Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/178

 Like him who, pestered by his donkey's vice, Got off and pushed it down the precipice; For who would lose his temper and his breath To keep a brute alive that's bent on death? Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach In some suburban school the parts of speech, And, maundering over grammar day by day, Lisp, prattle, drawl, grow childish, and decay.
 * Well, when in summer afternoons you see

Men fain to listen, tell them about me: Tell them that, born a freedman's son, possessed Of slender means, I soared beyond my nest, That so whate'er's deducted for my birth May count as assets on the score of worth; Say that I pleased the greatest of my day: Then draw my picture;—prematurely grey, Of little person, fond of sunny ease, Lightly provoked, but easy to appease. Last, if my age they ask you, let them know That I was forty-four not long ago, In the December of last year, the same That goes by Lepidus' and Lollius' name.