Horace, Carmina 1.1

Maecenas renowned for his kingly progenitors
O shield both and gloried sweetness of mine:

There are those whom it delights Olympic dust
To gather from a chariot, whom the pillar
Shunned by their wheels and the worthy palm
Raise up to terrestrial deities; this man,

If the fickle Quiritian crowd approve to raise him
In triple honors, rejoices; that, if he has put away
In his store, his very own, something
Gathered from Libyan crops; him glorying

To split fathers' earth with a plow you won't at all move
By Attalid treaties to split seas of Myrtus
With Venus' own trunk, a trembling sailor!

The merchant, fearing Africs' debate
With Icarian waves, praises leisure,
The lands of his city; but later he binds
Broken rafts, impatient of suffering want.

There is one who spurns not a cup of old Massic,
Nor hates to take hours from business, now
Stretching limbs 'neath green arbutus,
Now toward the calm source of waters holy.

Troops please many, and the tuba's blare
Mixed with the curved horn, war that is hateful
For mothers. Beneath a cold Jove

The hunter stays, unmindful of his tender wife,
Whether the faithful whelps see a stag
Or a Marsian boar breaks the rounded snares.

As for me, the rewards of doctoral ivy
Mix my brow with heightened gods,
Myself the cool grove of the nymphs
And the chorus tripping with Satyrs
Keeps from the crowd -- that is if Euterpe
Won't hold off her flutes and Polyhymnia, Lesbic,
Flees not at the touch of my beard.

So if you will graft with me vatic lyres,
I will broach the stars with my sublime crown.