[BNP/E3, 127I – 4r]

Horace

Horace “Ars Poetica”

“Ars Poetica”.

If to a human head a painter choose[1]

A horse’s neck to set, and divers plumes

On limbs each taken from a several frame,

So that an upper woman semblance fair

Should in some dusky fish unseemly tail.

Could ye, though friends, admitted to the sight,

Contain your laughter? Yet believe me, Pisos,

This piece that look is very like, whose shapes

So feigned chaotic, like distempered dreams,

Give neither head nor foot a lingering form.

But equal power to painter and to bard

Was ever giver everything to dare.

We know’t; we crave, and give in turn, this leave.

Yet not that you should wild and tame mute 

Or couple doves move on tigers, birds and snakes.

Paragraph 1.

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[4v]

Most writers, noble, dire, and sons as noble,

On stricken irony by semblance of the truth;

I strive to be concise and an[2] obscure,

{…}

Gaveston.

Facetiousness.

 
[1] choose /chose\
[2] an /grow\