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(From To His Wife Claudia)
Translated by C. A. Elton
FAIR stand the peopled towns: by Phœbus’ fane | |
| Auspicious graced, walls rose beside the main: | |
| Puteoli spreads smooth its haven’s sand, | |
| And shores, the shelter of the world, expand. | |
| Here Capua’s streets with Rome imperial vie, | 5 |
| Where Capys fixed his Trojan colony: | |
| Near lies the native city of my love; | |
| The mild soil Phœbus, by the guiding dove, | |
| Showed to Parthenope; the siren maid | |
| Crossed the wide seas, and here her Naples laid. | 10 |
| Hither I seek to bear thee: not my race | |
| Springs from wild Lybia, nor from barbarous Thrace. | |
| Tempered by breezy summers, winters bland, | |
| The waveless seas glide slumbering to the land: | |
| Safe peace is here; life’s careless ease is ours; | 15 |
| Unbroken rest, and sleep till morning hours. | |
| No courts here rage; no bickering brawls are known: | |
| The laws of men are in their manners shown; | |
| And Justice walks unguarded and alone. * * * * * | |
| Nor less the various charms of life are found | 20 |
| Where the wide champaign spreads its distant bound: | |
| Whether thou haunt warm Baiæ’s streaming shore, | |
| Or the prophetic sibyl’s cave explore; | |
| Or mount, made famous by Misenus’ oar; | |
| Or Gaurus’ vineyards, or the Caprean isle, | 25 |
| Where sailors mark the watch-tower’s moony pile; | |
| Surrentum’s hills, where acrid clusters twine, | |
| And where my Pollius dwells, and tends the vine: | |
| Ænaria’s healing lakes; and from the main | |
| The rocks of Statina emerged again. | 30 |
| A thousand pleasures could my verse expand, | |
| And darling loves of this my native land. | |
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