Oh truant Muse, how are you going to make up for neglecting the perfect combination of truth and beauty? Both truth and beauty depend on my beloved, as you also do, and are dignified by that. Come on, answer, Muse. Perhaps you'll say that truth doesn't need any ornament, being already attached to beauty; that beauty needs no poet's pen to advertise it, and that the best things don't need any help. But are you going to be silent just because my beloved needs no praise? You can't excuse your silence on those grounds because you have the ability to make him outlive a gilded tomb to be praised by generations yet to come. Then do your job, Muse. I'm showing you how to make him as vivid in the far distant future as he is now.
