Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) - 1.3.1. lyrics

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Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) - 1.3.1. lyrics

All singers have the same fault, nothing will make them Offer to sing for their friends when they're asked, Yet unasked they never stop. Sardinian Tigellius Was like that. Even if Caesar, with all his power, Had begged him to sing out of friendship to him And his father, he'd have got nowhere: yet if he chose He'd cry: ‘Hail Bacchus!' at meals, from the egg to the fruit, Now in a ba**, now tenor, from tip to toe of the lyre. The man lacked balance: sometimes he'd run as if fleeing An enemy: sometimes walk slow as a man who's carrying Juno's sacred basket. Sometimes he'd two hundred slaves, Sometimes just ten: One day it was tetrarchs and kings And everything royal, the next: ‘All I ask is salt in a shell, A three-legged table, a coat that however ill-made Will keep out the cold.' If you gave ten thousand or so To this thrifty man content with so little, in a week His pockets were empty. He'd stay awake all night Till dawn, then snore all day. Never lived so inconsistent A creature. ‘Well,' someone might say, ‘and what about you? Have you no faults?' Yes, others, but different and lesser Perhaps. When Maenius once savaged absent Novius Someone said: ‘Look at yourself, or do you think to pretend We can't see you too?' He answered: ‘Oh, myself I pardon.' Such stupid and shameless self-love deserves to be censured.

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