free-verse17 lines
To Ibycus's Wife. - Translations From Horace.
by Charles Stuart CalverleyOD. ii. 15.
Spouse of penniless Ibycus,
Thus late, bring to a close all thy delinquencies,
All thy studious infamy:-
Nearing swiftly the grave - (that not an early one) -
Cease girls' sport to participate,
Blurring stars which were else cloudlessly brilliant.
What suits her who is beautiful
Suits not equally thee: rightly devastates
Thy fair daughter the homes of men,
Wild as Thyad, who wakes stirred by the kettle-drums.
Nothus' beauty constraining her,
Like some kid at his play, holds she her revelry:
Thy years stately Luceria's
Wools more fitly become - not din of harpsichords,
Not pink-petalled roseblossoms,
Not casks drained by an old lip to the sediment.