And where the brothers gained their highest fame
Thus of the godlike twain
Their praise in full refrain
Quite the two quarters of his poem claim.
A talent had been promised by the athlete
As payment for the work; but when 'twas read
Only a third he gave him, saying, “'Tis meet
Castor and Pollux give the rest instead!
Let that celestial pair acquit their debt,
And thus content you; but I'll treat you yet;
Come, sup with me on glorious fare;
Choice spirits are my chosen guests,
My parents and my friends are there,
Come, be a comrade like the rest!"
Simonides assented, perhaps from fear
Of losing both his debt and praises due.
He comes, and finds them feasting off good cheer,
Each in good humour, and in jovial cue.
Up runs a servant, "At the door two men
Who ask to see you promptly, there and then !”
The crowd, when he had left his seat,
Passed not a dish uneaten, which they could eat. The two men were the sacred twins, whose praise Simonides had sounded in his lays.
By way of thanks, and for his verses' sake,
They urge him to retreat,
For that the house about their heads would break
And tumble at their feet!
It happened just precisely as they said:
Tombe sur le festin, brise plats et flacons,
N'en fait pas moins aux échansons.
Ce ne fut pas le pis: car pour rendre complète
La vengeance due au poëte,
Une poutre cassa les jambes à l'athlète,
Et renvoya les conviés
Pour la plus part estropiés.
La renommée eut soin de publier l'affaire :
Chacun cria miracle. On doubla le salaire
Que méritaient les vers d'un homme aimé des dieux.
Il n'était fils de bonne mère
Qui, les payant à qui mieux mieux,
Pour ses ancêtres n'en fit faire.
Je reviens à mon texte ; et dis premièrement
Qu'on ne saurait manquer de louer largement
Les dieux et leurs pareils : de plus que Melpomène
Souvent, sans déroger, trafique de sa peine :
Enfin, qu'on doit tenir notre art à quelque prix.
Les grands se font honneur, dès-lors qu'ils nous font grâce:
Jadis l'Olympe et le Parnasse
Etaient frères et bons amis.
A pillar gave the ceiling came away
With nothing to support it but a stay!
Breaks up the festival,
And smashes in its fall
Dishes and flagons all,
And leaves the servitors as good as dead!
This not the worst; as if to make complete
The poet's vengeance, down a girder came
And broke the legs, in falling, of the athlete,
And sent most of the roysterers home lame!
On all sides people published the renown
Of what they called a miracle through the town.
As for the poet whom the gods protected,
His verses fetched just twice what he expected.
There was no mother's son in all the place
Who wished to celebrate his ancestral race,
But paid, and through the nose, each several time
A heavier guerdon for the poet's rhyme.
I come back to my text, and the first thing I say
Is, you must not forget with a largess to pay
The gods, for such like, just as much as myself
Or my Muse, can't be thought to write quite without pelf:
Without derogation our art has its price;
While they honour, to pay we the great must entice :
The gods and the muses, the poet pretends,
In old times were brothers and very good friends.
Fable 15.-La Mort et le Malheureux.
UN malheureux appellait tous les jours
La mort à son secours.
O mort! lui disait-il, que tu me semble belle !
Viens vîte, viens finir ma fortune cruelle !
La Mort crut en venant, l'obliger en effet.
Elle frappe à sa porte, elle entre, elle se montre.
Que vois-je ! cria-t-il : ôtez-moi cet objet !
Qu'il est hideux! que sa rencontre
Me cause d'horreur et d'effroi !
N'approche pas, ô Mort! ô Mort, retire-toi!
Mécénas fut un galant homme :
Il a dit quelque part : Qu'on me rende impotent,
Cul-de-jatte, goutteux, manchot, pourvu qu'en somme
Je vive, c'est assez, je suis plus que content.
Ne viens jamais, ô Mort! on t'en dit tout autant.
Fable 15.-Death and the Unhappy Man.
A POOR man every day he spent
To help him Death did supplicate.
"O Death, you seem so excellent!
Oh quickly end my cruel fate!"
Death, to oblige, at once appeared
With countenance so wan and weird,
Knocks at his door, and shows his face :
"What do I see? Take it away!
What is this hideous object, say?
Oh, take it from this place!
It fills me with horror and with fear,
"Retire, O Death! O Death, approach not near!"
Some verses of Mecenas ran,
Mecenas quite the ladies' man,
"Let me a cripple be or lame,
One-armed, with gout, if that's your aim!
So that alive my days I've spent
Enough, I'm more than quite content!
Never come, Death! if that is true I hear,
You'd just as soon be absent, as be near."
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