These lines may be no more than an academic exercise on a commonplace theme, but there can be no doubt of their artistic success. We find the same simplicity in Columella, but not the same art. Compare them with the work of Petronius' contemporary, Calpurnius Siculus, and there is all the difference between true poetry and mere poetising. More passionate and more convincing is the elegiac poem celebrating the poet's return to the scene of former happiness: o litus vita mihi dulcius, o mare! felix, cui licet ad terras ire subinde tuas! o formosa dies! hoc quondam rure solebam naidas alterna[335] sollicitare manu. hic fontis lacus est, illic sinus egerit algas: haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus. pervixi; neque enim fortuna malignior umquam eripiet nobis, quod prior aura dedit.[336] O shore, O sea, that I love more than life! Happy is he that may straightway visit the lands ye border. O fairest day! 'Twas here that once I was wont to swim and vex the sea-nymphs with my hands' alternate strokes. Here is a stream's deep pool, there the bay casts up its seaweed: here is a spot that can faithfully guard the secret of one's love. I have lived my life to the full; nor can grudging fortune ever rob me of that which her favouring breeze once gave me. But Petronius can attain to equal success in other veins. Now we have a fragment in the epic style containing a simile at once original and beautiful: haec ait et tremulo deduxit vertice canos consecuitque genas; oculis nec defuit imber, sed qualis rapitur per vallis improbus amnis, cum gelidae periere nives et languidus auster non patitur glaciem resoluta vivere terra, gurgite sic pleno facies manavit et alto insonuit gemitu turbato murmure pectus.[337] He spake, and rent the white hair on his trembling head and tore his cheeks, and his eyes streamed with a flood of tears. As when a resistless river sweeps down the valley when the chill snows have melted and the languid south wind thaws the earth and suffers not the ice to remain, even so his face streamed with a torrent of weeping and his breast groaned loud with a confused murmur of sorrow. Elsewhere we find him writing in satirical vein of the origin of religion,[338] on the decay of virtue,[339] on the hardship of the married state[340]: 'uxor legis onus, debet quasi census amari.' nec censum vellem semper amare meum. 'One should love one's wife as one loves one's fortune.' Nay, I desire not always to love even my fortune. But it is in a love-poem that he reaches his highest achievement: