Explore "HORACE. (Epode XIV.)" by Eugene Field on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You ask me, friend, / Why I don't send / The long since due-and-paid-for numbers -- / Why, songless, I / As drunken lie / Abandoned to Lethaean slumbers.
Long time ago / (As well you know) / I started in upon that carmen; / My work was vain -- / But why complain? / When gods forbid, how helpless are men!
Some ages back, / The sage Anack / Courted a frisky Samian body, / Singing her praise / In metered phrase / As flowing as his bowls of toddy.
'Till I was hoarse / Might I discourse / Upon the cruelties of Venus -- / 'Twere waste of time / As well of rhyme, / For you've been there yourself, Maecenas!
Perfect your bliss, / If some fair miss / Love you yourself and _not_ your minae; / I, fortune's sport, / All vainly court / The beauteous, polyandrous Phryne!