Page:The works of Horace - Christopher Smart.djvu/51

 supreme Jove! O thou sweet alleviator of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee!

not too much, my Albius, thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man is more agreeable, than you in her eyes. A love for Cyrus inflames Lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead: Cyrus follows the rough Pholoë; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than Pholoë shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. Such is the will of Venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes persons and tempers ill suited to each other. As for myself, the slave-born Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic Sea that forms the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time that a more eligible love courted my embraces.

and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now