Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/131

 Some bait a widow-trap with fruits and cakes, And net old men, to stock their private lakes. But grant that folks have different hobbies; say, Does one man ride one hobby one whole day? "Baiæ's the place!" cries Croesus: all is haste; The lake, the sea, soon feel their master's taste: A new whim prompts: 'tis "Pack your tools tonight! Off for Teanum with the dawn of light!" The nuptial bed is in his hall; he swears None but a single life is free from cares: Is he a bachelor? all human bliss, He vows, is centred in a wedded kiss.
 * How shall I hold this Proteus in my gripe?

How fix him down in one enduring type? Turn to the poor: their megrims are as strange; Bath, cockloft, barber, eating-house, they change; They hire a boat; your born aristocrat Is not more squeamish, tossing in his yacht.
 * If, when we meet, I'm cropped in awkward style

By some uneven barber, then you smile; You smile, if, as it haps, my gown's askew, If my shirt's ragged while my tunic's new: How, if my mind's inconsequent, rejects What late it longed for, what it loathed affects, Shifts every moment, with itself at strife, And makes a chaos of an ordered life, Builds castles up, then pulls them to the ground, Keeps changing round for square and square for round?