Page:The works of Horace - Christopher Smart.djvu/83

Rh way. Me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep the woodland doves, famous in story, covered with green leaves in the Apulian Vultur, just without the limits of my native Apulia; so that it was matter of wonder to all that inhabit the nest of lofty Acherontia, the Bantine Forests, and the rich soil of low Ferentum, how I could sleep with my body safe from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how I could be covered with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, though a child, not animated without the [inspiration of the] gods. Yours, O ye muses, I am yours, whether I am elevated to the Sabine heights; or whether the cool Præneste, or the sloping Tibur, or the watery Baiæ have delighted me. Me, who am attached to your fountains and dances, not the army put to flight at Philippi, not the execrable tree, nor a Palinurus in the Sicilian Sea has destroyed. While you shall be with me with pleasure will I, a sailor, dare the raging Bosphorus; or, a traveler, the burning sands of the Assyrian shore: I will visit the Britons inhuman to strangers, and the Concanian delighted [with drinking] the blood of horses; I will visit the quivered Geloni, and the Scythian river without hurt. You entertained lofty Cæsar, seeking to put an end to his toils, in the Pierian grotto, as soon as he had distributed in towns