Amores III.15

Seek a new bard, mother of tender Loves! I am come to the last turning-post my elegies will graze; the elegies whose poet am I — nor have these my delights dishonoured me — child reared on Paelignian acres, and heir, if that be aught, of a line of grandsires far removed, no knight created but now amid the whirlwind of war.

Mantua joys in Virgil, Verona in Catullus; 'tis I shall be called the glory of the Paelignians, race whom their love of freedom compelled to honourable arms when anxious Rome was in fear of the allied bands; a and some stranger, looking on watery Sulmo's walls, that guard the scant acres of her plain, may say : " O thou who couldst beget so great a poet, however small thou art, I name thee mighty! "

O worshipful child, and thou of Amathus, mother of the worshipful child, pluck ye up from my field your golden standards! The horned Lyaean hath dealt me a sounding blow with weightier thyrsus; I must smite the earth with mighty steeds on a mightier course. Unwarlike elegies, congenial Muse, O fare ye well, work to live on when I am no more!