Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/189

 You'd fill the temple Phœbus holds so dear, And give poor bards the stimulus of hope To aid their progress up Parnassus' slope. Poor bards! much harm to our own cause we do (It tells against myself, but yet 'tis true), When, wanting you to read us, we intrude On times of business or of lassitude, When we lose temper if a friend thinks fit To find a fault or two with what we've writ, When, unrequested, we again go o'er A passage we recited once, before, When we complain, forsooth, our laboured strokes, Our dexterous turns, are lost on careless folks, When we expect, so soon as you're informed That ours are hearts by would-be genius warmed, You'll send for us instanter, end our woes With a high hand, and make us all compose.
 * Yet greatness, proved in war and peace divine,

Had best be jealous who should keep its shrine: The sacred functions of the temple-ward Were ill conferred on an inferior bard. A blunderer was Chœrilus; and yet This blunderer was Alexander's pet, And for the ill-stamped lines that left his mint Received good money with the royal print. Ink spoils what touches it: indifferent lays Blot out the exploits they pretend to praise. Yet the same king who bought bad verse so dear In other walks of art saw true and clear; None but Lysippus, so he willed by law,