Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/99

"'Almighty Jove, who giv'st and tak'st away
The pains we mortals suffer, hear me pray!'
(So cries the mother of a child whose cold,
Or ague rather, now is five months old)
'Cure my poor boy, and he shall stand all bare
In Tiber, on thy fast, in morning air.'
So if, by chance or treatment, the attack
Should pass away, the wretch will bring it back,
And give the child his death: 'tis madness clear;
But what produced it? superstitious fear."
Such were the arms Stertinius, next in sense
To the seven sages, gave me for defence.
Now he that calls me mad gets paid in kind,
And told to feel the pigtail stuck behind.
H. Good Stoic, may you mend your loss, and sell
All your enormous bargains twice as well.
But pray, since folly's various, just explain
What type is mine? for I believe I'm sane.
D. What? is Agave conscious that she's mad
When she holds up the head of her poor lad?
H. I own I'm foolish--truth must have her will--
Nay, mad: but tell me, what's my form of ill?
D. I'll tell you. First, you build, which means you try
To ape great men, yourself some two feet high,
And yet you laugh to see poor Turbo fight,
When he looks big and strains beyond his height.
What? if Mæcenas does a thing, must you,
His weaker every way, attempt it too?