Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/175

Bare feet, grim visage, after Cato's sort?
Would you respect him, hail him from henceforth
The heir of Cato's mind, of Cato's worth?
The wretched Moor, who matched himself in wit
With keen Timagenes, in sunder split.
Faults are soon copied: should my colour fail,
Our bards drink cummin, hoping to look pale.
Mean, miserable apes! the coil you make
Oft gives my heart, and oft my sides, an ache.
Erect and free I walk the virgin sod,
Too proud to tread the paths by others trod.
The man who trusts himself, and dares step out,
Soon sets the fashion to the inferior rout.
'Tis I who first to Italy have shown
Iambics, quarried from the Parian stone;
Following Archilochus in rhythm and stave,
But not the words that dug Lycambes' grave.
Yet think not that I merit scantier bays,
Because in form I reproduce his lays:
Strong Sappho now and then adopts a tone
From that same lyre, to qualify her own;
So does Alcæus, though in all beside,
Style, order, thought, the difference is wide;
'Gainst no false fair he turns his angry Muse,
Nor for her guilty father twists the noose.
Aye, and Alcæus' name, before unheard,
My Latian harp has made a household word.
Well may the bard feel proud, whose pen supplies
Unhackneyed strains to gentle hands and eyes.
Ask you what makes the uncourteous reader laud