TO PHYLLIS.
Horace
Phyllis, I have a cask full of Abanian wine, upward of nine years old; I
have parsley in my garden, for the weaving of chaplets, I have a store
of ivy, with which, when you have bound your hair, you look so gay: the
house shines cheerfully With plate: the altar, bound with chaste
vervain, longs to be sprinkled [with the blood] of a sacrificed lamb:
all hands are busy: girls mingled with boys fly about from place to
place: the flames quiver, rolling on their summit the sooty smoke. But
yet, that you may know to what joys you are invited, the Ides are to be
celebrated by you, the day which divides April, the month of sea-born
Venus; [a day,] with reason to be solemnized by me, and almost more
sacred to me than that of my own birth; since from this day my dear
Maecenas reckons his flowing years. A rich and buxom girl hath possessed
herself of Telephus, a youth above your rank; and she holds him fast by
an agreeable fetter. Consumed Phaeton strikes terror into ambitious
hopes, and the winged Pegasus, not stomaching the earth-born rider
Bellerophon, affords a terrible example, that you ought always to pursue
things that are suitable to you, and that you should avoid a
disproportioned match, by thinking it a crime to entertain a hope beyond
what is allowable. Come then, thou last of my loves (for hereafter I
shall burn for no other woman), learn with me such measures, as thou
mayest recite with thy lovely voice: our gloomy cares shall be mitigated
with an ode.
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