If truth there be in old Cratinus' song,
No verse, you know, Maecenas, can live long
Writ by a water-drinker. Since the day
When Bacchus took us poets into pay
With fauns and satyrs, the celestial Nine
Have smelt each morning of last evening's wine.
The praises heaped by Homer on the bowl
At once convict him as a thirsty soul:
And father Ennius ne'er could be provoked
To sing of battles till his lips were soaked.
"Let temperate folk write verses in the hall
Where bonds change hands, abstainers not at all;"
So ran my edict: now the clan drinks hard,
And vinous breath distinguishes a bard.
What if a man appeared with gown cut short,
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 Alcaeus, 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 Alcaeus' 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
My works at home, but run them down abroad?
I stoop not, I, to catch the rabble's votes
By cheap refreshments or by cast-off coats,
Nor haunt the benches where your pedants swarm,
Prepared by turns to listen and perform.
That's what this whimpering means. Suppose I say
"Your theatres have ne'er been in my way,
Nor I in theirs: large audiences require
Some heavier metal than my thin-drawn wire:"
"You put me off," he answers, "with a sneer:
Your works are kept for Jove's imperial ear:
Yes, you're a paragon of bards, you think,
And no one else brews nectar fit to drink."
What can I do? 'tis an unequal match;
For if my nose can sniff, his nails can scratch:
I say the place won't snit me, and cry shame;
"E'en fencers get a break 'twixt game and game."
Games oft have ugly issue: they beget
Unhealthy competition, fume and fret:
And fume and fret engender in their turn
Battles that bleed, and enmities that burn.