Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/34

 Is kept in check, proportioned to his need, He neither draws his water mixed with mud, Nor leaves his life behind him in the flood.
 * But there's a class of persons, led astray

By false desires, and this is what they say: "You cannot have enough: what you possess, That makes your value, be it more or less." What answer would you make to such as these? Why, let them hug their misery if they please, Like the Athenian miser, who was wont To meet men's curses with a hero's front: "Folks hiss me," said he, "but myself I clap When I tell o'er my treasures on my lap." So Tantalus catches at the waves that fly His thirsty palate—Laughing, are you? why? Change but the name, of you the tale is told: You sleep, mouth open, on your hoarded gold; Gold that you treat as sacred, dare not use, In fact, that charms you as a picture does. Come, will you hear what wealth can fairly do? 'Twill buy you bread, and vegetables too, And wine, a good pint measure: add to this Such needful things as flesh and blood would miss. But to go mad with watching, nights and days To stand in dread of thieves, fires, runaways Who filch and fly,—in these if wealth consist, Let me rank lowest on the paupers' list.
 * "But if you suffer from a chill attack,

Or other chance should lay you on your back,