Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/98

 'Sir, if a thing is senseless, to bring sense To bear upon it is a mere pretence; Now love is such a thing, the more's the shame; First war, then peace, 'tis never twice the same, For ever heaving, like a sea in storm, And taking every hour some different form. You think to fix it? why, the job's as bad As if you tried by reason to be mad.'
 * "When you pick apple-pips, and try to hit

The ceiling with them, are you sound of wit? When with your withered lips you bill and coo, Is he that builds card-houses worse than you? Then, too, the blood that's spilt by fond desires, The swords that men will use to poke their fires! When Marius killed his mistress t'other day And broke his neck, was he demented, say? Or would you call him criminal instead, And stigmatize his heart to save his head, Following the common fallacy, which founds A different meaning upon different sounds?
 * "There was an aged freedman, who would run

From shrine to shrine at rising of the sun, Sober and purified for prayer, and cry 'Save me, me only! sure I need not die; Heaven can do all things:' ay, the man was sane In ears and eyes: but how about his brain? Why, that his master, if not bent to plead Before a court, could scarce have guaranteed. Him and all such Chrysippus would assign To mad Menenius' most prolific line.