You’ll find young Paullus passing fair,
  Modest, refined, and tony;
Go, now, incite the favored wight! 
  With Venus for a crony
He’ll outshine all at feast and ball
  And conversazione!

Then shall that godlike nose of thine
  With perfumes be requited,
And then shall prance in Salian dance
  The girls and boys delighted,
And while the lute blends with the flute
  Shall tender loves be plighted.

But as for me, as you can see,
  I’m getting old and spiteful. 
I have no mind to female kind,
  That once I deemed delightful;
No more brim up the festive cup
  That sent me home at night full.

Why do I falter in my speech,
  O cruel Ligurine? 
Why do I chase from place to place
  In weather wet and shiny? 
Why down my nose forever flows
  The tear that’s cold and briny?

TO LYDIA

Tell me, Lydia, tell me why,
  By the gods that dwell above,
Sybaris makes haste to die
  Through your cruel, fatal love.

Now he hates the sunny plain;
  Once he loved its dust and heat. 
Now no more he leads the train
  Of his peers on coursers fleet.

Now he dreads the Tiber’s touch,
  And avoids the wrestling-rings,—­
He who formerly was such
  An expert with quoits and things.

Come, now, Mistress Lydia, say
  Why your Sybaris lies hid,
Why he shuns the martial play,
  As we’re told Achilles did.

TO NEOBULE

A sorry life, forsooth, these wretched girls are undergoing,
Restrained from draughts of pleasant wine, from loving favors showing,
For fear an uncle’s tongue a reprimand will be bestowing!

Sweet Cytherea’s winged boy deprives you of your spinning,
And Hebrus, Neobule, his sad havoc is beginning,
Just as Minerva thriftily gets ready for an inning.

Who could resist this gallant youth, as Tiber’s waves he breasted,
Or when the palm of riding from Bellerophon he wrested,
Or when with fists and feet the sluggers easily he bested?

He shot the fleeing stags with regularity surprising;
The way he intercepted boars was quite beyond surmising,—­
No wonder that your thoughts this youth has been monopolizing!

So I repeat that with these maids fate is unkindly dealing,
Who never can in love’s affair give license to their feeling,
Or share those sweet emotions when a gentle jag is stealing.

AT THE BALL GAME

What gods or heroes, whose brave deeds none can dispute,
Will you record, O Clio, on the harp and flute? 
What lofty names shall sportive Echo grant a place
On Pindus’ crown or Helicon’s cool, shadowy space?

Sing not, my Orpheus, sweeping oft the tuneful strings,
Of gliding streams and nimble winds and such poor things;
But lend your measures to a theme of noble thought,
And crown with laurel these great heroes, as you ought.