A Translation

by Rudyard Kipling

　　

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There are whose study is of smells, And to attentive schools rehearse How something mixed with something else Makes something worse. Some cultivate in broths impure The clients of our body, these, Increasing without Venus, cure, Or cause, disease. Others the heated wheel extol, And all its offspring, whose concern Is how to make it farthest roll And fastest turn. Me, much incurious if the hour Present, or to be paid for, brings Me to Brundusium by the power Of wheels or wings; Me, in whose breast no flame hath burned Life-long, save that by Pindar lit, Such lore leaves cold. I am not turned Aside to it More than when, sunk in thought profound Of what the unaltering Gods require, My steward (friend but slave) brings round Logs for my fire.

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