Book III, Elegy 1

Shade of Callimachus and sacred rites of Philetas, suffer me, I pray, to enter your grove. I am the first with priestly service from an unsullied spring to carry Italian mysteries among the dances of Greece. Tell me, in what grotto did ye weave your songs together? With what step did ye enter? What sacred fountain did ye drink?

Away with the man who keeps Phoebus tarrying among the weapons of war! Let verse run smoothly, polished with fine pumice. 'Tis by such verse as this that Fame lifts me aloft from earth, and the Muse, my daughter, triumphs with garlanded steeds, and tiny Loves ride with me in my chariot, and a throng of writers follows my wheels. Why strive ye against me vainly with loosened rein? Narrow is the path that leadeth to the Muses. Many, O Rome, shall add fresh glories to thine annals, singing that Bactra shall be thine empire's bound; but this work of mine my pages have brought down from the Muses' mount by an untrodden way, that thou mayest read it in the midst of peace.

Pegasid Muses, give soft garlands to your poet: no hard crown will suit my brow. But that whereof the envious throng have robbed me in life, Glory after death shall repay with double interest. After death lapse of years makes all things seem greater; after the rites of burial a name rings greater on the lips of men. Else who would know aught of the citadel shattered by the horse of fir-wood, or how rivers strove in mortal conflict with Haemonia's hero? Who would know aught of Idaean Simois and Scamander sprung from Jove, or that the chariot-wheel thrice dragged Hector foully o'er the plain? Scarce would their own land know Deiphobus, Helenus, and Polydamas, and Paris that sorry warrior. Little talk now would there be of thee, Ilion, and of thee, Troy, twice captured by the power of Oeta's god. Nay, even Homer, that told thy fall, hath seen his work grow in fame through lapse of after-years. Me too shall Rome praise in the voices of late-born generations; myself I foresee that day beyond the fatal pyre. No man shall spurn the grave where the headstone marks my bones! So ordaineth Lycia's god, for he hath approved my vows.