Complete Poems

After you shall not have been here. While I am, why then should I labor
So as not to be, as if I were to be, when afterwards I am not.
Yet this fever holds me, and will hold me without end:
How foolishly and miserably we are all religious,
The whole race of men. This set aside, the infant is no gentler,
Assiduity no greater in the merchant: service
Is performed more promptly to a wealthy wife: to a friend
No one is more ready. Love with simplicity.
Lest you perhaps think me, as the greatest part of men act,
A kinsman of those things which morose old age brings.
In controversies I cut to the middle, I judge sparingly,
Not for myself, but for reason, or what seems to be reason.
I do battle, unconcerned with what this man or that man stubbornly holds.
Thus even now, what is right rings in my sleepless ear,
Since I have drawn it from the mouth of God, sent down from heaven:
Reporting the likeness and colors of eternal life.
Thus I am, to whom I might seem perhaps not disagreeable, so that
It may be allowed me, especially to you, who alone and unique
Are the guardian of letters, and a quiet port.
For if I displease the people, I shall deserve to have pleased in this.

The Advocate & the Physician.

If the physician deserves this, because he is believed to be a benefit to him
To whom he provides aid: on the other hand, by what cross is he deemed worthy,
If he prolongs the disease, not in that manner, [as] Tuellus
Is accustomed, ignorant of affairs and of wholesome duty:
But so that he may have more: so that he may be able to pay more
Extorted from the miseries of a wide estate.
If stubborn insanity of a hard neck, an evil mind, ungrateful pride
Has birthed a lawsuit: (what is like to this disease, what disease is equal?) black bile
Urges me toward the artificer of crimes, to be considered a consultant
Who seeks the law. To him I relate whatever seems
To be of use to the case. He praises: and [offers] me sterile hope