Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/194

Aye, and besides, my friends who'd have me chant
Are not agreed upon the thing they want:
You like an ode; for epodes others cry,
While some love satire spiced and seasoned high.
Three guests, I find, for different dishes call,
And how's one host to satisfy them all?
I bring your neighbour what he asks, you glower:
Obliging you, I turn two stomachs sour.
Think too of Rome: can I write verses here,
Where there's so much to tease and interfere?
One wants me for his surety; one, still worse,
Bids me leave work to hear him just rehearse;
One's ill on Aventine, the farthest end,
One on Quirinal; both must see their friend.
Observe the distance. "What of that?" you say,
"The streets are clear; make verses by the way."
There goes a builder's gang, all haste and steam;
Yon crane lifts granite, or perhaps a beam;
Waggons and funerals jostle; a mad dog
Ran by just now; that splash was from a hog:
Go now, abstract yourself from outward things,
And "hearken what the inner spirit sings."
Bards fly from town and haunt the wood and glade;
Bacchus, their chief, likes sleeping in the shade;
And how should I, with noises all about,
Tread where they tread and make their footprints out?
Take idle Athens now; a wit who's spent
Seven years in studying there, on books intent,
Turns out as stupid as a stone, and shakes