Horace, Ode 3.26

vixi puellis nuper idoneus
et militavi non sine gloria,
     nunc arma defunctumque bello
     barbiton hic paries habebit,
laevom marinae qui Veneris latus
custodit. hic, hic ponite lucida
     funalia et vectis et arcus
     oppositis foribus minacis.
o quae beatum diva tenes Cyprum et
Memphin carentem Sithonia nive
     regina, sublimi flagello
     tange Chloen semel arrogante.

My erstwhile beauty and my skill I sing,
   When I once soldier’d on Love’s battlefield,
But Arms made obsolete by War I bring,
   My sword, my lyre, my spear, fife, drum and shield.
Now I consign them to their rightful place:
   Rest, rest, ye arms, on pegs by Venus’ side!
And near the Goddess, born of foam, a space
   For torches, threat’ning War where they abide.
O Goddess who in Cyprus blest doth dwell,
   And Memphis, far from Thracian mountains snowy,
Queen, take thy Whip against her to rebel,
   And with one humb’ling blow, I pray, strike Chloe.

—Horace, Ode 3.26

I rendered this poem into alternate rhyming lines of iambic pentameter so as to keep the line numbers the same, thereby imitating the styles of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century translators. It’s even better if you imagine it written out with elongated s and fl and ct ligatures, and the proper names in small caps. This poem would make a great sonnet, I think—there’s a pretty good volta right where the third quatrain would begin. Unfortunately, there are only twelve lines in the original, so if you wanted to stick your own ‘zinger’ couplet at the end, it’d have to be of your own devising.