[Footnote 3:  See Lucretius, “De Rer.  Nat.,” lib. i.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 4:  Bubo, the owl.—­Dublin Edition.]

[Footnote 5:  Taken prisoner by the Carthaginians in the first Punic war, and ultimately tortured to death.  See the story in Cicero, “De Officiis,” i, 13; Hor., “Carm.,” iii, 5.—­W.  E. B.]

ON A PEN. 1724

In youth exalted high in air,
Or bathing in the waters fair,
Nature to form me took delight,
And clad my body all in white. 
My person tall, and slender waist,
On either side with fringes graced;
Till me that tyrant man espied,
And dragg’d me from my mother’s side: 
No wonder now I look so thin;
The tyrant stript me to the skin: 
My skin he flay’d, my hair he cropt: 
At head and foot my body lopt: 
And then, with heart more hard than stone,
He pick’d my marrow from the bone. 
To vex me more, he took a freak
To slit my tongue and make me speak: 
But, that which wonderful appears,
I speak to eyes, and not to ears. 
He oft employs me in disguise,
And makes me tell a thousand lies: 
To me he chiefly gives in trust
To please his malice or his lust. 
From me no secret he can hide;
I see his vanity and pride: 
And my delight is to expose
His follies to his greatest foes. 
All languages I can command,
Yet not a word I understand. 
Without my aid, the best divine
In learning would not know a line: 
The lawyer must forget his pleading;
The scholar could not show his reading. 
  Nay; man my master is my slave;
I give command to kill or save,
Can grant ten thousand pounds a-year,
And make a beggar’s brat a peer. 
  But, while I thus my life relate,
I only hasten on my fate. 
My tongue is black, my mouth is furr’d,
I hardly now can force a word. 
I die unpitied and forgot,
And on some dunghill left to rot.

ON GOLD

All-ruling tyrant of the earth,
To vilest slaves I owe my birth,
How is the greatest monarch blest,
When in my gaudy livery drest! 
No haughty nymph has power to run
From me; or my embraces shun. 
Stabb’d to the heart, condemn’d to flame,
My constancy is still the same. 
The favourite messenger of Jove,
And Lemnian god, consulting strove
To make me glorious to the sight
Of mortals, and the gods’ delight. 
Soon would their altar’s flame expire
If I refused to lend them fire.

  By fate exalted high in place,
  Lo, here I stand with double face: 
  Superior none on earth I find;
  But see below me all mankind
  Yet, as it oft attends the great,
  I almost sink with my own weight.

At every motion undertook,
The vulgar all consult my look. 
I sometimes give advice in writing,
But never of my own inditing. 
  I am a courtier in my way;
For those who raised me, I betray;
And some give out that I entice
To lust, to luxury, and dice. 
Who punishments on me inflict,
Because they find their pockets pickt. 
  By riding post, I lose my health,
And only to get others wealth.