'Tis just, ye gods, and what I well deserve: and dropping hair? See! by the tallest servant borne on high, To his just growth: the provinces from far Furnish our kitchens and revenge our war. Baits for the rich and childless they supply: Aurelia thence must sell, and Lenus buy. The largest lamprey which their seas afford Rash, daring nets, in hope of such a prize, With what a tail and breast salutes his With foulest mud and the rank ordure fed. Well rubbed with this, when Boccar comes Those godlike men, to wanting virtue kind, Near him is placed the liver of a goose- In fruitful showers and desired thunders rend Would any god, or godlike man below, 66 My brother? Who carves to my best of friends?" O sesterces, this honor's done to you: Of Lybia, where such mushrooms can be You are his friends, and you his brethren With flying knife, and as his art directs proper gestures every fowl dissects— too. Wouldst thou become his patron and his lord, Wouldst thou be, in thy turn, by him adored, He viler friends with doubtful mushrooms treats; Secure for you, himself champignons eats: Such Claudius loved, of the same sort and taste, If thou dare murmur, if thou dare com- Till Agrippina kindly gave the last. plain With freedom like a Roman gentleman, And dragged like Cacus by Herculean hands To him are ordered, and those happy few you, Most fragrant fruits. Such in Pheacian gar- Where a perpetual autumn ever smiled Descend to take a glass once touched by By such swift Atalanta was betrayed: Thou takst all this as done to save expense? | On thy shaved slavish head. Meanwhile, and sport. Thou thinkst thyself companion of the great Art free and happy in thy own conceit; He thinks thou'rt tempted by th' attractive smell Of his warm kitchen. And he judges well; For who so naked, in whose empty veins. One single drop of noble blood remainsWhat free-born man, who, though of mongrel strain Would twice support the scorn and proud gin, he was from his boyhood an enthusiastic disdain student, and early disclosed his poetical pow With which those idols you adore, the ers. Very soon, too, he turned his attention to satire, for which the vile condition of Roman society gave him full argument and illustration. Honest himself, and inculcating a purity which he displayed in his own life, he lashed Roman vices with the severest rigor. He always handles vice with angry contempt and hatred. To the taste of the present age he is somewhat offensive, because he descends into the vile details of vicious living; he describes too exactly and curiously the sins he rebukes. He has left sixteen satires. One of them, launched against a pantomime-dancer-Paris, who had been a favorite of Do If you can bear all this and think him mitian-offended Hadrian, who was under a kind, similar influence, and who therefore sent the You well deserve the treatment which you poet into honorable exile, into Egypt or Libya. find. At last thou wilt beneath the burden bow, And, glad, receive the manumitting blow The works of Juvenal present a remarkable delineation of the private life of the Romans in his age. THE MAID OF THE RHONE. WAS in that lovely land | Oh, many an eye had marked it well, But none that warrior's tale could tell, Save that he bore the Red Cross shield And fought in some far Syrian field. that lies On scenes that to the pil- As when, undimmed by It rose amid the dawn of time That early spring whose blossoms grew While yet the heavens and earth were new. There stood beside the rapid Rhone, That, now from Leman free, By wood and city wall swept on To meet the classic sea, An ancient and a stately hall, And she, the lady of the tower, Though last of all her line, Of beauty-at whose shrine. And proved their vows by song and sword. A warrior's portrait, pale, gaze But there the maiden's earliest glance away. So loved the lady of the tower; Though past his manhood's prime; His steps in many a clime; |