Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/54

Sarmentus cries: for Messius' brow was marred
By a deep wound, which left it foully scarred.
Then, joking still at his grim countenance,
He begged him just to dance the Cyclop dance:
No buskin, mask, nor other aid of art
Would be required to make him look his part.
Messius had much to answer: "Was his chain
Suspended duly in the Lares' fane?
Though now a notary, he might yet be seized
And given up to his mistress, if she pleased.
Nay, more," he asked, "why had he run away,
When e'en a single pound of corn a day
Had filled a maw so slender?" So we spent
Our time at table, to our high content.
Then on to Beneventum, where our host,
As some lean thrushes he essayed to roast,
Was all but burnt: for up the chimney came
The blaze, and well nigh set the house on flame:
The guests and servants snatch the meat, and fall
Upon the fire with buckets, one and all.
Next rise to view Apulia's well-known heights,
Which keen Atabulus so sorely bites:
And there perchance we might be wandering yet,
But shelter in Trivicum's town we get,
Where green damp branches in the fireplace spread
Make our poor eyes to water in our head.
Then four and twenty miles, a good long way,
Our coaches take us, in a town to stay
Whose name no art can squeeze into a line,
Though otherwise 'tis easy to define: