Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS

A single volume Persius wrote,
But this in every heart enshrined him;
How many now could read or quote
The epics Marsus left behind him?
So if you read a book of mine,
Think it my only publication;
I know more brightly it will shine
In that imagined isolation.
* XXX.4 WARNING TO FISHERMEN
Go from our Baian Lake, I bid thee go,
Ere thou the guilt of sacrilege allow.
Holy the fish that swim about this strand;
They know their Lord, and fawn upon the hand
That is on earth most mighty, and withal
They have their names and answer to his call.
An impious wretch from Africa's dark shore
Was drawing from this deep his prey of yore,
When sudden blindness fell upon his eyes,
Nor could he longer see his watery prize.
So now he holds his cursed hooks in hate,
And as a beggar sits at Baiae's gate.
Revere these dainty fish and with pure heart
Cast them a guileless meal and then depart.
XXXI
THE DIFFICULT RHYME
WRITE you an epigram? When you suggested it,
Friend, I was flattered that you had requested it.
Is it an honour? I pledge you my word on it,
If my poor verses a lustre conferred on it,
Gladly I'd mention your name from regard to you,
Had not your mother been cruelly hard to you.
Names so unmetrical, sesquipedalian,
Dry up the source of the fountain Castalian,
Melpomene will not whisper or mutter it,
None of her sisters nor Phoebus can utter it.
Get you another the Muses think better of,
This is a word I can't use the last letter of;
' Hippodame,' little grace I can see in it,
Though, to be sure, I might end with the ' C ' in it.
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