“It was in these ways that I was thinking of you yesterday, when I put my own work aside and walked by the shore of the great bay here, looking toward Capri.  And will you let a man who has lived nearly a quarter of a century longer than you have add that I wondered also whether before long you will not seek another mistress for your worship, one whose service shall transcend not only riches but all personal passions?

“Like you, I have lain by the Tiber, and watched the skiffs hurrying by, and the slow barges towed along the yellow waves.  And my thoughts also have been of the meanness of wealth and of the glory of love.  But it was to Rome herself that I made my vows, and in whose service I enlisted.  Was there ever a time when she needed more the loyalty of us all?  While she is fashioning that Empire which shall be without limit or end and raise us to the lordship of the earth, she runs the risks of attack from impalpable enemies who shall defile her highways and debauch her sons.  Arrogance, luxury, violent ambition, false desires, are more to be dreaded than a Parthian victory.  The subtle wickedness of the Orient may conquer us when the spears of Britain are of no avail.  Antony and Gallus are not the only Romans from whom Egypt has sucked life and honour.

“Like you, again, I am no soldier.  Your friends and my friends go lustily to Ionia and Lydia and Gaul and Spain, co-workers, as you say, in a beloved government.  Is not Rome, then, all the more left to our defence?  You pleased me once by saying that you ’knew every line’ of my Georgics.  You know, then, that I have believed that the sickened minds of to-day could be healed, if men would but return to the intimacies of the soil and farm.  Our great master, Lucretius, preached salvation through knowledge of the physical world.  I have ventured to say that it could be found through the kindly help of the country gods.  But now I am beginning to see deeper.  In Rome herself lie the seeds of a new birth.  When men see her as she is in her ancient greatness and her immortal future, will not greed and lust depart from their hearts?  I think it must have been at dawn, when the sea was first reddening under the early sun, that AEneas sailed up to the mouth of the Tiber, and found at last the heart of that Hesperia whose shores had seemed ever to recede as he drew near them.  Now that our sky is blazing with the midday sun, shall we betray and make void those early hopes?  Shall the sistrum of Isis drown our prayers to the gods of our country, native-born, who guard the Tiber and our Roman Palatine?

“I am seeking to write a poem which shall make men reverence their past and build for their future.  Will you not help me to work for Rome’s need?  You have sincerity, passion, talent.  You have commended a beautiful woman to me.  Will you not let me commend my Mistress to you?  Farewell.”