Complete Poetic Works, Volume 7

The Poet, swift with his javelin and superior in his great art,
Circles about, and tests where Fortune might be easiest.
Wherever the raging Seer carries himself in the middle of the ranks:
He returns from there a victor, and pulls back his foot from the enemy:
Here the Maiden secretly turns her swift reins.
She wanders through these entrances, and now those, and every
Circuit on every side, and shamelessly rotates her certain weapon.

THE SISTER is carried into the contest more boldly. She rushes against the enemy as if with contempt. Sometimes she might seem headlong, and more indulgent with hooked nostrils original: "uncis naribus," a classical idiom for sneering or mocking satire than befits a Maiden from the Heliconian Parthenon The temple of the Muses on Mount Helicon. You might say a Roman female gladiator original: "Ludiam" is training at the post, as the Satirist The Roman poet Juvenal shouts out:

Look with what a roar she delivers the blows she was taught,
And how she is bent by the great weight of the helmet: look how much
Bandage sits on her knees, and how thick the leggings are.

HENDECASYLLABLES A metrical line of eleven syllables, often used for witty or light poetry, being young men of masculine vigor, show nothing feminine. Instead, they fight strenuously. When the Elegies join hands, these join feet A pun on metrical feet. They are spirited, and will not easily leave their station.

THE SCAZON Also known as the choliambic or "limping" meter, characterized by a sudden rhythmic shift at the end of the line that gives it a blunt, prose-like quality. This raw and warlike servant stands by its own weight. Possessing a stubborn nature, sudden, and sharpened on a whetstone, it has no regard for courtly ceremonies. It brings a muscular style of speech. For me, while it speaks what it feels, it creates a scene.

Before the trumpet gave the signal, I called these Allies original: "Symmachis" together into the center. I explained my mind to them and opened up what I felt about Poetry.

I. Its seeds were not scattered in our minds by Nature, nor matured by so many retreats of the ancient Poets, for the purpose of us anxiously gluing together quarreling syllables and measuring a verse with a rod. Rather, it was so that a capable Talent might be made more capable. Once filled with the best things and thoughts, it should pour out magnificent or tender speech from its own fountain, driven by delight.

II. Just as the fall or rise of the Nile is the cause and sign of sterility or fertility: so too, the less or more the Castalian... The Castalian Spring on Mount Parnassus was sacred to the Muses; Balde is comparing poetic inspiration to the rising waters of the Nile