Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/59

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SATIRE VI.
29

Yet, if my nature, otherwise correct,
But with some few and trifling faults is flecked,
Just as a spot or mole might be to blame
Upon some body else of comely frame,
If none can call me miserly and mean
Or tax my life with practices unclean,
If I have lived unstained and unreproved
(Forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved,
I owe it to my father, who, though poor,
Passed by the village school at his own door,
The school where great tall urchins in a row,
Sons of great tall centurions, used to go,
With slate and satchel on their backs, to pay
Their monthly quota punctual to the day,
And took his boy to Rome, to learn the arts
Which knight or senator to HIS imparts.
Whoe'er had seen me, neat and more than neat,
With slaves behind me, in the crowded street,
Had surely thought a fortune fair and large,
Two generations old, sustained the charge.
Himself the true tried guardian of his son,
Whene'er I went to class, he still made one.
Why lengthen out the tale? he kept me chaste,
Which is the crown of virtue, undisgraced
In deed and name: he feared not lest one day
The world should talk of money thrown away,
If after all I plied some trade for hire,
Like him, a tax-collector, or a crier:
Nor had I murmured: as it is, the score
Of gratitude and praise is all the more.