This is my choyce; for why, I finde
No wealth is like a quiet minde.
My wealth is health and perfect ease;
My conscience clere my chiefe defence;
I neither seeke by bribes to please,
Nor by desert to breed offence.
Thus do I live; thus will I die;
Would all did so as well as I!
TO ONE WHO HAD SCOFFED AT THE POET'S POVERTY.
YES, I am poor, Callistratus! I own;
And so was ever; yet not quite unknown,
Graced with a knight's degree; nor this alone:
But through the world my verse is often sung;
And "That is he!" sounds buzzed from every
And what to few, when dust, the Fates assign,
In bloom and freshness of my days is mine.
Thy ceilings on a hundred columns rest;
Wealth as of upstart freedman bursts thy chest;
Nile flows in fatness o'er thy ample fields;
Cisalpine Gaul thy silky fleeces yields.
Lo! Such thou art, and such am I like me,
Callistratus! thou canst not hope to be;
A hundred of the crowd resemble thee!
From the Latin of MARTIAL.