Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS

And, see, a gentler hand than Venus' own
Toys with a cestus-Cupid brought it her;
Let Juno, yea, or Venus, beg that zone
To lure the War God or the Thunderer.
XIV
THE SILENT SINGER
You write no tuneful verse. You say you can,
But from the proof your modest pen doth shrink.
You could and will not! Self-denying man!
0 Milton, guiltless of your country's ink I
XV
ON AN ANT IN AMBER
THE amber dripped from Phaethon's fair tree
And whelmed a petty ant that wandered there,
And, though of little worth in life was she,
Now in her death she is a treasure rare.
* XVI
THE ORCHARD KEEPER
PRIAPUS, who dost these few acres guard,
With phallus and with sickle keeping ward;
Never may hoary thieves these fences break,
But only boys and girls thy apples take.
XVII
ABBREVIATIONS
YOU'RE Cinna now, not Cinnamus,
0 Barber, you are Barbarous,
In clipping names you err.
Suppose you shared the honoured name
Of Furius, would you do the same,
And crop it down to ' Fur?'
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