Amores I.15

Why, biting Envy, dost thou charge me with slothful years, and call my song the work of an idle wit, complaining that, while vigorous age gives strength, I neither, after the fashion of our fathers, pursue the dusty prizes of a soldier's life, nor learn garrulous legal lore, nor set my voice for common case in the ungrateful forum?

It is but mortal, the work you ask of me; but my quest is glory through all the years, to be ever known in song throughout the earth. Maeonia's son will live as long as Tenedos shall stand, and Ida, as long as Simois shall roll his waters rushing to the sea; the poet of Ascra, too, will live as long as the grape shall swell for the vintage, as long as Ceres shall fall beneath the stroke of the curving sickle. The son of Battus shall aye be sung through all the earth; though he sway not through genius, he sways through art. No loss shall ever come to the buskin of Sophocles; as long as the sun and moon Aratus shall live on; as long as tricky slave, hard father, treacherous bawd, and wheedling harlot shall be found, Menander will endure; Ennius the rugged in art, and Accius of the spirited tongue, possess names that will never fade. Varro and the first of ships — what generation will fail to know of them, and of the golden fleece, the Aesonian chieftain's quest? The verses of sublime Lucretius will perish only then when a single day shall give the earth to doom. Tityrus and the harvest, and the arms of Aeneas, will be read as long as Rome shall be capital of the world she triumphs o'er; as long as flames and bow are the arms of Cupid, thy numbers shall be conned, O elegant Tibullus; Gallus shall be known to Hesperia's sons, and Gallus to the sons of Eos, and known with Gallus shall his own Lycoris be.

Yea, though hard rocks and though the tooth of the enduring ploughshare perish with passing time, song is untouched by death. Before song let monarchs and monarchs' triumphs yield' — yield, too, the bounteous banks of Tagus bearing gold! Let what is cheap excite the marvel of the crowd; for me may golden Apollo minister full cups from the Castalian fount, and may I on my locks sustain the myrtle that fears the cold; and so be ever conned by anxious lovers! It is the living that Envy feeds upon; after doom it stirs no more, when each man's fame guards him as he deserves. I, too, when the final fires have eaten up my frame, shall still live on, and the great part of me survive my death."