Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/216

 Our Roman boys, by puzzling days and nights, Bring down a shilling to a hundred mites. Come, young Albinus, tell us, if you take A penny from a sixpence, what 'twill make. Fivepence. Good boy! you'll come to wealth one day. Now add a penny. Sevenpence, he will say. O, when this cankering rust, this greed of gain, Has touched the soul and wrought into its grain, What hope that poets will produce such lines As cedar-oil embalms and cypress shrines?
 * A bard will wish to profit or to please,

Or, as a tertium quid, do both of these. Whene'er you lecture, be concise: the soul Takes in short maxims, and retains them whole: But pour in water when the vessel's filled, It simply dribbles over and is spilled.
 * Keep near to truth in a fictitious piece,

Nor treat belief as matter of caprice. If on a child you make a vampire sup, It must not be alive when she's ripped up. Dry seniors scout an uninstructive strain; Young lordlings treat grave verse with tall disdain: But he who, mixing grave and gay, can teach And yet give pleasure, gains a vote from each: His works enrich the vendor, cross the sea, And hand the author down to late posterity.
 * Some faults may claim forgiveness: for the lyre

Not always gives the note that we desire; We ask a flat; a sharp is its reply;