Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/151

Fresh runnels, moss-grown rocks, and woodland green.
What would you more? once let me leave the things
You praise so much, my life is like a king's:
Like the priest's runaway, I cannot eat
Your cakes, but pine for bread of wholesome wheat.
Now say that it behoves us to adjust
Our lives to nature (wisdom says we must):
You want a site for building: can you find
A place that's like the country to your mind?
Where have you milder winters? where are airs
That breathe more grateful when the Dogstar glares,
Or when the Lion feels in every vein
The sun's sharp thrill, and maddens with the pain?
Is there a spot where care contrives to keep
At further distance from the couch of sleep?
Is springing grass less sweet to nose or eyes
Than Libyan marble's tesselated dyes?
Does purer water strain your pipes of lead
Than that which ripples down the brooklet's bed?
Why, 'mid your Parian columns trees you train,
And praise the house that fronts a wide domain.
Drive Nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout
The false refinements that would keep her out.
The luckless wight who can't tell side by side
A Tyrian fleece from one Aquinum-dyed,
Is not more surely, keenly, made to smart
Than he who knows not truth and lies apart.
Take too much pleasure in good things, you'll feel
The shock of adverse fortune makes you reel.