The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius
And practice what may chains and exile claim:
On Guilt's broad base thy towering fortunes raise,
For virtue starves on--universal praise!
While crimes, in scorn of niggard fate, afford
The ivory couches, and the citron board, 120
The goblet high-embossed, the antique plate,
The lordly mansion, and the fair estate!
O! who can rest--who taste the sweets of life,
When sires debauch the son's too greedy wife;
When males to males, abjuring shame, are wed, 125
And beardless boys pollute the nuptial bed!
No: INDIGNATION, kindling as she views,
Shall, in each breast, a generous warmth infuse,
And pour, in Nature and the Nine's despite,
Such strains as I, or Cluvienus, write! 130
E'er since Deucalion, while, on every side,
The bursting clouds upraised the whelming tide,
Reached, in his little skiff, the forked hill,
And sought, at Themis' shrine, the Immortals' will;
When softening stones grew warm with gradual life, 135
And Pyrrha brought each male a virgin wife;
Whatever, passions have the soul possest,
Whatever wild desires inflamed the breast,
Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Love, Hatred, Transport, Rage,
Shall form the motley subject of my page. 140
And when could Satire boast so fair a field?
Say, when did Vice a richer harvest yield?
When did fell Avarice so engross the mind?
Or when the lust of play so curse mankind?--
No longer, now, the pocket's stores supply 145
The boundless charges of the desperate die:
The chest is staked!--muttering the steward stands,
And scarce resigns it, at his lord's commands.
Is it a SIMPLE MADNESS,--I would know,
To venture countless thousands on a throw, 150
Yet want the soul, a single piece to spare,
To clothe the slave, that shivering stands and bare!
Who called, of old, so many seats his own,
Or on seven sumptuous dishes supped alone?--
Then plain and open was the cheerful feast, 155
And every client was a bidden guest;
Now, at the gate, a paltry largess lies,
And eager hands and tongues dispute the prize.
But first (lest some false claimant should be found),
The wary steward takes his anxious round, 160
And pries in every face; then calls aloud,
"Come forth, ye great Dardanians, from the crowd!"
For, mixed with us, e'en these besiege the door,
And scramble for--the pittance of the poor!
"Dispatch the Prætor first," the master cries, 165
"And next the Tribune." "No, not so;" replies
The Freedman, bustling through, "first come is, still,
First served; and I may claim my right, and will!--
Though born a slave ('tis bootless to deny,
What these bored ears betray to every eye), 170
On my own rents, in splendor, now I live,
On five fair freeholds! Can the PURPLE give
Their Honors, more? when, to Laurentum sped,
NOBLE Corvinus tends a flock for bread!--
Pallas and the Licinii, in estate, 175
Must yield to me: let, then, the Tribunes wait."
Yes, let them wait! thine, Riches, be the field!--
It is not meet, that he to Honor yield,
To SACRED HONOR, who, with whitened feet,
Was hawked for sale, so lately, through the street. 180
O gold! though Rome beholds no altars flame,
No temples rise to thy pernicious name,
Such as to Victory, Virtue, Faith are reared,
And Concord, where the clamorous stork is heard,
Yet is thy full divinity confest, 185
Thy shrine established here, in every breast.
But while, with anxious eyes, the great explore
How much the dole augments their annual store,
What misery must the poor dependent dread,
Whom this small pittance clothed, and lodged, and fed? 190
Wedged in thick ranks before the donor's gates,
A phalanx firm, of chairs and litters, waits:
Thither one husband, at the risk of life,
Hurries his teeming, or his bedrid wife;
Another, practiced in the gainful art, 195
With deeper cunning tops the beggar's part;
Plants at his side a close and empty chair:
"My Galla, master;--give me Galla's share."
"Galla!" the porter cries; "let her look out."
"Sir, she's asleep. Nay, give me;--can you doubt!" 200
What rare pursuits employ the clients' day!
First to the patron's door their court to pay,
Next to the forum, to support his cause,
Thence to Apollo, learned in the laws,
And the triumphal statues; where some Jew, 205
Some mongrel Arab, some--I know not who--
Has impudently dared a niche to seize,
Fit to be p---- against, or--what you please.--
Returning home, he drops them at the gate:
And now the weary clients, wise too late, 210
Resign their hopes, and supperless retire,
To spend the paltry dole in herbs and fire.
Meanwhile, their patron sees his palace stored
With every dainty earth and sea afford:
Stretched on th' unsocial couch, he rolls his eyes 215
O'er many an orb of matchless form and size,
Selects the fairest to receive his plate,
And, at one meal, devours a whole estate!--
But who (for not a parasite is there)
The selfishness of luxury can bear? 220
See! the lone glutton craves whole boars! a beast
Designed, by nature, for the social feast!--
But speedy wrath o'ertakes him: gorged with food,
And swollen and fretted by the peacock crude,
He seeks the bath, his feverish pulse to still, 225
Hence sudden death, and age without a Will!
Swift flies the tale, by witty spleen increast,
And furnishes a laugh at every feast;
The laugh, his friends not undelighted hear,
And, fallen from all their hopes, insult his bier. 230
NOTHING is left, NOTHING, for future times
To add to the full catalogue of crimes;
The baffled sons must feel the same desires,
And act the same mad follies, as their sires.
VICE HAS ATTAINED ITS ZENITH:--Then set sail, 235
Spread all thy canvas, Satire, to the gale--
But where the powers so vast a theme requires?
Where the plain times, the simple, when our sires
Enjoyed a freedom, which I dare not name,
And gave the public sin to public shame, 240
Heedless who smiled or frowned?--Now, let a line
But glance at Tigellinus, and you shine,
Chained to a stake, in pitchy robes, and light,
Lugubrious torch, the deepening shades of night;
Or, writhing on a hook, are dragged around, 245
And, with your mangled members, plow the ground.
What, shall the wretch of hard, unpitying soul,
Who for THREE uncles mixed the deadly bowl,
Propped on his plumy couch, that all may see,
Tower by triumphant, and look down on me! 250
Yes; let him look. He comes! avoid his way,
And on your lip your cautious finger lay;
Crowds of informers linger in his rear,
And, if a whisper pass, will overhear.
Bring, if you please, Æneas on the stage, 255
Fierce war, with the Rutulian prince, to wage;
Subdue the stern Achilles; and once more,
With Hylas! Hylas! fill the echoing shore;
Harmless, nay pleasant, shall the tale be found,
It bares no ulcer, and it probes no wound. 260
But when Lucilius, fired with virtuous rage,
Waves his keen falchion o'er a guilty age,
The conscious villain shudders at his sin,
And burning blushes speak the pangs within;
Cold drops of sweat from every member roll, 265
And growing terrors harrow up his soul:
Then tears of shame, and dire revenge succeed--
Say, have you pondered well the advent'rous deed?
Now--ere the trumpet sounds--your strength debate;
The soldier, once engaged, repents too late. 270
J. Yet I MUST write: and since these iron times,
From living knaves preclude my angry rhymes,
I point my pen against the guilty dead,
And pour its gall on each obnoxious head.
SATIRE II.
O FOR an eagle's wings! that I might fly
To the bleak regions of the polar sky,
When from their lips the cant of virtue falls,
Who preach like Curii, live like Bacchanals!
Devoid of knowledge, as of worth, they thrust, 5
In every nook, some philosophic bust;
For he, among them, counts himself most wise,
Who most old sages of the sculptor buys;
Sets most true Zenos, or Cleanthes' heads,
To guard the volumes which he--never reads! 10
TRUST NOT TO OUTWARD SHOW: in every street
Obscenity, in formal garb, we meet.--
And dost thou, hypocrite, our lusts arraign,
Thou! of Socratic catamites the drain!
Nature thy rough and shaggy limbs designed 15
To mark a stern, inexorable mind;
But all's so smooth below!--"the surgeon smiles,
And scarcely can, for laughter, lance the piles."
Gravely demure, in wisdom's awful chair,
His beetling eyebrows longer than his hair, 20
In solemn state, the affected Stoic sits,
And drops his maxims on the crowd by fits!--
Yon Peribomius, whose emaciate air,
And tottering gait, his foul disease declare,
With patience I can view; he braves disgrace, 25
Not skulks behind a sanctimonious face:
Him may his folly, or his fate excuse--
But whip me those, who Virtue's name abuse,
And, soiled with all the vices of the times,
Thunder damnation on their neighbor's crimes! 30
"Shrink at the pathic Sextus! Can I be,
Whate'er my guilt, more infamous than he?"
Varillus cries: Let those who tread aright,
Deride the halt; the swarthy Moor, the white;
This we might bear; but who his spleen could rein, 35
And hear the Gracchi of the mob complain?
Who would not mingle earth, and sea, and sky,
Should Milo murder, Verres theft, decry,
Clodius adultery? Catiline accuse
Cethegus, Lentulus, of factious views, 40
Or Sylla's pupils, soil'd with deeper guilt,
Arraign their master for the blood he spilt?
Yet have we seen--O shame, for ever fled!--
A barbarous judge start from the incestuous bed,
And, with stern voice, those rigid laws awake, 45
At which the powers of War and Beauty quake,
What time his drugs were speeding to the tomb
The abortive fruit of Julia's teeming womb!--
And must not, now, the most debased and vile,
Hear these false Scauri with a scornful smile; 50
And, while the hypocrites their crimes arraign,
Turn, like the trampled asp, and bite again!
They must; they do:--When late, amid the crowd,
A zealot of the sect exclaimed aloud,
Where sleeps the Julian law? Laronia eyed 55
The scowling Stoicide, and taunting, cried,
"Blest be the age that such a censor gave,
The groaning world to chasten and to save!
Blush, Rome, and from the sink of sin arise--
Lo! a THIRD CATO, sent thee from the skies! 60
But--tell me yet--What shop the balm supplied,