Happy is Fannius, with immortals classed,
His bust and bookcase canonized at last,
While, as for me, none reads the things I write. 
Loath as I am in public to recite,
Knowing that satire finds small favour, since
Most men want whipping, and who want it, wince. 
Choose from the crowd a casual wight, ’tis seen
He’s place-hunter or miser, vain or mean: 
One raves of others’ wives:  one stands agaze
At silver dishes:  bronze is Albius’ craze: 
Another barters goods the whole world o’er,
From distant east to furthest western shore,
Driving along like dust-cloud through the air
To increase his capital or not impair: 
These, one and all, the clink of metre fly,
And look on poets with a dragon’s eye. 
“Beware! he’s vicious:  so he gains his end,
A selfish laugh, he will not spare a friend: 
Whate’er he scrawls, the mean malignant rogue
Is all alive to get it into vogue: 
Give him a handle, and your tale is known
To every giggling boy and maundering crone.” 
A weighty accusation! now, permit
Some few brief words, and I will answer it: 
First, be it understood, I make no claim
To rank with those who bear a poet’s name: 
’Tis not enough to turn out lines complete,
Each with its proper quantum of five feet;
Colloquial verse a man may write like me,
But (trust an author)’tis not poetry. 
No; keep that name for genius, for a soul
Of Heaven’s own fire, for words that grandly roll. 
Hence some have questioned if the Muse we call
The Comic Muse be really one at all: 
Her subject ne’er aspires, her style ne’er glows,
And, save that she talks metre, she talks prose. 
“Aye, but the angry father shakes the stage,
When on his graceless son he pours his rage,
Who, smitten with the mistress of the hour,
Rejects a well-born wife with ample dower,
Gets drunk, and (worst of all) in public sight
Keels with a blazing flambeau while ’tis light.” 
Well, could Pomponius’ sire to life return,
Think you he’d rate his son in tones less stern? 
So then ’tis not sufficient to combine
Well-chosen words in a well-ordered line,
When, take away the rhythm, the self-same words
Would suit an angry father off the boards. 
Strip what I write, or what Lucilius wrote,
Of cadence and succession, time and note,
Reverse the order, put those words behind
That went before, no poetry you’ll find: 
But break up this, “When Battle’s brazen door
Blood-boltered Discord from its fastenings tore,”
’Tis Orpheus mangled by the Maenads:  still
The bard remains, unlimb him as you will.