The Poetic Life

Giovanni della Casa, Giovanni della Casa's Poem Book, tr. John Van Sickle (1999), III., The Healthy Style of Poetic Life, pp. 45-47:  

        If you delight in wisdom's watchful care, 
        and keen ability gives strength, enjoy
        henceforth the gods' bright gift: thus you will live
        more rightly, much more fully, far more fitly 
        whatever time your friendly fates spin out.
        Nor how the commons view you need you give
        great weight, unruffled: much that stupid crowd
        weighs basely. Pay no heed, avoid
        retreating from the field where you're engaged:
        No sane man puts the people's view ahead
        of better men's applause, which you will get by right,
        since, Bembo, you already far outrun
        all others on this course: believe a straight
        and canny referee. Yet, meanwhile, we
        get charged with sloth by folks, lest you suppose
        they prize this simple life. No, they would have
        us give up trifling verse for real affairs,
        to sunny day from shade and darkness move:
        they blame inaction actively, they whine
        that we with wheedling love corrupt the pure
        in heart; like sour-faced relatives they scold. [...]