Select, all ye who write, a subject fit,
A subject, not too mighty for your wit!
And ere you lay your shoulders to the wheel,
Weigh well their strength, and all their weakness feel!
He, who his subject happily can choose,
Wins to his favour the benignant Muse;
The aid of eloquence he ne’er shall lack,
And order shall dispose and clear his track.

Order, I trust, may boast, nor boast in vain,
These Virtues and these Graces in her train.
What on the instant should be said, to say;
Things, best reserv’d at present, to delay;
Guiding the bard, thro’ his continu’d verse,
What to reject, and when; and what rehearse.

On the old stock of words our fathers knew,
Frugal and cautious of engrafting new,
Happy your art, if by a cunning phrase
To a new meaning a known word you raise:
If ’tis your lot to tell, at some chance time,
“Things unattempted yet in prose or rhime,”
Where you are driv’n perforce to many a word
Which the strait-lac’d Cethegi never heard,
Take, but with coyness take, the licence wanted,
And such a licence shall be freely granted:
New, or but recent, words shall have their course,
If drawn discreetly from the Graecian source.
Shall Rome, Caecilius, Plautus, fix your claim,
And not to Virgil, Varius, grant the same?
Or if myself should some new words attain,
Shall I be grudg’d the little wealth I gain?

Translation by George Coleman from The Art Of Poetry, An Epistle To The Pisos, by Horace used under a Project Gutenberg license.

Sumite materiam vostris, qui scribitis, aequam
Viribus: et versate diu, quid ferre recusent
Quid valeant humeri. Cui lecta potenter erit res,
Nec facundia deferet hunc, nec lucidus ordo.

Ordinis haec virtus erit et venus, aut ego fallor,
Ut jam nunc dicat, jam nunc debentia dici
Pleraque differat, et praesens in tempus omittat.
Hoc amet, hoc spernat, promissi carminis auctor.

In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque ferendis,
Dixeris egregié, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum: si forté necesse est
Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum;
Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis
Continget: dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter.
Et nova factaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si
Graeco fonte cadant, parcé detorta. Quid autem?
Caecilio, Plautoque dabit Romanus, ademptum
Virgilio, Varioque? ego cur acquirere pauca