Читать книгу Yale Classics - Ancient Greek Literature - Anacreon - Страница 159

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To rear a child is easy, but to teach

Morals and manners is beyond our reach;

To make the foolish wise, the wicked good,

That science yet was never understood.

The sons of Esculapius, if their art

Could remedy a perverse and wicked heart,

Might earn enormous wages! But in fact

The mind is not compounded and compact

Of precept and example; human art

In human nature has no share or part.

Hatred of vice, the fear of shame and sin,

Are things of native growth, not grafted in:

Else wives and worthy parents might correct

In children's hearts each error and defect:

Whereas we see them disappointed still,

No scheme nor artifice of human skill

Can rectify the passions or the will.