Bki:Xxxi A Prayer To Apollo

What is the poet’s request to Apollo? What does he pray for as he pours out the wine from the bowl? Not for the rich harvests of fertile Sardinia, nor the herds, (they’re delightful), of sunlit Calabria, not for India’s gold or its ivory, nor fields our silent Liris’s stream carries away in the calm of its flow. Let those that Fortune allows prune the vines, with a Calenian knife, so rich merchants can drink their wine from a golden cup, wine they’ve purchased with Syrian goods, who, dear to the gods, three or four times yearly, revisit the briny Atlantic, unscathed. I browse on olives, and chicory and simple mallow. Apollo, the son of Latona, let me enjoy what I have, and, healthy in body and mind, as I ask, live an old age not without honour, and one not lacking the art of the lyre.