Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS
He would perhaps have made a long oration,
Elated by his novel situation;
But Leitus his periods put to rout,
And to his purple mantle said-' Get out.'
IX
THE MASTER-PHYSICIAN
I WAS out of sorts-not like to dieTill swift to my bedside flew
Symmachus, fever's best ally,
And a hundred pupils too;
A hundred hands with the north-wind chill
Pawed me, until I vow
That, though till he came I was not ill,
I shiver with ague now.
X
TO REGULUS
'FAME comes not to the living. Strange! 'you say,
' How few can love the artists of their day! '
The cause is this, that envy's cross-eyed view
Will always set the old above the new.
Thus haunt we Pompey's ancient porch-and thus
Fools praise the crumbled fanes of Catulus.
So Virgil's Rome pored still o'er Ennius' page,
And Homer lived unhonoured of his age;
Few were his peers to laud Menander's plays;
Who save Corinna knew her Ovid's lays?
Yet soft, my books, no haste, nor hurry fate;
If fame must wait on death, then let it wait.
XI
TO THE POET STELLA
THAT diamond, emerald, and sard
Adorn my Stella's hand,
Thlt jaspers bright should deck the bard
1 well can understand.
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