MY Martial owns a garden, famed to please, Beyond the glades of the Hesperides; Along Janiculum lies the chosen block Where the cool grottos trench the hanging rock. The moderate summit, something plain and bare, Tastes overhead of a serener air; And while the clouds besiege the vales below, Keeps the clear heaven and doth with sunshine glow. To the June stars that circle in the skies The dainty roofs of that tall villa rise. Hence do the seven imperial hills appear; And you may view the whole of Rome from here; Beyond, the Alban and the Tuscan hills; And the cool groves and the cool falling rills, Rubre Fidenæ, and with virgin blood Anointed once Perenna’s orchard wood. Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way, Stretch far broad below the dome of day; And lo! the traveller toiling towards his home; And all unheard, the chariot speeds to Rome! For here no whisper of the wheels; and tho’ The Mulvian Bridge, above the Tiber’s flow, Hangs all in sight, and down the sacred stream The sliding barges vanish like a dream, The seaman’s shrilling pipe not enters here, Nor the rude cries of porters on the pier. And if so rare the house, how rarer far The welcome and the weal that therein are! So free the access, the doors so widely thrown, You half imagine all to be your own.
GO(D) knows, my Martial, if we two could be To enjoy our days set wholly free; To the true life together bend our mind, And take a furlough from the falser kind. No rich saloon, nor palace of the great, Nor suit at law should trouble our estate; On no vainglorious statues should we look, But of a walk, a talk, a little book, Baths, wells and meads, and the veranda shade, Let all our travels and our toils be made. Now neither lives unto himself, alas! And the good suns we see, that flash and pass And perish; and the bell that knells them cries: “Another gone: O when will ye arise?”
WOULDST thou be free? I think it not, indeed; But if thou wouldst, attend this simple rede: [When quite contented / Thou shall be free when] thou canst dine at home And drink a small wine of the march of Rome; When thou canst see unmoved thy neighbour’s plate, And wear my threadbare toga in the gate; When thou hast learned to love a small abode, And not to choose a mistress _à la mode_: When thus contained and bridled thou shalt be, Then, Maximus, then first shalt thou be free.