure to die in some outrageous way.
Beside, none knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse,
By what offence heaven's anger he incurred,
A grave defiled, a sacred boundary stirred:
So much is plain, he's mad: like bear that beats
His prison down and ranges through the streets,
This terrible reciter puts to flight
The learned and unlearned left and right:
Let him catch one, he keeps him till he kills,
As leeches stick till they have sucked their fills. ”

“ Extols his own young years with peevish praise,
But rates and censures these degenerate days.
Years, as they come, bring blessings in their train;
Years, as they go, take blessings back again:
Yet haste or chance may blink the obvious truth,
Make youth discourse like age, and age like youth:
Attention fixed on life alone can teach
The traits and adjuncts which pertain to each.
Sometimes an action on the stage is shown,
Sometimes 'tis done elsewhere, and there made known.
A thing when heard, remember, strikes less keen
On the spectator's mind than when 'tis seen. ”

“ Offends the taste: 'tis reason that it should;
We do without such things, or have them good:
Just so with verse; you seek but to delight;
If by an inch you fail, you fail outright.
He who knows nought of games abstains from all,
Nor tries his hand at quoit, or hoop, or ball,
Lest the thronged circle, witnessing the play,
Should laugh outright, with none to say them nay:
He who knows nought of verses needs must try
To write them ne'ertheless. "Why not?" men cry:
"Free, gently born, unblemished and correct,
His means a knight's, what more can folks expect?" ”

“ Act as a poor man's counsel or his bail?
Blest though he be, his wealth will cloud his view,
Nor suffer him to know false friends from true.
Don't ask a man whose feelings overflow
For kindness that you've shown or mean to show
To listen to your verse: each line you read,
He'll cry, "Good! bravo! exquisite indeed!"
He'll change his colour, let his eyes run o'er
With tears of joy, dance, beat upon the floor.
Hired mourners at a funeral say and do
A little more than they whose grief is true:
'Tis just so here: false flattery displays
More show of sympathy than honest praise. ”

“ Your Satyr folk, and mirth and morals blend,
Let not your heroes doff their robes of red
To talk low language in a homely shed,
Nor, in their fear of crawling, mount too high,
Catching at clouds and aiming at the sky. ”

“ And end the same creation it began.
'Tis hard, I grant, to treat a subject known
And hackneyed so that it may look one's own;
Far better turn the Iliad to a play
And carve out acts and scenes the readiest way,
Than alter facts and characters, and tell
In a strange form the tale men know so well. ”

“ Oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong.
I prove obscure in trying to be terse;
Attempts at ease emasculate my verse;
Who aims at grandeur into bombast falls;
Who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls;
Who hopes by strange variety to please
Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas.
Thus zeal to 'scape from error, if unchecked
By sense of art, creates a new defect.
Fix on some casual sculptor; he shall know
How to give nails their sharpness, hair its flow ”

“ Where dream-like forms in sick delirium blend,
And nought is of a piece from end to end.
"Poets and painters (sure you know the plea)
Have always been allowed their fancy free."
I own it; 'tis a fair excuse to plead ”