for what cause to be Tibullus. (...

for what cause to be Tibullus.

(Elegiae 11)

Albius Tibullus

Pile your wealth high in yellow bullion
if you want to, if tilled wide acres make you
rich enough to

and you don't mind work that doesn't stop, and be still
that starts and posts when army trumpets blast
an enemy alert.

I'll take the poor man's discharge from that service,
maybe without honor. I'll take a hearth
that doesn't gain cold

and abiding habitation living. I'll plant young vines myself,
when the almanac says to, and cut offs that grow
too heavy for a poet's hand.

Harvest the author of all thingss never fail this farmer's
prayer for grain