He tells Venus that he now ceases to write Elegies.

Seek a new Poet, mother of the tender Loves; here the extreme turning-place is grazed 674 by my Elegies, which I, a foster-child of the Pelignian fields, have composed; nor have my sportive lays disgraced me. Me, I say, who, if that is aught, am the heir to my rank, 675 even through a long line of ancestors, and not lately made a Knight in the hurly-burly of warfare. Mantua delights in Virgil, Verona in Catullus; I shall be called the glory of the Pelignian race; which its own liberties summon to glorious arms, 676 when trembling Rome dreaded 677 the allied bands. And some stranger will say, as he looks on the walls of the watery Sulmo, which occupy but a few acres of land, "Small as you are, I will call you great, who were able to produce a Poet so great." Beauteous boy, and thou, Amathusian parent 678 of the beauteous boy, raise your golden standard from my fields. The horned 679 LyÆus 680 has struck me with a thyrsus more potent; with mighty steeds must a more extended plain be paced. Unwarlike Elegies, my sportive 681 Muse, farewell; a work destined to survive long after I am dead and gone.——