UC-NRLF 
 
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TRANSLATIONS BY 
 
 THE LAST KNIGHT. A Romance Garland. 
 Translated from the German of Anastasius 
 Griin by John O. Sargent. Crown 8vo, 
 $2.50. 
 
 HORATIAN ECHOES. Translations of the 
 Odes of Horace by John O. Sargent. With 
 Introduction by Olivkr Wendell Holmes. 
 i2mo. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 Boston and New York. 
 
HORATIAN ECHOES 
 
 TRANSLATIONS OF THE ODES 
 OF HORACE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN OSBORNE SARGENT 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (3r]be 0iberi5itie ^rcsj^, (CamBritige 
 
 1893 
 
Copyright, 1893, 
 Bv GEORGIANA W. SARGENT. 
 
 All rights I'eserved. 
 
 T^e Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 
 
CONTENTS ;^^: 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 XI 
 
 Introduction, by Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 Biographical Sketch of the Translator . 
 
 Horace, an Introductory Ode ...... xix 
 
 The Odes of Horace, Book One. 
 
 I. To Maecenas i 
 
 II. To Augustus 3 
 
 III. To the Ship in which Virgil sailed to Athens . 6 
 
 IV. To Lucius Sestius 9 
 
 V. To Pyrrha 11 
 
 VI. To Agrippa 13 
 
 VII. To Plancus 15 
 
 VIII. To Lydia 18 
 
 IX. To Thaliarchus 20 
 
 XI. To Leuconoe 22 
 
 XII. Augustus 23 
 
 XIII. To Lydia 27 
 
 XIV. To the State ........ 29 
 
 XV. The Prophecy of Nereus . . . . . -31 
 
 XVI. A Palinode ' 34 
 
 XVII. To Tyndaris 36 
 
 XIX. Glycera 38 
 
 XXI. To Diana and Apollo 40 
 
 XXII. To Fuscus 42 
 
 XXIII. To Chloe 44 
 
 XXIV. To Virgil 45 
 
 iii 
 
 M147915 
 
IV CONTENTS 
 
 XXVI. To Lamia 47 
 
 XXVIII. Archytas .'....,,.. 48 
 
 XXIX. To Iccius , . . 51 
 
 XXX. To Venus 53 
 
 XXXI. To Apollo 54 
 
 XXXII. To my Lyre 56 
 
 XXXIII. To Albius Tibullus 58 
 
 XXXIV. To Himself 60 
 
 XXXV. To Fortune 62 
 
 XXXVL To Numida 65 
 
 XXXVII. Cleopatra • . 67 
 
 XXXVIII. To his Servant 69 
 
 Book Two. 
 
 I. To Pollio 70 
 
 II. To Crispus Sallustius 73 
 
 III. To Dellius 75 
 
 IV. To Xanthias ^^ 
 
 V. Lalage 79 
 
 VI. To Septimius 81 
 
 VII. To Pompeius Varus 83 
 
 VIII. To Barine 86 
 
 IX. To Valgius • ... 88 
 
 XI. To Quintius 90 
 
 XII. To Maecenas 92 
 
 XIII. To a Tree 94 
 
 XIV. To Postumus 97 
 
 XV. Old Times and New 99 
 
 XVI. To Grosphus loi 
 
 XVII. To Maecenas 104 
 
 XVIII. Vanity of Riches 106 
 
 XIX. To Bacchus 109 
 
 XX. To Maecenas iii 
 
 Book Three. 
 
 I. A Chorus of Virgins and Youths . . . . 113 
 
 II. Education 116 
 
 III. The Honest Man 118 
 
CONTENTS V 
 
 IV. To Calliope . . . 122 
 
 V. Regulus . . 127 
 
 VI. To the Romans 
 VII. To Asterie . 
 
 131 
 '34 
 
 VIII. To Maecenas 136 
 
 IX. An Amoebean Ode 138 
 
 X. To Lyce 140 
 
 XI. To Mercury 142 
 
 XIII. To the Fountain of Bandusia 145 
 
 XIV. To the Roman People 147 
 
 XVI. To Maecenas 149 
 
 XVII. To Lamia 152 
 
 XVIII. ToFaunus 154 
 
 XIX. To Telephus 156 
 
 XXIII. To Phidyle 158 
 
 XXIV. Cupidity 160 
 
 XXVI. To Venus 164 
 
 XXVII. To Galatea 165 
 
 XXIX. To Maecenas 170 
 
 XXX. To Melpomene 175 
 
 Book Four. 
 
 I. To Venus 176 
 
 II. To Julius Antonius 179 
 
 III. To Melpomene 183 
 
 IV. Drusus 185 
 
 VI. To Apollo 191 
 
 VII. To Torquatus 194 
 
 VIII. To Censorinus . . . . . . . .196 
 
 IX. To Lollius 199 
 
 XI. To Phyllis 202 
 
 XII. To Virgil 205 
 
 XIV. To Augustus 208 
 
 XV. The Praises of Augustus 211 
 
 Appendix 215 
 
 Second Epode 232 
 
 Index of (Latin) First Lines 237 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 IT gives me peculiar pleasure to write a few lines 
 of introduction to the translation made by my 
 dear and almost lifelong friend, John Osborne Sar- 
 gent. 
 
 We began our literary life together. Hand in 
 hand, like the Babes in the Wood, we ventured into 
 the untried realm of letters : he, a college senior of 
 twenty ; I, a half-trained graduate of about the same 
 age. Side by side our early productions appeared in 
 the same periodicals ; and from that day to the year 
 of his death we have kept in friendly relations with 
 each other. 
 
 Mr. Sargent was by no means homo wiiiis libri, a 
 man of a single book, but few scholars have shown 
 more devotion to a chosen author than he has mani- 
 fested to his beloved Horace. That classic writer was 
 
viii INTR OD UC TION 
 
 always a favorite of the learned. The perfection of 
 his style, the admirable truth and discrimination of 
 his critical judgment, the charming companionable 
 familiarity of his Odes, the thoroughly human feeling 
 which pervades them, qualified by the sensitive fasti- 
 diousness inseparable from the highest cultivation, — 
 fit him for the scholar's intimate and the student's 
 guide. Few could appreciate these excellences so 
 fully as Mr. Sargent. He assimilated all that was most 
 characteristic and captivating in this delicious writer, 
 whose fascination surpasses that of poets of far loftier 
 pretensions. Virgil has been the object of an admira- 
 tion amounting almost to worship, but he will often 
 be found on the shelf, while Horace lies on the stu- 
 dent's table, next his hand. It is a privilege to be in- 
 troduced to the great Augustan lyrical poet and critic 
 by one so thoroughly conversant with his author, and 
 so deeply imbued with all the distinguishing qualities 
 of this refined, genial, clear-sighted, thoroughbred 
 Roman gentleman. 
 
 All Mr. Sargent's translations bear the same mark 
 of fidelity to the original, and a happy transfusion of 
 ancient thought, which can never grow old, into the 
 modern phrases of another language. 
 
INTR ODUC TION ix 
 
 It is not as a critic that I stand for a moment be- 
 tween Mr. Sargent and his reader, but rather as a 
 friend who thoroughly recognizes the translator's fit- 
 ness for the work he had undertaken. It is deeply to 
 be regretted that he was called away before he had 
 completed the whole task which he had contemplated, 
 but we are thankful for the valuable literary legacy he 
 has left us. 
 
 January y i8gj. 
 
The repetition of one of the Odes of Horace to him- 
 self, was to him such music, as a lesson on the viol 
 was to others, when they played it to themselves or 
 friends. — Izaak Walton's Life of Bishop Sanderson. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 JOHN OSBORNE SARGENT was born in Glouces- 
 ter, Mass., September 20, 181 1. His father was 
 Epes Sargent, a Boston sea-captain and merchant ; 
 his mother was Hannah Dane Coffin, of Gloucester. 
 He entered the Boston Latin School in 182 1. In a 
 collection of articles written by the Latin School boys 
 of his time, entitled the " Prize Book," appeared a 
 Latin ode by him, and a translation of the first elegy 
 of Tyrtaeus. "Juvenilia," a similar volume, contains 
 his first printed translation of an ode of Horace. He 
 graduated from Harvard College in 1830, at the age 
 of nineteen, the valedictorian of his class. During 
 the last year of his college life he was the leader of 
 the club that edited the " Collegian," a brilliant col- 
 lege monthly. 
 
 In reminiscences written for his class book in 1880, 
 he says : — 
 
Xll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 ''On leaving college I entered the law office of 
 William Sullivan, of Boston, the distinguished advo- 
 cate. My fellow-students were my class-mate Thomas 
 C. Amory and John T. S. Sullivan. We studied very 
 fairly, and varied our amusements and studies by an 
 occasional excursion into politics. Those were stirring 
 times. I blush to relate that now and then I stole an 
 hour, that might have been better spent in Blackstone 
 and Chitty, to write verses printed under pseudonyms 
 in the 'Atlantic Souvenir' and the 'Token,' illus- 
 trated annuals that were then fashionable, and that 
 may still be referred to as examples of the art and 
 light literature of that period. In those fledgling 
 days, in connection with my friends Wendell Holmes 
 and Park Benjamin, I took a minor part in the pro- 
 duction of a brochure entitled 'Illustrations of the 
 Athenaeum Gallery,' and also in the 'Harbinger,' a 
 collection of poems that we made at the suggestion 
 of our friend. Dr. Samuel G. Howe, for sale at the 
 great 'Fair for the Blind,' in 1833." 
 
 He was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1833, and 
 from 1836 to 1840 he was active as a journalist in 
 Boston. Of this period he writes : " The country 
 was then in a state of chronic agitation, politically, 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xill 
 
 and a letter of mine on some irritating topic, ad- 
 dressed to the ' Boston Atlas,' then under the charge 
 of Richard Haughton, led to an arrangement under 
 which, for two or three years, I furnished that paper 
 with its political leaders." 
 
 In Governor Everett's time, Mr. Sargent was elected 
 to the lower house of the Massachusetts Legislature, 
 being its youngest member. In 1838 he was invited 
 by Colonel Webb, of New York, who was perhaps the 
 most effective partisan writer of his day, to join the 
 " Courier and Enquirer." In that office he remained 
 till after the election of President Harrison, in 1840, 
 "playing the useful man," he says, "when an address, 
 or a string of resolutions, or a speech, was wanted in 
 a hurry." 
 
 In 1 841 he resumed the practice of the law, and 
 was admitted to the Bar of New York and the Bar of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States. Drawn 
 into Washington life, he became one of the managers 
 of a new paper, "The Republic," which was the organ 
 of President Taylor's administration. He continued 
 his connection with the paper until a difference arose 
 regarding the President's retention of the Secretary 
 of War, who, as the public were informed, had been 
 
XIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 busy working up what was known as the Galphin 
 claim, in which he was personally interested. Mr. 
 Sargent not only declined to say a word in his defence, 
 but made such comments on the transaction as ren- 
 dered the editors' relations with the cabinet rather 
 equivocal, and subsequently he and another of the 
 editors withdrew from the paper. But on President 
 Fillmore's entrance into office Mr. Sargent was asked 
 to resume his connection with " The Republic," and 
 continued to conduct it till the close of the adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 The account he gives of the political situation at 
 this period is not without interest. " During the Whig 
 Convention of 1852 I saw Mr. Webster daily, break- 
 fasted with him, and dined with him ; and spent the 
 entire forenoon with him on the day when it was an- 
 nounced on a Wall Street bulletin that he would cer- 
 tainly be nominated on the next ballot. Mr. Fillmore 
 I also saw often ; and if I can judge from what both 
 said, there was no time during the session of that 
 convention when either of those gentlemen would 
 not gladly have transferred his votes to the other to 
 secure his nomination, if such a transfer had been 
 possible." 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xv 
 
 He accompanied Mr. Fillmore on his Southern and 
 Northern tours, and was tendered by him the com- 
 missionership to China, but he declined it. 
 
 Some of his correspondence with the distinguished 
 men of that day still survives, and a letter from Henry 
 Clay to his youthful friend contains the following pas- 
 sage : " I shall always be happy to hear from you, 
 from whom I know I shall receive only counsels of 
 truth, honor, and patriotism." 
 
 Mr. Sargent edited at intervals volumes of the 
 English poets, writing the biographies, — but they 
 were published in the name of his brother, Epes Sar- 
 gent. He also wrote between 1870 and 1874 three 
 pamphlets in review of " The Rule in Minot's Case," 
 that attracted attention in legal circles. These were 
 published anonymously. 
 
 In January, 1854, he was married to Georgiana 
 Welles, daughter of Benjamin Welles, Esq., of Boston, 
 and at about the same time he retired from politics 
 and journalism, and resumed the practice of the law 
 in Washington and New York. In 186 1 his wife's ill 
 health decided him to go abroad, and of this period of 
 his life he writes : — 
 
 " We passed the next twelve years, with inconsider- 
 
XVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 able intervals, in Europe, and one season at Torquay. 
 I began a translation of Anastasius Griin's ' Der 
 Letzte Ritter,' which was published in 1872, and 
 dedicated to my old-time and all-time friend, Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. In that year we returned from our 
 foreign wanderings, and soon after a mere accident 
 made me a summer resident of Lenox, in Berkshire. 
 Till that time I had taken no interest in rural life or 
 agricultural pursuits. But all that has changed. I 
 cannot say with Horace, ' Hoc erat in votis^ for it was 
 the last thing I should have thought of; but after 
 several summers' experience, I. can cordially say with 
 him, in the same connection, * Bene est ; nihil amplius 
 oroJ' " Here it was he resumed his active interest in 
 public affairs, and when Mr. Blaine was nominated for 
 President in 1884, he wrote very vigorously against his 
 candidacy in " Chapters for the Times," signing him- 
 self "A Berkshire Farmer." In "Tracts for the 
 Times," and other political articles written by him at 
 this time, were first published a number of his Hora- 
 tian translations and paraphrases, sometimes adapted 
 directly and explicitly to the political issues of the 
 day. 
 
 To the study of Horace, begun, as we have seen. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XVU 
 
 when he was a schoolboy, he had given more and 
 more thought with advancing years, and the transla- 
 tions contained in this volume were made, at odd 
 times and as a recreation, during the last decade of 
 his life. At one time he contemplated publishing a 
 collection of the best translations of the Odes. He 
 collected a large number of books for this purpose, 
 and left notes and criticisms on the versions of the 
 various English translators, from Sir Philip Sidney to 
 Sir Theodore Martin. To encourage in his college 
 the love of the poet, he offered, in 1886, a prize for the 
 best metrical translation of an ode of Horace, which 
 he continued annually during his life, and which has 
 since been endowed by his daughter. It was the first 
 prize opened to the competition of the Annex students. 
 Always interested in the welfare of his Alma Mater, 
 he was instrumental in starting the movement that 
 resulted in the broadening of the ranks of the Over- 
 seers by allowing them to be chosen from any State 
 in the Union, and, in 1880, he followed Dr. Bellows as 
 the second Overseer elected outside of Massachusetts. 
 He was for several years President of the Harvard 
 Club of New York, in which city he resided after his 
 return from Europe. 
 
xviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 A friend writes : " Mr. Sargent's manner of life 
 seems to have been in many respects what Horace 
 himself regarded most pleasant. He had his house 
 in town, and he had a charming country-seat ; he saw 
 much of the world, and he loved itj he loved his 
 friends, and he loved to have them about him; his 
 intellectual life extended to his death, — his studies 
 were pursued to the very last, and in his beloved 
 Horace he found delight, solace, peace, refreshment 
 at all times. In one of the last letters he wrote, he 
 referred to a book of translations which I had men- 
 tioned, saying that law business had prevented him 
 for six months from keeping run of the new pub- 
 lications. * Hence,' he wrote, 'within sight of port, 
 having only three odes' distance before me, I have 
 been obliged to abandon Horace for the present.' " 
 
 He did not live to resume the work ; and, in all, six 
 odes appear to have been untouched by him, while of 
 the others more than that number were left incomplete, 
 and have therefore been omitted from this volume. 
 
 He died of bronchial pneumonia, after an illness of 
 two weeks, on December 28, 1891, in New York. He 
 was buried from St. Paul's Church, Boston, and was 
 laid beside his wife in Mount Auburn. 
 
HORACE 
 
 HE who would echo Horace' lays 
 Aspires to an Icarian fame ; 
 And borne on waxen wings essays 
 A flight — may give some sea a name. 
 
 My fate perchance ! But as I write 
 I see through Time's reverted glass, 
 
 In fleckered mists of shade and light, 
 The phantoms of the ages pass. 
 
 I see an infant, tired with play, 
 Sleep sweetly in Apulia's wild, 
 
 And doves bring myrtle leaves and bay 
 To cover the courageous child. 
 xix 
 
HORACE 
 
 A stripling walks the streets of Rome, 
 With slate and satchel on his arm ; 
 
 His life abroad, his ways at home, 
 A loving father's care and charm. 
 
 Fulfilment of his boyhood's dream, 
 
 Greece welcomes now the freedman's son 
 
 He haunts the groves of Academe, 
 And quaffs the springs of Helicon. 
 
 Light of the World ! the central seat 
 Of wit and wisdom, art and lore, — 
 
 In Athens patriot exiles meet 
 Where bards and sages met before. 
 
 No athlete, and no warrior he. 
 With Brutus on Philippi's field, 
 
 The darling of Melpomene, 
 
 Not bravely, throws away his shield. 
 
 Her fleets dispersed and tempest-tost. 
 Her armies crushed, their leaders slain. 
 
 Now is the great Republic lost, 
 Lost never to revive again. 
 
HORACE xxi 
 
 The Julian star ascends the sky, 
 It shines on groups of learned men, 
 
 Law clips the wings of Liberty, 
 
 And Horace wields the Empire's pen. 
 
 Names, only names ! — the brilliant throng 
 That crowd the poet's pictured page : 
 
 Still lives in his imperial song 
 The soul of the Augustan age. 
 
 No longer through the Sacred Way 
 The pontiffs lead the vestal train ; 
 
 Thrones crumble, dynasties decay, 
 Of Alaric born, or Charlemagne — 
 
 Saints, Soldiers, Presbyters, and Popes 
 In legions rise and disappear, 
 
 And Bards with glowing horoscopes 
 Oblivion garners year by year : 
 
 But on strong wing, through upper air, — 
 Two worlds beneath, the Old and New, — 
 
 The Roman Swan is wafted where 
 The Roman eagles never flew. 
 
 J. o. s. 
 
THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 I. TO MAECENAS 
 
 Mcecenas atavis edite regibus 
 
 ALIKE my guardian and my grace, 
 Maecenas, born of Tuscan Kings, 
 Men live to whom the Olympian race 
 
 With clouds of dust its rapture brings ; 
 And when the glowing axles graze 
 
 But clear the goal, and win the prize, 
 The ennobling palm will even raise 
 
 Earth's greatest Masters to the skies ; 
 Him who by Rome's capricious choice 
 
 Her triple powers and honors wields, 
 And him whose granaries rejoice 
 
 In all the wealth of Libya's fields. 
 The man who lives contented now 
 
 To hoe and delve ancestral acres 
 
THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 No gold will tempt on Cyprian prow 
 
 To face Myrtoan storms and breakers. 
 The merchant, fearing winds and waves, 
 
 Praises farm-life and quits the sea, 
 But soon again its shipwrecks braves, 
 
 Untaught to bear with poverty. 
 This man disdains not to recline 
 
 Beneath an arbute half the day, 
 And quaff his cups of Massic wine, 
 
 And doze where sacred fountains play. 
 Live many men for whom the camp 
 
 And trumpet-blast that calls to arms. 
 The horn's sharp shriek, and war's stern tramp, 
 
 Hated by mothers, have their charms. 
 Unmindful of his tender spouse, 
 
 The huntsman fronts the frosty air. 
 If faithful hounds the deer arouse, 
 
 Or wild boar break the well-wrought snare. 
 Thee, ivies, crown of learned men. 
 
 Mix with celestial gods ; with me. 
 Apart from crowds, in grove and glen 
 
 Satyrs and Nymphs find company — 
 If sweet Euterpe plays her flute, 
 
 Nor Polyhymnia denies 
 Her echoes of the Lesbian lute : 
 
 But I shall touch the starry skies 
 If thou vouchsafe to write my name 
 
 Among the bards of lyric fame. 
 
11. TO AUGUSTUS 
 
 jfafn satis terris nivis atque dirce 
 
 ENOUGH of snow and hail has vexed the land 
 In tempests sent by the Eternal Sire ; 
 Temples have fallen beneath his red right hand, 
 While all Rome trembled at the portents dire ; 
 
 The nations trembled, with a panic fear 
 
 Lest the times Pyrrha wailed should come again, 
 
 And all their many marvels reappear; 
 
 Lest Proteus find the mountain-tops the main, 
 
 Herding his seals there, and the finny race 
 Cling to the topmost branches of the trees, 
 
 And panting deer the crested waves displace. 
 Where the wood-pigeons reared their colonies. 
 3 
 
THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 We have seen yellow Tiber hurling back 
 Impetuous billows from the Tuscan shore, 
 
 To sweep away in his relentless track 
 
 Temple and tower that Numa built of yore. 
 
 On his left bank the surges overflow — 
 
 The uxorious river w^ould avenge the wrongs 
 
 Of Ilia wailing with excess of woe 
 
 For deeds whose chastisement to Jove belongs. 
 
 The Roman youth, thinned by their fathers' guilt. 
 Shall hear that civic strife made sharp the blade 
 
 By which the Persian blood were better spilt 
 Than blood of friends in hostile ranks arrayed. 
 
 When ruin threats the empire — in despair, 
 What Deity shall the people supplicate t 
 
 How shall the sacred virgins press their prayer 
 On Vesta, angry at the pontiff's fate 1 
 
 Romans beneath their crime inexpiate quail ; 
 
 Who, mighty Jove, shall their deliverer be ? 
 Thine image radiant through its misty veil. 
 
 Augur Apollo, shall we turn to thee ? 
 
TO AUGUSTUS 
 
 Or wilt thou, Erycine, assume the task, 
 
 Smiling with Mirth and Cupid in thy train ? 
 
 Or thee, great Founder, shall we humbly ask 
 To care for thy neglected sons again, — 
 
 Thee who enjoy'st the battle's din and show. 
 Whom clashing arms and shining helms delight. 
 
 And the fierce aspect, glaring on his foe. 
 Of Marsian soldier in the bloody fight ? 
 
 Or wilt thou, leaving thy celestial sphere, 
 Of mortal youth the figure imitate, 
 
 Thou, gentle Maia's winged son, appear, — 
 Caesar's avenger, saviour of the State ? 
 
 Late mayst thou seek again thy native skies, 
 Long with the people of Quirinus stay ; 
 
 And never may untimely blast arise 
 
 To bear thee, wearied with our crimes, away. 
 
 Accept the names of Prince and Father here, 
 Here the proud triumph and the glad ovation : 
 
 No Parthian inroads unavenged we fear. 
 
 While thou, great Caesar, guide and guard the 
 nation. 
 
III. TO THE SHIP IN WHICH VIRGIL 
 SAILED TO ATHENS 
 
 Sic te diva potens Cypri 
 
 SO may thy course the queen of Cyprus guide, 
 So Helena's twin brethren light thy sails, 
 And x^olus restrain all winds beside 
 
 The North-west sweeping in propitious gales ; 
 
 That thou, O ship, I earnestly implore, 
 
 Mayst guard the precious freightage in thy care, 
 
 And through the billows to the Attic shore, 
 Virgil, my soul's own half, in safety bear. 
 
 For surely mail of oak and triple brass 
 
 Encased the breast of him who dared the first 
 
 In a frail bark the savage sea to pass, 
 
 And dauntless faced the Afric winds that burst 
 6 
 
SHIP IN WHICH VIRGIL SAILED 
 
 In sudden blast — contending with the North 
 Nor feared the rain-foreboding Hyades, 
 
 Nor the South wind that rushes madly forth, 
 The master of the Adriatic seas. 
 
 What form of death feared he who with dry eyes 
 Looked on the swimming monsters of the deep, 
 
 Who saw in rage the ocean billows rise, 
 And the ill-famed Acroceraunian steep ! 
 
 The several nations of the earth to part 
 Hath a wise Providence essayed in vain, 
 
 If by contrivances of human art 
 
 We leap the barriers of the unsocial main. 
 
 But the forbidden, mortals most desire ; 
 
 By man are all things dared and all things wrought ; 
 Stolen by audacious craft, celestial fire 
 
 Was by Prometheus to the nations brought. 
 
 With fire came new diseases upon man ; 
 
 Now, first, consumption — wasting fevers came ; 
 Of human years grim Death curtailed the span, 
 
 Hastening his step and taking surer aim. 
 
8 THE ODES OE HORACE 
 
 DiEdalus, wafted through the vacant air 
 
 On wings not given to man, pursued his course, 
 
 Nor vainly did Herculean labor dare 
 
 Its way through Acherontian bounds to force. 
 
 Nought seems too high for mortals to attain ; 
 
 We scale heaven's summits in our foolish pride 
 So sinful are we, Jove desires in vain 
 
 To lay his wrathful thunderbolts aside. 
 
IV. TO LUCIUS SESTIUS 
 
 Solvitur acris hiems 
 
 HARD Winter melts ; the welcome Spring again 
 Comes back, and in her train 
 The West wind, and the laid-up keels once more 
 
 Are launched from the dry shore. 
 No longer do the herds the stalls desire 
 
 Nor husbandman his fire ; 
 The meadows that but now were white with frost 
 
 Their pallid hues have lost. 
 In dance, by Cytherean Venus led, 
 
 With the moon overhead. 
 Joined with the Nymphs the sister Graces beat 
 
 The earth with rhythmic feet, 
 While at the Cyclops' ponderous forge the light 
 
 Makes swarthy Vulcan bright. 
 Now round the tresses that with unguents shine 
 
 Green myrtles we may twine, 
 Or flowers with which from icy fetters freed 
 
 Earth garnishes the mead. 
 9 
 
lO I'll I'- ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Now is the time to make in shady groves 
 
 The offerings Pan loves, 
 Whether he may demand a lamb or bid 
 
 Oblation of a kid. 
 Pale Death before them stalks impartially, 
 
 Whether the portals be 
 Of peasant or of prince — hovel or tower — 
 
 Alike all feel his power, 
 O happy Sestius ! Life's little span 
 
 Forbids long hope to man ; 
 Thy sunny day impending night invades, 
 
 Thee wait the fabled Shades, 
 And Pluto's narrow house ; where, once thou go, 
 
 No more by lucky throw 
 Of dice wilt thou in banquet hall recline 
 
 King of the realms of wine ; 
 No tender Lycidas will love inspire, 
 
 Whose charms thou dost admire, — 
 Whom rival youths regard with jealous eye, 
 
 And maids will by and by. 
 
V. TO PYRRHA 
 
 Quis niidta gracilis te puer in rosa 
 
 WHAT slender youth with roses crowned, 
 With Hquid odors perfumed well, 
 My charming Pyrrha, hast thou found 
 To woo thee in his pleasant cell, — 
 For whom dost braid thy yellow hair 
 And don thy simple robe with care ? 
 
 Alas ! how often shall he weep 
 
 For broken vows and gods estranged, 
 
 Who, dreaming by the glassy deep, 
 Beholds amazed its aspect changed, — 
 
 Black winds and surging waves arise 
 For gentle airs and summer skies, — 
 
 Who now enjoys thy golden prime 
 And hopes thou 'It always be his own, 
 
12 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Loving and lovely all the time 
 
 As if false winds had never blown. 
 
 Ah, wretched they who wan thy smiles 
 And have not proved thy artful wiles. 
 
 With me it is a thing gone by ; 
 
 In Neptune's temple, on the wall, 
 A votive tablet tells that I 
 
 Have met with storms and baffled all, 
 And hung my vestments dripping wet — 
 
 A sign, — where they are hanging yet. 
 
VI. TO AGRIPPA 
 
 Scriberis Vario fortis et hostium 
 
 THE glorious history shall Varius write, 
 Borne on Maeonian wing, in epic strain. 
 Of what brave soldiers did by land and main, 
 With you their leader in victorious fight. 
 
 We cannot treat, Agrippa, themes like these. 
 Nor Pelops' tragic house, nor the grave wrath 
 Of stern Pelides, nor the devious path 
 
 Of double-faced Ulysses through the seas : 
 
 Such are not in our vein. Humility 
 
 And the brave mistress of the sportive lyre 
 Bid us not bate through lack of native fire 
 
 Praises of matchless Caesar and of thee. 
 
4 
 
 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Who shall write worthily of Mars arrayed 
 In mail of steel ? Or of Meriones 
 Black with Troy's dust ? or, peer of deities, 
 
 Tydides, victor by Minerva's aid ? 
 
 Banquets we sing of and the fierce affrays 
 
 Of youths beset by maidens with clipped nails, 
 Whether we conquer love, or love prevails, 
 
 In heart and spirit buoyant all our days. 
 
VII. TO PLANCUS 
 
 Laudabimt alii daram Rhodon 
 
 SUN-LIGHTED Rhodes, or Mitylene's towers, 
 Or Corinth's walls washed by the double sea, 
 Ephesus, or Thessalian Tempe's bowers, 
 
 Or Thebes, the birthplace of the god of wine, 
 Or Delphi, famous for Apollo's shrine, — 
 
 May win their praise from others, not from me. 
 
 Men live who have no work in life beside 
 
 Extolling in their never-ending lays 
 The Athenian city, chaste Minerva's pride, — 
 
 While, from all quarters plucked, it is their wont 
 With olive branches to entwine their front. 
 
 Many would honor Juno with the praise 
 
 Of rich Mycense, — Argos fit for steeds : 
 Others may love Larissa's fertile field, 
 15 
 
1 6 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Or Lacedaemon with her patient deeds ; 
 
 To me Albunea's resounding cave, 
 The groves, the orchards Tibur's rivers lave, 
 
 And Anio's falls, a keener pleasure yield. 
 
 As the white South wind often clears the skies 
 
 From cloud and mist, nor brings perpetual show- 
 ers, — 
 
 Thus you, my Plancus, by experience wise, 
 Neither at sorrows nor at toils repine, 
 
 But soothe their bitterness with mellow wine, 
 Abridge life's cares, prolong its joyous hours, — 
 
 Whether the camp with its superb array 
 
 Of standards keep you still — or to the shade 
 
 Of your own Tibur you are on the way. 
 
 When from his sire and Salamis Teucer fled. 
 
 With poplar wreaths they say he crowned his head. 
 And his friends' fears with cheering words allayed 
 
 " Where fortune leads us, than my sire more kind, 
 Thither, my friends and comrades, let us go, — 
 
 In other lands a better home to find. 
 
 Despair of nought with Teucer as your guide ; = 
 
 Hopes under Teucer's auspices abide 
 
 While the waves float us and the breezes blow. 
 
TO PLANCUS ly 
 
 " We have Apollo's promise to assure 
 
 Our voyage a prosperous issue shall attain, 
 And a new Salamis the old obscure. 
 
 Brave men, whose sorrows and whose joys are 
 mine, 
 We 've seen worse times ; now banish care with wine ; 
 To-morrow the great sea we '11 try again." 
 
VIII. TO LYDIA 
 
 Lydia, die, per onines 
 
 SAY, Lydia, how is this — 
 That by your love you ruin Sybaris ? 
 If any prayer can reach you, 
 
 By all the Gods in Heaven I beseech you. 
 You 've taught him to detest 
 
 The manly sports he always loved the best. 
 Patient of dust and sun. 
 
 Why does he now the open Campus shun ? 
 Why cease to take a pride 
 
 In martial contests, — with his peers to ride .'' 
 With jagged bit and rein 
 
 Why cease his Gallic coursers to restrain ? 
 Even to take a swim 
 
 In yellow Tiber is too much for him. 
 Why does he more 
 
 Avoid the wrestlers' oil than serpent's gore ? 
 The ponderous quoit he threw 
 
 That with the strain his arms were black and blue 
 18 
 
TO LYDIA 19 
 
 And never did he fail 
 
 To cast the javelin beyond the pale. 
 In a girl's costume hid 
 
 Why play the part the son of Thetis did, 
 When the sea-goddess thought 
 
 To snatch him from the battles to be fought 
 Round Ihon's leaguered walls, — 
 
 Marauding bands and Lycian funerals ? 
 
IX. TO THALIARCHUS 
 
 Vides. ut alta stet nive catididwn 
 
 LO ! looming through the frosty air, 
 Soracte's summit crowned with snow ! 
 Woods labor with the load they bear, 
 And rivers, ice bound, cease to flow. 
 
 Come now, my genial host, with fire 
 And Sabine wine dispel this cold ; 
 
 Pile fagots in the chimney higher, 
 And tap a cask of four-year-old. 
 
 Leave to the Gods the rest, whose will 
 Subdues the tumult of the seas : 
 
 The waves subside, the winds are still, 
 Nor shake old ash and cypress trees. 
 
TO THALIARCHUS 21 
 
 The future never seek to learn ; 
 
 Count every sort of day a gain, 
 Nor dulcet loves nor dances spurn 
 
 While youth and youth's desires remain. 
 
 And never, till your hair is white, 
 Fly from the favors of the fair — 
 
 The gentle whispers heard at night, 
 The trysting-place of park or square, 
 
 When, by her merry laugh betrayed, 
 She half consents and half resists, 
 
 While you enfold the hiding maid, 
 And rob her finger and her wrists. 
 
XL TO LEUCONOE 
 
 Tu ne qucBsieris, scire nefas 
 
 OH, do not seek to learn, Leuconoe, 
 What fate the Gods reserve for you or me ; 
 'T is wrong. Nor call in Babylonian seers 
 By mystic numbers to forecast your years. 
 Better endure what Jupiter ordains, 
 And not inquire how much of life remains ; 
 Perhaps more winters — this our last may be, 
 Grinding the rocks that curb the Tyrrhene sea. 
 Filter your wine, be wise, there 's little scope 
 In a short life to cherish distant hope. 
 Even while we speak, Time envious slips away ; 
 Incredulous of the morrow, — pluck to-day ! 
 
 22 
 
XII. AUGUSTUS 
 Quern virion aut heroa lyra vel acri 
 
 WHAT man or hero wilt thou choose, 
 On the sharp pipe to sound his fame, 
 Or on the lyre — what god, my Muse ? 
 So Echo shall repeat his name 
 
 In notes that Orpheus sang of old, 
 When trees to listen hurried on 
 
 From Pindus, or from Haemus cold, 
 Or shady lands of Helicon : 
 
 Gifted with all his mother's skill. 
 The river's rapid flight he stayed ; 
 
 To hear his strains swift winds were still, 
 The oaks his tuneful strings obeyed. 
 23 
 
24 T^E ODES OF HORACE 
 
 What shall I sing before the praise 
 Due to the Father of our race ; 
 
 Who men and gods with justice sways, 
 Earth in its seasons, time, and space ? 
 
 From whom nought greater springs than He, 
 The world no like or second bears ; 
 
 Yet next and near to Deity, 
 
 The highest honors Pallas shares. 
 
 Nor will I pass thee by unnamed, 
 Brave Bacchus, nor the virgin foe 
 
 Of savage beasts, nor Phoebus famed 
 And feared for his unerring bow. 
 
 Alcides too and Leda's twdns 
 I '11 sing — the one by chivalry 
 
 And one his fame as athlete wins : 
 
 When mariners their white star see, — 
 
 Drips from the rocks the refluent spray. 
 The clouds disperse, the winds subside, 
 
 While threatening waves their will obey, 
 And slumber on the tranquil tide. 
 
AUGUSTUS 
 
 Next Romulus, or Numa's reign 
 Of peace, shall I commemorate ? 
 
 Shall haughty Tarquin prompt the strain, 
 Or the last Cato's noble fate ? 
 
 Regulus and the Scauri, men 
 
 Of the old stamp, next fire my lay ; 
 
 Braves such as Carthage slaughtered when 
 Great PauUus threw his life away. 
 
 Fabricius, Curius unshorn, 
 Camillus, expert all in arms 
 
 For the state's service, humbly born 
 To toil on their ancestral farms. 
 
 Marcellus' glory, like a tree. 
 
 Grows in the silent lapse of years ; 
 
 The Julian star resplendently, 
 A moon mid lesser fires, appears. 
 
 Father and Keeper of mankind, 
 
 From Saturn sprung, — the Fates to thee 
 Care of great Caesar have assigned ; 
 
 Thou, King, — and thy vice-gerent, he. 
 
 25 
 
26 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Whether he bends on Eastern coasts 
 Seres and Indians to his sway, 
 
 Or, threatening Latium, Parthian hosts 
 Defeated tread the Sacred Way : 
 
 He reigns below and Thou above, 
 With justice both : Olympus shakes 
 
 Beneath thy car ; thy rule is love, 
 
 But guilt beneath thy thunder quakes. 
 
XIII. TO LYDIA 
 
 Cum tu, Lydia, Telephi 
 
 NOW it is Telephus' rosy neck, 
 Then it is Telephus' waxen arms ; 
 While you, my Lydia, little reck 
 
 How my heart swells as you praise his charms. 
 
 My wavering mind from its centre flies, 
 Quick is my color to come and go, 
 
 The tear-drops furtively dim my eyes. 
 And with inward fires how thin I grow ! 
 
 I burn when I see on your shoulders white 
 That the reveller's wine has left a stain. 
 
 Or behold the kiss of the frenzied wight 
 
 In the print of his tooth which your lips retain. 
 27 
 
28 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Listen to me, and I 'm sure you *11 think 
 There 's little to hope from a lover so rude 
 
 As to mar your charms in his greed to drink 
 The kisses with Venus' own nectar imbued. 
 
 Thrice happy and more than thrice happy are they 
 Who live unmoved by this passionate strife, 
 
 United more closely as years wear away, — 
 The end of their love is the end of their life. 
 
XIV. TO THE STATE 
 
 O navis, referent in mare te novi 
 
 BARQUE, where do the new billows bear thee ? 
 About ! and into harbor sail. 
 Sides stripped of oars but ill prepare thee 
 To face the terrors of the gale. 
 
 By Afric wdnds thy mast is broken ; 
 
 Thy main-yards groan ; and, lacking ropes, 
 In vain thy keel, all signs betoken, 
 
 With too imperious surges copes. 
 
 No Gods to hear thy supplication. 
 No sails without a rent are thine ; 
 
 An empty boast thy name and nation. 
 Though fashioned of the Pontic pine, 
 29 
 
30 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Noble among the forest's daughters. 
 
 In painted sterns no crews confide ; 
 And thou, take heed, lest winds and waters 
 
 Should make a mocking of thy pride. 
 
 Of late, the cause of sad repining ; 
 
 Now, of fond hope and weighty care : 
 But where the Cyclades are shining. 
 
 Of storms and hidden rocks beware ! 
 
XV. THE PROPHECY OF NEREUS 
 
 Fastor cum traheret per freta navibus 
 
 WHEN with Helen his hostess the treacherous 
 swain 
 On a vessel of Ida was scouring the main, 
 
 Nereus quelling the winds to an unwelcome rest 
 Thus sung their wild fates, with his vision opprest : 
 
 With ill omens, you bear to the home of your shame 
 The bride whom all Greece shall in battle reclaim. 
 Your infamous nuptials with ruin o'erwhelm, 
 And bring desolation on Priam's old realm. 
 
 Alas for the riders ! Alas for the steeds ! 
 
 I see Dardan graves, and a nation in weeds ! 
 Now Pallas, infuriate, drives to the field. 
 In her swift rolling chariot, with helmet and shield 
 31 
 
32 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 " You in vain for safe keeping on Venus rely, 
 And bold in her favor all danger defy ; 
 
 Comb your locks, play the lute, and your measures 
 
 divide, 
 To please the fair women who loll by your side. 
 
 In your chamber you vainly will seek a retreat 
 From the terrible spears and the arrows of Crete, 
 
 The swift-footed Ajax, the din of the strife ; 
 
 Though late, you will pay for your lust with your 
 life. 
 
 There is Nestor of Pylos — dare look in his face, 
 And there Laertiades, scourge of your race ; 
 Salaminius Teucer is urging your flight. 
 And Sthenelus, knowing and strong in the fight, 
 
 Nor in guiding the steeds of a chariot slow ; 
 And there is Meriones whom you will know ; 
 
 And, raging to meet you — through blood and 
 through fire — 
 
 The son of Tydeus, more brave than his sire. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF NEREUS 33 
 
 " And you, — as the deer for no pastures will stay 
 When he catches a glimpse of the wolf far away, — 
 At the sight of him run, till you gasp, out of 
 
 breath, — 
 Though you 've promised your mistress you '11 
 fight to the death. 
 
 " For a while will the wrath of Achilles delay 
 The coming of Ilion's funeral day ; 
 
 But with fire Achaean I see it in flames, 
 
 And I hear the loud wail of the Phrygian dames. 
 
XVI. A PALINODE 
 
 O matre pidchra filia pulchrior 
 
 OF a beautiful mother more beautiful daughter, 
 Forgive me for having made light of her name ; 
 My sharp verses consign to the fire or the water ; 
 So they perish — I care not by flood or by flame. 
 
 It was anger that urged me to censure so freely, 
 And it goads to such madness as nothing else can ; 
 
 Not the Pythian or Bacchus or sceptred Cybele 
 With their wild rites so shatter the reason of man. 
 
 Not flames of the fire, not storms of the ocean, 
 
 Nor Noric swords e'er turn aside from his path, — 
 Nor the thunders of Jove, with their deafening com- 
 motion, — 
 The mortal who burns with the frenzy of wrath. 
 34 
 
A PALINODE 35 
 
 When Prometheus a man of a statue was making, 
 And compelled from all creatures to borrow a 
 part, — 
 
 Last of all, when to life the cold marble awaking, 
 The rage of the lion he lodged in his heart. 
 
 By anger Thyestes was doomed to perdition ; 
 
 Proud cities by anger have come to their fall ; 
 Walls and towers been razed with a fell demolition, 
 
 And the plough with its furrows has covered them 
 all. 
 
 Curb your temper ; the passion my warm heart in- 
 vited 
 
 Was laden with sweets in the flower of my days, 
 But the anger that glows in a love unrequited 
 
 Drove me wildly to pen my impetuous lays. 
 
 But I now would exchange the severe for the tender. 
 And for all former sins make the amplest amends ; 
 
 So I pray you accept the atonement I render, 
 
 And count me once more on the list of your friends. 
 
XVII. TO TYNDARIS 
 
 Velox amcenum scBpe Lucretilem 
 
 HIS Arcadian hills nimble Faunus exchanges 
 For a trip now and then to my Sabine retreat, 
 And good-naturedly shelters my flocks where he 
 ranges, 
 From the winds that bring rain, and the fiery heat. 
 
 Here safe in his charge roam my she-goat com- 
 munity, 
 Seeking thyme and wild strawberries hid in the 
 brakes ; 
 They stray as they please through my grove with im- 
 punity, 
 And harbor no fear of the wolves and the snakes 
 
 In the thickets of savage Hcedilia abounding : 
 
 While the sweetest of airs from his shepherd pipe 
 floats, 
 
 36 
 
TO TYNDARIS 
 
 Through the valleys of sloping Ustica resounding, — 
 And the polished rocks, Tyndaris, echo the notes. 
 
 The Gods are my guardians, the Gods like my piety, 
 And are pleased with my Muse ; from their bounty 
 shall flow 
 
 For your use all the fruits of the earth to satiety, 
 All the pleasures that Nature alone can bestow. 
 
 In this valley sequestered the too ardent kisses 
 Of Sirius at noontide you always may shun. 
 
 While you sing Teian songs of the wife of Ulysses, 
 And of slippery Circe, — two striving for one ! 
 
 And here you shall quaff, 'neath the vine-leaves that 
 screen us. 
 
 The mild wines from Lesbian clusters exprest ; 
 And never shall Mars and the ward of Silenus 
 
 With their petulant outbreaks our quiet molest. 
 
 You '11 be free from all danger of Cyrus' appearing, 
 With jealous suspicion your secrets to probe, — 
 
 To snatch at the wreaths to your tresses adhering 
 Or tear into tatters your innocent robe. 
 
XIX. GLYCERA 
 
 Mater sceva Cupidinum 
 
 CRUEL mother of Cupids, why make this attack, — 
 With the plump son of Semele close at your 
 back ? 
 Why come again thus, with Desire in your train, 
 And kindle love's sparks in its ashes again ? 
 
 Pure as Parian marble is, chiselled by art. 
 The strange beauty of Glycera fires my heart, 
 
 With the mock on her lips and the flash of her een 
 And the face never still long enough to be seen. 
 
 Venus rushing with all her force madly at me, 
 The temples deserts in her isle of the sea ; 
 And forbids me of Scythian invaders to sing, 
 Or of Parthian riders who shoot on the wing, 
 38 
 
GL YCERA 
 
 39 
 
 Or of aught but myself. New turf, boys, bring here. 
 With vervain and incense, her altar to rear ; 
 
 Crown them all with a goblet of two-year-old wine : 
 She may favor me more for the gifts on her shrine. 
 
XXI. TO DIANA AND APOLLO 
 
 Dianam tenerce dicite vir^ines 
 
 '6' 
 
 'ING, tender maidens, in Diana's praise ; 
 
 ^ Ye boys, to unshorn Cynthius tune your lays ; 
 
 Sing of Latona too, above 
 
 All others dear to Jove. 
 
 Sing ye of her who in the leafy heights 
 And the cold stream of Algidus delights, 
 Or Erymanthus' sylvan shades 
 Or Cragus' grassy glades. • 
 
 Hail, boys, Apollo, with applausive airs, 
 Who wi:h the quiver on his shoulder bears 
 
 His brother's lyre : with Tempe's vale. 
 
 His natal Delos hail ! 
 40 
 
rO DIANA AND APOLLO 
 
 From Prince and people he will drive far hence 
 Famine and tearful war and pestilence, — 
 
 Moved by your prayer to strike 
 
 Britons and Parthians alike. 
 
 41 
 
XXII. TO FUSCUS 
 
 Liteger vitce scelerisque purus 
 
 THE pure of hand and whole of heart, 
 My Fuscus, needs no other arm, 
 No practice in the bowman's art, 
 No venomed shafts, no Moorish dart. 
 To keep him safe from harm, — 
 
 Whether through Syrtes' glowing sands 
 
 His journey lies, through boiling waves. 
 Or Caucasus' bleak table-lands 
 Inhospitable, or the golden strands 
 Fabled Hydaspes laves. fk 
 
 In Sabine woods, without a care, 
 
 And singing lays to Lalage, 
 I strayed beyond my bounds, and there 
 A wolf was startled in his lair 
 
 And ran away from me. 
 42 
 
TO FUSCUS 43 
 
 Portentous monster ! Daunia 
 
 The warlike never bred a worse ; 
 
 None such in her oak-forests prey, 
 
 And none in Mauritania, 
 The lions' arid nurse. 
 
 Place me in regions where no tree 
 
 Is ever fanned by summer air, 
 The side of earth that nebulae 
 And fogs infest perpetually, 
 And make a desert there : 
 
 Or in the torrid atmosphere 
 
 Where human dwelling may not be, 
 The sun impels his car so near, — 
 I '11 dote on my sweet-smiling dear, 
 
 Sweet-prattling Lalage. 
 
XXIII. TO CHLOE 
 
 Vitas hinnideo me similis^ Chloe 
 
 YOU shun me, Chloe, like a doe 
 That through the mountains, far and wide, 
 In dread of winds and wood, will go 
 To seek her timid mother's side. 
 
 For whether Spring's first zephyrs shake 
 The quivering foliage of the trees, 
 
 Or the green lizards stir the brake, 
 She trembles in her heart and knees. 
 
 No lion and no tiger I, 
 
 Pursuing you to rend your charms ; 
 No longer to your mother fly, 
 
 But nestle in a husband's arms. 
 44 
 
w 
 
 XXIV. TO VIRGIL 
 
 Quis desiderio sit pudor aiit modus 
 
 HAT measure in our mourning can there be 
 For one so dear — what shame ? Sad chants 
 
 mspire, 
 Thou of the liquid voice, Melpomene, 
 To whom thy father gave it with the lyre. 
 
 In his last sleep, then, doth Quintilius lie ? 
 
 Endowed with virtues more than words can tell, 
 Good Faith and Justice, sisters, — Modesty, 
 
 And Truth, — when will they find his parallel .? 
 
 Quintilius fell, by many good men wept, 
 By none than Virgil wept more bitterly. 
 
 Thy friend entrusted them, the Gods have kept, — 
 And will not for thy tears restore to thee. 
 45 
 
46 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Even didst thou touch the lyre more cunningly 
 Than Thracian Orpheus, and by magic song 
 
 Compel the trees to hear, — if Mercury 
 
 Has once impaled him in the dusky throng 
 
 By his dire wand, he will not heed thy prayer 
 And animate again the bloodless shape ; 
 
 Hard fate ! but Nature teaches us to bear 
 The ills we cannot conquer or escape. 
 
XXVI. TO LAMIA 
 
 Musis a77iicus tristitiam ei metus 
 
 A FRIEND to the Muses, all tremors and tears 
 I fling to the winds of the Cretan sea ; 
 What peril the king of the frozen North fears, — 
 Who scares Tiridates, — is nothing to me. 
 
 And thou, gentle maid of the Pimplean spring, 
 Who in virgin and crystalline fountains rejoicest, 
 
 Come, and with thee be sure sunny flowers to bring, 
 And twine for my Lamia a wreath of the choicest. 
 
 To pay him due honors I cannot aspire, 
 
 But thou and thy sisters must blazon his fame, 
 
 And adding new chords to the Lesbian lyre 
 Awaken a symphony worthy his name. 
 47 
 
XXVIII. ARCHYTAS 
 
 Te maris et terrcz numeroque carentis arence. 
 
 THEE, measurer of the earth and of the main, 
 And reckoner of the sands that know no 
 score, 
 Archytas ! scanty heaps of sand restrain 
 
 In hopeless bondage by Matinum's shore. 
 Nought it avails thee that thy restless mind 
 Explored the starry chambers of the sky. 
 And roamed the earth from pole to pole, — to find, 
 
 At last, life's chief commission is to die. 
 Host of the gods, the sire of Pelops falls ; 
 
 Into thin air Aurora's bridegroom fades ; 
 Minos, admitted to Jove's secret halls. 
 
 His trusted counsellor, mingles with the shades ; 
 Euphorbus twice; — on Trojan battlefield 
 
 He rendered up the ghost ; in after days 
 The sage Pythagoras, as attests the shield 
 Displayed in Argos to men's wondering gaze. 
 48 
 
ARCHYTAS 49 
 
 Save skin and sinews, nothing else forsooth 
 
 Was prey to gloomy Death ; of this judge thou ! 
 Who know'st him versed in Nature and the Truth, 
 
 No mean expounder of their mysteries now. 
 Children of men, one night awaits us all, 
 
 And once all tread the pathway to their graves ; 
 Doomed by the Furies to grim Mars some fall. 
 
 Some perish victims to the devouring waves. 
 Youth and old age fill full the funeral cars, 
 
 No one escapes Proserpine's cruel realms. 
 
 Me too — beneath Orion's stormy stars. 
 
 The South wind in Illyrian billows whelms. 
 But thee, O passing mariner, I implore, 
 
 Some drifting sand to sprinkle on these bones, — 
 This head that lies unburied on the shore, 
 
 Heedful of nothing but the surges' moans. 
 Some drifting sand ! So may the Eastern gales. 
 
 That threat Hesperian seas, exhaust their force 
 On the Venusian woods, and fill thy sails 
 
 With gentle airs, propitious to thy course. 
 So may thy voyage meet deserved success. 
 
 And all thy ventures win abundant gains, 
 With Jove the just thy pious care to bless, 
 
 And Neptune, guardian of Tarentine fanes. 
 And wilt thou recklessly commit a crime 
 
 To harm thine innocent children 1 It may be, 
 
50 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 With the revenges and the turns of time, 
 A fate like mine shall also follow thee. 
 
 From prayers unheeded shall my curses flow, 
 No expiation shall absolve thy wrong ; 
 
 Thrice on my corpse a little sand to throw — 
 
 Though time may press — will not detain thee long. 
 
XXIX. TO ICCIUS 
 
 led, beatis nunc Arabum invides 
 
 SO, Iccius, you now look with covetous eye 
 On the treasures of Araby ; leaving your letters 
 To compel her invincible monarchs to fly, 
 
 And to send home the terrible Parthian in fetters. 
 
 Of the barbarous virgins whose lovers you '11 slay, 
 To find one as a handmaiden will you be able ? 
 
 Or a boy skilled in archery hope to display, 
 
 With locks perfumed and trim, serving wine at your 
 table ? 
 
 After this no one need to feel any surprise 
 
 In beholding the rivers ascend to the mountains, 
 
 Or one moment refuse to believe his own eyes 
 
 If they see yellow Tiber run back to his fountains ; 
 51 
 
52 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 When you for Iberian corselets and blades 
 Would barter the works of the sages collected 
 
 Far and wide in your bibliographical raids, — 
 
 You, Iccius ! from whom better things were ex- 
 pected ! 
 
XXX. TO VENUS 
 
 O Venus, regina Cnidi Paphiqiie 
 
 O VENUS, of Cnidos and Paphos the queen, 
 In your well beloved Cyprus no longer be seen ; 
 But listen, I pray, to my Glycera's call, 
 And breathe the frankincense that burns in her 
 hall. 
 
 Let Cupid come with you, impetuous boy, 
 
 And the Graces with girdles loosed add to your joy ; 
 
 Let the Nymphs come, and silver-tongued Mercury 
 too, 
 
 And Youth — void of beauty or charm without you. 
 
 S3 
 
XXXI. TO APOLLO 
 
 Qiiid dedicatum poscit ApoUinem 
 
 TO Apollo, what prayer, on his shrine's dedication, 
 Shall the bard offer up as he pours his libation ? 
 Not for harvests that fertile Sardinia yields, 
 Nor the sleek herds of sunny Calabrian fields. 
 Not for ivory brought from the Indian lands, 
 Nor for gold that is filtered through African sands, 
 Not for farms which the beautiful Liris laves, — 
 Silent river ! that runs with the softest waves ; — 
 For grapevines of Cales he '11 not importune. 
 Which they on whom fortune bestows them may prune : 
 Let the merchant delight in his goblets of gold, 
 And drain at a draught all the liquor they hold ; 
 For well of his wealth and his wine he may boast, — 
 The gains of his trade on the Syrian coast ; 
 He 's a pet of the Gods, — three or four times a year 
 The Atlantic he tempts with no perils to fear. 
 Mallows, olives, and endives suffice for my diet ; ^ 
 54 
 
TO APOLLO 55 
 
 Let me, son of Latona, enjoy them in quiet ; 
 Let me live on my income and reckon it wealth, 
 With a mind unimpaired and a body in health. 
 An old age of honor — not lacking my lyre, — 
 Grant me this — and you grant all your bard can desire. 
 
XXXII. TO MY LYRE 
 
 Poscimiir. Si quid vacui sub umbra 
 
 WE are called on : if ever, reclined in the shade, 
 Joy touching thy strings, some light carol I 've 
 played. 
 Which for one or more seasons its life may prolong, 
 Come, sing me, my Lyre, a good Latin song. 
 
 Alcaeus of Lesbos attuned thee of old. 
 The loyal in love, and in battle the bold, 
 
 But the poet at all times, — though wielding the 
 brand. 
 
 Or moorino: his surf-beaten boat to the strand. 
 
 Thy silver-toned chords with his symphonies rang ; 
 
 Of the Muses and Bacchus and Venus he sang, 
 Of the boy by her side — he is clinging there yet, - 
 And of Lycus with eyes and hair black as the jet. 
 56 
 
TO MY LYRE ' 57 
 
 O pride of Apollo ! Thy magical spell 
 Charms the banquets of Jupiter, resonant shell ! 
 Thou solace of labor, thou killer of care, 
 If I rightly invoke thee, oh, list to my prayer ! 
 
XXXIII. TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS 
 
 Albi^ lie doleas plus nimio memor 
 
 MY Albius, don't pose as a martyr to grief, 
 Tho' Glycera turn on your suit a cold shoul- 
 der ; 
 Nor in piteous elegies seek for relief, 
 
 When you find she prefers a young beau to an older. 
 
 While all Rome her pretty low forehead admires, 
 Lycoris with passion for Cyrus is burning ; 
 
 Cyrus fancies in Pholoe all he desires, 
 
 While she the old sinner is cruelly spurning. 
 
 Thus the kids from the wolves in Apulia run ; 
 
 And this pleases Venus, who seeks to entangle 
 Her dupes in such meshes, enjoying the fun 
 
 When an ill-mated pair in a brazen yoke wrangle. 
 S8 
 
TO ALB I US TIBULLUS 59 
 
 The freedwoman Myrtale caught even me 
 
 And kept me bound body and soul in her fetters, 
 
 Though I knew her as false as the waves of the sea, 
 And my love (though I say it) was sought by her 
 betters. 
 
XXXIV. TO HIMSELF 
 
 Farcus deorum cultor et infrequens 
 
 DISCIPLE of a mad philosophy, 
 I am a rare, neglectful worshipper 
 In the Gods' temples ; conscious that I err, 
 I must shift sails, my course retraced shall be 
 
 For Jupiter, — whose wont it is to sunder 
 
 With his forked fire the sky that tempests shroud, 
 Through the pure air serene, without a cloud, 
 
 Has driven his chariot swift, and steeds of thunder, 
 
 By which the inert earth and running rivers, — 
 By which the Styx and Taenarus' horrid seat, — 
 The gate of hell, — with strange pulsations beat, 
 
 And the far Atlantean summit shivers. 
 60 
 
7-6» HIMSELF 6 1 
 
 Yes ! God is strong to change low things for high, 
 Exalt the obscure and throw the haughty down ; 
 Fortune delights to take and give the crown, — 
 
 Rapacious, on shrill pinions rushing by. 
 
XXXV. TO FORTUNE 
 O diva, gratum quce regis Antium 
 
 O GODDESS, queen of Antium's fair domains, 
 A present power in mortal destinies, 
 Bidding to lofty heights the lowly rise, 
 And changing triumphs to funereal trains : 
 
 The humble tiller of the soil to thee, 
 Solicitous, his earnest prayer prefers ; 
 Thine aid invoking, suppliant mariners 
 
 Cleave with Bithynian keel the Cretan sea. 
 
 Homage to thee cities and nations pay; 
 Nomadic Scythians and Dacians rude. 
 Mothers of savage kings, fierce Latium's brood, 
 
 And purple-vested tyrants fear thy sway : 
 62 
 
rO FORTUNE 6'^ 
 
 Fear, lest with ruin thou shouldst overwhehii 
 And crush the standing pillar of the State ; 
 Lest foes to arms, by fervor of debate, 
 
 Be roused to arms, and break the imperial realm. 
 
 Before thee, prompt to do thy stern command. 
 Stalks dire Necessity in thy service bred, 
 With grappling-hooks and store of molten lead, 
 
 And spikes and wedges in her brazen hand. 
 
 Thee Hope attends : thee, clad in garb of white, 
 
 Her fellow, rarely-met Fidelity; — 
 
 And if, thy garments changed, in hate thou flee 
 From powerful houses, — follows in thy flight. 
 
 The faithless vulgar and the courtesan 
 
 Forsworn retire; and when the casks are dry — 
 Drained to the dregs — fair-weather comrades fly, 
 
 Eager to shun the unprosperous while they can. 
 
 To Csesar, bound for Britain*s savage Isles — 
 Earth's Western limit, — give protecting care ; 
 On levied hosts who terror Eastward bear 
 
 To the Red Sea, bestow thy favoring smiles. 
 
64 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Alas, of brothers' blood we bear the stains ! 
 
 Shame be upon us for our scars and crimes ! 
 
 Ah, cruel race ! in these, our hardened times, 
 What form of wickedness untried remains ! 
 
 Fear of the Gods checks not Youth's impious hands. 
 
 What altars spare they ? — Forge our blunted 
 swords 
 
 On a new anvil. Turn them on the hordes 
 Of Massagetan and Arabian lands ! 
 
XXXVI. TO NUMIDA 
 
 Et thure et fidibiis juvat 
 
 COME, strike the lyre, and incense burn, 
 And be the votive heifer slain, 
 To thank for Numida's return 
 
 The Gods who bring him home again, — 
 
 Who from Hesperia's farthest shore 
 Meets friends not met for many a year. 
 
 To all some kisses gives, but more 
 To Lamia, dearest of the dear, — 
 
 Mindful that they in school-boy days 
 
 Watched the same master's smile or frown, 
 
 Together shared their tasks and plays. 
 Together donned the manly gown. 
 65 
 
^^ THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Nor suffer this propitious day 
 Its mark of Cretan white to lack, 
 
 Nor whirl of Salian dances stay, 
 Nor spare the flagons on the rack, 
 
 Nor in his bout with Damalis 
 Let Bassus at her bumpers quail, 
 
 Nor let our banquet roses lack, 
 Nor parsley green, nor lily frail. 
 
 On Damalis they all shall gaze 
 
 With melting eyes ; but like a vine 
 
 Shall Damalis in wanton ways 
 About her new-found lover twine. 
 
XXXVII. CLEOPATRA 
 
 Nunc est bibendum^ nunc pede libera 
 
 NOW is the time to drink your wine, 
 To merrily dance in the open air, 
 Now for the Salian priests to dine 
 At banquets fit for the gods to share. 
 
 The Caecuban that your fathers stored, — 
 To have broken its seals a shame had been, 
 
 While your city was doomed by a savage horde, 
 And the Empire pledged to a frenzied Queen. 
 
 With her countless host of miscalled men, 
 
 Crippled by lust and foul with disease, 
 
 She was drunk with prosperous fortune, when 
 
 Her galleys swept the Hesperian seas. 
 67 
 
68 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 But her rage by Roman fires was tamed, 
 That left of her fleets but a single sail, 
 
 And the cheek which the Mareot grape inflamed, 
 When Caesar followed her flight, grew pale. 
 
 Through the waters swiftly his mariners row, 
 
 As the hawk sweeps down on the doves in the air, 
 
 Or through fields of Ha^monia white with snow 
 The hunter chases the timorous hare. 
 
 He brought for the deadly monster chains, — 
 She will not stoop to a fate abhorred ; 
 
 No coward blood in her woman's veins. 
 She seeks no haven and fears no sword. 
 
 Her falling palace she treads a Queen, 
 And bravely her crumbling sceptre grasps 
 
 With a soul unmoved and a face serene 
 She bares her breast to the fatal asps. 
 
 The hunt of the savage Illyrians is vain ; 
 
 A conqueror's triumph she scorns to grace 
 But fronts her fate with a fierce disdain, 
 
 And dies, the last of a royal race. 
 
XXXVIII. TO HIS SERVANT 
 
 Persicos odi^ puer, apparatus 
 
 HATE, boy, the pomp and parade of the Per- 
 
 _ sian, — 
 
 These linden-bound wreaths are my special aversion ; 
 Cut-flowers in their season will do for my posies, — 
 So omit any search for the last of the roses. 
 
 I 
 
 On your zeal for these gauds I make no requisition, 
 A few sprigs of myrtle will need no addition ; 
 Myrtle suits me in vine-mantled arbor reclining, 
 And suits you, the servant who waits on my dining. 
 69 
 
BOOK II 
 I. TO POLLIO 
 
 Motum ex Metello consule civicum 
 
 THE civil movement in Metellus' days, 
 The causes of our war, its foremost men 
 In fatal friendships bound, their vicious ways, 
 The tricks that fickle Fortune played us then, 
 
 Arms smeared with blood unexpiated still — 
 When themes like these the historic pen inspire, 
 
 You tread a pathway countless perils fill, 
 
 Where treacherous ashes crust the latent fire. 
 
 The austere Muse of trag^edy may wait : 
 So leave the stage awhile, and by and by. 
 
 When you have finished with affairs of State, 
 For the Cecropian buskin's honors try. 
 70 
 
TO POLLIO 71 
 
 Your sage advice the Senate leans upon, 
 Sad clients on your powerful aid rely, 
 
 And triumphs, Pollio, in Dalmatia won. 
 
 Crowned you with laurel that shall never die. 
 
 Even now the brazen trumpets' menacing crash 
 And the shrill clarion thrill my listening ear ; 
 
 The riders' faces and the armor's flash 
 
 Inspire even now the flying steeds with fear. 
 
 In fancy, as you read, I hear the shout 
 
 Of mighty leaders soiled with battle's stains, 
 
 Not without honor : in the general rout 
 Cato's fierce soul alone unbowed remains. 
 
 Juno and every friendly deity 
 
 Who sought in vain the Africans to aid. 
 In vengeance, sent the victors' sons to die, 
 
 Unpitied victims to Jugurtha's shade. 
 
 Where is the land but blood of Latins spilt 
 In impious wars its fertile acres feeds ? 
 
 Unnumbered sepulchres attest our guilt. 
 
 Sounds of Hesperia's downfall reach the Medes. 
 
72 THE ODES OF HORACE . 
 
 Where is the gulf not crimsoned with our gore ? 
 
 What rivers flow with unpolluted tide ? 
 Within earth's limits is there sea or shore 
 
 That has not been with Daunian slaughter dyed ? 
 
 Lest thou, my sportive Muse, become too grave, 
 And for light lays a Cean dirge inspire, — 
 
 With me beneath the Dionsean cave 
 
 To livelier measures seek to tune the lyre. 
 
II. TO CRISPUS SALLUSTIUS 
 
 Niillus argento color est avaris 
 
 THE silver has no brightness which the mines 
 Hide in the greedy bosom of the earth ; 
 And with thee, Sallust, ore has little worth, 
 Unless with wise and temperate use it shines. 
 
 So Proculeius, for a father's care 
 
 Bestowed upon his brethren, gained a name 
 Him and his story shall surviving Fame 
 
 On tireless pinion through the ages bear. 
 
 A covetous spirit tame, and make thine own 
 
 A wider realm than if all Libya 
 
 And far Hesperian climes confessed thy sway, 
 And either Carthage served but thee alone. 
 
 1^ 
 
74 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Greed, self-indulgent, like the dropsy, grows, 
 
 Its thirst unslaked ; and while the cause remains 
 Of dire disease, nor flies the poisoned veins, 
 
 Through the pale frame the watery languor flows. 
 
 Phraates to the throne of Persian kings 
 
 Restored — dissenting Virtue strikes his name 
 From those deemed happy by the world's acclaim, 
 
 Unteaching the false names men give to things. 
 
 The diadem and a sure empire bring, 
 
 And deathless bays — to him who passes by 
 Huge heaps of gold, and with no longing eye 
 
 Looks back upon them ; — he alone is king. 
 
III. TO DELLIUS 
 
 y^qtiam memento rebus in arduis 
 
 WHEN the outlook is dark and your star on the 
 wane, 
 Take care that your mind never loses its poise ; 
 And when Fortune, my Dellius, smiles brightly again, 
 With the same equanimity temper your joys. 
 
 For your goal is the grave, run 3^our race as you may, — 
 
 Whether always dejected you toil and repine, 
 Or on feast-days in grassy nook moisten your clay 
 . With a bottle of choice old Falernian wine. 
 
 Where the silver-leaved poplar and towering pine, 
 With boughs interlaced, to their shadows invite ; 
 
 Where the brook cuts the turf in a tortuous line. 
 And flashes and frets in its tremulous flight ; 
 
 75 
 
76 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Bring hither wines, perfumes, and, sweetest of flowers, 
 The rose, — though so fleeting it blooms but to 
 wither ; 
 While the Fates spare your life, make the most of its 
 hours ; 
 With youth, health, and riches, O haste to come 
 hither. 
 
 Your seat on the Tiber, your pleasant domains, 
 The home and the garden, your joy and your care. 
 
 You must leave ,them and lose them, in spite of your 
 pains ; 
 You have only been heaping a pile for your heir. 
 
 Whether scion of Inachus, oldest of kings, 
 
 Or the child of a pauper, he draws his first breath, — 
 
 It matters to none whence his lineage springs, 
 All, all are the victims of pitiless death. 
 
 To the same place are bound all the children of men. 
 Our lots are all shaken in one common urn ; 
 
 All are drawn from it, sooner or later, and then 
 We embark on the voyage whence we never return. 
 
IV. TO XANTHIAS 
 
 Ne sit ancillcB tibi amor pudori 
 
 NAY, Xanthias, deem it not a shame 
 The love you to a handmaid gave, 
 For great Achilles did the same, — 
 The blonde Brise'is was a slave. 
 
 Ajax, the son of Telamon, 
 
 Captive Tecmessa's charms inspired ; 
 A virgin, spoil in battle won, 
 
 The heart of Agamemnon fired 
 
 When the Thessalian felled in fight 
 
 Fierce hordes, and Hector snatched away 
 
 Made for the wearied Greeks more light 
 The task of taking Pergama. 
 
 11 
 
7^8 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 The gods are cruel ; it may be 
 
 Fair Phyllis' lineage shows no flaw, - 
 
 Of royal blood a princess she, — 
 And you a royal son-in-law. 
 
 From no plebeian rubbish came, 
 Believe me, one to you so dear, 
 
 No mother of ignoble fame 
 
 Bore one so liberal and sincere. 
 
 Her arms and face and rounded leg, 
 
 Heart-whole I praise ; dismiss your fears. 
 
 Nor harbor idle doubts, I beg. 
 Of one hard on to forty years. 
 
V. LALAGE 
 
 Nondum suhacta ferre jugum valet 
 
 SHE is like a young heifer — it never will do 
 To couple this delicate creature with you ; 
 The yoke does not suit her — she never will pull 
 Her part in the load with a fiery bull. 
 
 For your heifer now little or nothing heeds 
 But to plash in the waters and graze on the meads, 
 And to frisk with the calves on the river's bank 
 Where the shade of the willows is cool and dank. 
 
 Then why will you follow this bootless suit 
 And the fancy you have for an immature fruit ? 
 To pluck the blue clusters be never in haste, — 
 Rich Autumn will purple the grape to your taste. 
 79 
 
80 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 She may fly from you now but she soon will pursue ; 
 
 Cruel Time gives her years that he pilfers from you ; 
 And soon will your Lalage join in the chase 
 For a husoand, with never a blush on her face. 
 
 More beloved than Chloris of shoulder so white 
 That she shines like the moon on the water by night, 
 Or than Pholoe ever coquettish and coy, 
 Or than beautiful Gyges the Cnidian boy — 
 
 Whom if you should mix in a bevy of girls. 
 With his delicate face and his loose flowing curls. 
 It would bother a stranger, when trying his best, 
 To tell which was which, and pick him from the rest. 
 
VI. TO SEPTIMIUS 
 
 Sepfimi, Gades aditure mecum 
 
 I'M sure, Septimius, thou wouldst go 
 To Cadiz with me or explore 
 The haunts of our unconquered foe 
 
 That dwell on the Cantabrian shore, — 
 And journey on to Afric lands 
 Through boiling waves and burning sands. 
 
 Worn as I am with war's alarms, 
 Hard perils, and the billows' rage, 
 
 Let me in Tibur's rural charms 
 Find a calm haven for my age : 
 
 Some colonists of Grecian race 
 
 Were the first settlers of the place. 
 
 But should the Fates this boon deny, 
 Tarentum is my second choice ; 
 
 8i 
 
82 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 On sweet Galoesus' banks would I 
 
 Amid the pastured flocks rejoice, 
 Whose fleeces show the shepherds' care 
 In the protecting skins they wear. 
 
 No spot on earth, where'er it Hes, 
 For me has such a power to please 
 
 It beams with smiles, its honey vies 
 With that of the Hymettian bees, 
 
 And green Venafrum cannot show 
 
 A field where finer olives grow. 
 
 The Springs are long, we breathe an air 
 Moistened with warm and genial rains ; 
 
 Flowers and fruits will flourish there, 
 
 And vineyards pay the peasant's pains : 
 
 On hills hard by a wine is prest 
 
 That "s equal to Falernum's best. 
 
 In that serene and happy seat, 
 
 Remote from worldly toil and strife, 
 
 Wilt thou with me in calm retreat 
 Tread the descending path of life, — 
 
 Till thou, bereaved, with tears regard 
 
 The ashes of thy friend the bard. 
 
VII. TO POMPEIUS VARUS 
 O scBpe meciim tejnpus in ultimiim 
 
 DEAREST companion of my prime, 
 Who under Brutus shared with me 
 The dangers of that troubled time — 
 Who, Pompey, has restored to thee 
 The civil rights that Romans prize, 
 Thy fathers' gods, Italian skies ? 
 
 But not in feats of arms alone 
 
 Were all our hours of youth consumed ; 
 For, crowned with flowers, my ringlets shone, 
 
 By Syrian essences perfumed, 
 When thou and I on many a day 
 With wine drove loitering Time away. 
 
 I saw with thee Philippi's field, 
 
 The onset and the headlong flight : 
 83 
 
84 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Ignobly left behind my shield, 
 
 When Valor faltered in the fight — 
 And in the sordid dust the brave, 
 Who looked for victory, found a grave. 
 
 Fate sheltered me — my guardian then 
 
 Was the swift-footed Mercury ; 
 Veiled in dense clouds, through hostile men, 
 
 He bore me safe ; but as for thee, 
 Thy wreck upon a stormy main 
 Engulfed thee in the wars again. 
 
 Let then thy vows to Jove be paid, 
 And thou, at peace with all thy foes, 
 
 Beneath my laurel's tranquil shade 
 Awhile thy war-worn limbs repose ; 
 
 And never scruple to make free 
 
 With casks long since reserved for thee. 
 
 Pour perfumes from capacious shells, 
 Fill up the polished bowls with wine ; 
 
 Oblivion of all sorrow dwells 
 In clusters of the Massic vine : 
 
 Parsley and myrtle twigs, who now 
 
 Shall weave in garlands for thy brow t 
 
TO POMPEIUS VARUS 85 
 
 And whom with Venus' aid shall we 
 
 As master of our revels call ? 
 A truce to sanity — I '11 be 
 
 Less sane than Thracian bacchanal ; 
 When bosom friends long parted meet 
 A brief delirium is sweet. 
 
VIII. TO BARINE 
 
 Vila si juris tibi perjerati 
 
 BARINE, if a lapse in truth 
 Had ever worked thee any harm, 
 Darkened a nail, or stained a tooth, 
 Or robbed thee of a single charm — 
 
 I might believe ! But, perjured, thou 
 Dost with a brighter lustre shine, 
 
 Youth's cynosure, — each broken vow 
 Adds graces to that form of thine. 
 
 Swear by the deathless deities, 
 The ashes of thy mother's urn. 
 
 Night's silent signs that stud the skies, 
 All thy false oaths to profit turn. 
 86 
 
TO BARINE 87 
 
 This Venus laughs at, not alone, — 
 
 Her simple nymphs laugh all the same, — 
 
 While Cupid on a blood-dyed stone 
 Sharpens his arrows tipped with flame. 
 
 And while the Roman youth increase. 
 New slaves grow up to wear thy chain, 
 
 And never will old lovers cease 
 To quit thee and come back again. 
 
 Frugal old men and mothers dread 
 The wiles that lure their boys astray, 
 
 And brides are fearful, newly wed, 
 
 Thou 'It steal their husbands' hearts away. 
 
N 
 
 IX. TO VALGIUS 
 
 Non semper hfibres niibibus hispidos 
 OT always from the clouds are showers descend- 
 
 From hail and sleet the fields are sometimes free ; 
 Not always are the angry winds contending 
 To swell the surges of the Caspian sea ; 
 
 Not at all seasons, Valgius, are the fountains 
 Of bleak Armenia clogged with ice and snow, 
 
 Nor oaks and ash-trees on the Apulian mountains 
 Widowed of foliage when the north winds blow. 
 
 In sighs and tears thou wastest days — and morrows 
 For Mystes lost, — no respite to thy grief ! 
 
 The evening star looks down upon thy sorrows, 
 And morning's sunshine brings thee no relief. 
 
TO VALGIUS 89 
 
 Nestor who lived three ages was not weeping 
 For slain Antilochus through all those years ; 
 
 Nor were his parents and his sisters keeping 
 Their grief for Troilus ever fresh with tears. 
 
 Cease then these querulous and doleful measures, 
 And paeans to Augustus Caesar sing, 
 
 Who from the Orient returns with treasures 
 And the new trophies that his armies bring. 
 
 Rigid Niphates adds to his ovations. 
 
 Its course in lesser waves the Danube rounds, 
 
 The Medes are counted with the conquered nations, 
 And Scythia's horsemen keep within her bounds. 
 
XL TO QUINTIUS 
 
 Quid bellicosiis Cantaber et Scythes 
 
 WHY inquire what next the Cantabrian intends, 
 Or whether the Scythians continue our 
 friends ? 
 Little need, my dear Quintius, of bulwarks to screen 
 
 us, 
 While the broad Adriatic is rolling between us. 
 
 All the wants of your age frugal means will supply ; 
 Youth and beauty are always too ready to fly ; 
 
 Easy sleep and sweet loves, added years drive 
 away, — 
 
 Though your nap after dinner is coming to stay. 
 
 The same splendor not always invests the spring 
 
 flowers ; 
 The moon does not shine with one face at all hours ; 
 
 90 
 
ro QuiNTJUs 91 
 
 Why do you in your mind without respite revolve 
 The riddles eternity only can solve ? 
 
 Why not, under the plane-tree or under this pine, 
 With no thought in the world but of pleasure, recline, — 
 With roses crown locks that are verging to gray, 
 And, well perfumed, indulge in good wine while w^e 
 may ? 
 
 Gay Bacchus is potent to drive away troubles, — 
 Our sorrows he halves, and our transports he doubles ; 
 What boy at my beck will come hither the quicker 
 To cool in the stream this Falernian liquor ? 
 
 What boy bring the singing-girl forth from her home, 
 
 Shy Lyde wiio little is given to roam ? 
 
 Bid her come wdth her lyre, and let her take care 
 In the true Spartan fashion to knot up her hair. 
 
XIL TO M^CENAS 
 
 Nolis longaferce bella Niimaniice 
 
 USED to soft strains, do not command my lyre 
 To tell of brave Numantians' savage slaughters ; 
 Nor exploits bold of Hannibal the dire, 
 Nor Punic blood purpling Sicilian waters ; 
 
 Nor of Hylaeus flushed with too much wine ; 
 
 Nor how Herculean valor tamed the giant 
 Sons of the earth, threatening to undermine 
 
 Saturn's refulgent house ; nor the defiant 
 
 And cruel Lapithae. In unmeasured lay 
 You, my Maecenas, shall record the story 
 
 Of kings led captive through the Roman Way, 
 And battles fought and won for Caesar's glory. 
 92 
 
TO MMCE.VAS 93 
 
 But me the Muse commands, in dulcet lays 
 
 To sing your Queen Licymnia's bright eyes shining 
 
 Into your own with intermingled rays, 
 
 And mutual fondness heart with heart entwinins. 
 
 Quick at retort and jest, — she no less charms 
 
 When in the dance with graceful movement swa3'ing, 
 
 Than when on Dian's festal days her arms 
 
 Twine with the arms of brilliant maidens playing. 
 
 You would not give Licymnia's slightest tress 
 For all the gold that fertile Phrygia offers, 
 
 Nor all that Achasmenes' heirs possess, 
 Nor all the treasures in Arabian coffers. 
 
 When she with joy to hail your coming flies, 
 Turning her neck to meet your fiery kisses, 
 
 Eager to give, she cruelly denies, — 
 
 That you may seize, not she bestow, their blisses. 
 
XIII. TO A TREE 
 
 Ilk et nefasto te posuit die 
 
 WHOEVER first planted thee, stump of a tree, 
 And with hand sacrilegious attended thy 
 tillage, 
 Chose an ill-omened day and well knew thou wouldst 
 be 
 Posterity's curse and the shame of the village. 
 
 There 's nothing of such a man might not be said ; 
 He has mixed Colchic poisons, — and, by the same 
 token, 
 I am sure he has murdered a guest in his bed, 
 
 And his own parent's neck has remorselessly 
 broken, — 
 
 And been guilty of every conceivable crime, — 
 
 Who transplanted thee — thee^ ugly root of disaster, 
 94 
 
TO A TREE 
 
 95 
 
 To my fields, — with the evil intent at the time 
 
 That thou some day shouldst fall on thy innocent 
 master. 
 
 As to what we should shun we are all in the dark, — 
 Every hour that passes is fraught with its danger ; 
 
 But the mariner sailing in Tyrian bark 
 
 Dreads the sea, — and to all other dread is a 
 stranger ; 
 
 The soldier fears war and the cloud in the air 
 Of arrows the Parthian shoots in his flying ; 
 
 The Parthian fears dungeons : but none are aware 
 How the summons will come that admits no denying. 
 
 How near have I come to the Kingdom of Night 
 Where ^acus is judge and Proserpina reigning, 
 
 With the separate seats of the happy in sight, 
 
 Where flits Sappho's ghost, with her lyre, complain- 
 ing 
 
 Of the Lesbian girls ; and where wanders the bard, 
 Alc^eus, whose harp wakes a deeper emotion. 
 
 As he strikes it with golden bow, — singing how hard 
 Are the evils of exile, of war, and the ocean ! 
 
96 THE ODES OE HORACE 
 
 They both sing in strains that are worth being heard, 
 While Hsten in silence the crowd of beholders ; 
 
 But by battles and upsets of tyrants are stirred 
 
 More deeply the Shades, pressing shoulder on 
 shoulders. 
 
 What wonder ! entranced by those marvellous airs. 
 The attention of Cerberus' self is enlisted, 
 
 While he droops his black ears and his ravishment 
 shares 
 With the snakes in the locks of the Furies entwisted ; 
 
 Prometheus the peck of the vulture ignores, 
 And the sire of Pelops his thirst ; and Orion 
 
 To the stars on the pinions of harmony soars. 
 Forgetting the chase of the lynx and the lion. 
 
XIV. TO POSTUMUS 
 
 Eheu fugaces^ Postume, Postume 
 
 MY Postumus, the fleeting years 
 Pass swiftly. Neither prayers nor tears 
 Can smooth the h'nes by age imprest 
 Or Death's advancing step arrest, — 
 
 Not if three hundred bulls a day 
 You should to tearless Pluto slay, 
 Whose Stygian waters' circling chain 
 The Giants strive to break in vain, — 
 
 Waters that all of mortal birth 
 Must cross who eat the fruits of Earth, 
 Whether they bask in wealth, or toil 
 To win scant fare from stubborn soil. 
 97 
 
98 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 In vain from bloody Mars we 're free, 
 Or hoarse surge of the Hadrian sea ; 
 In vain from noxious vapors fly 
 That South winds breed in Autumn's sky 
 
 To the sad shades we all must go, 
 See black Cocytus winding slow, 
 See Sisyphus his long toil ply, 
 And Danaus' hateful familv. 
 
 Lands you must leave, and home, and wife ; 
 
 And of the trees you nurse in hfe 
 None, save the cypresses we hate. 
 Shall mourn their short-lived master's fate. 
 
 A worthier heir shall drain the lees 
 Of casks you guard with countless keys, 
 And stain the floor with choicer wine 
 Than crowns the board where pontiffs dine. 
 
XV. OLD TIMES AND NEW 
 
 Jam pauca aratro jiigera regies 
 
 SOON will our regal structures leave small space 
 Of acres for the ploughshare ; while we make 
 Our fish-ponds broader than the Lucrine lake, 
 And the unmarried plane-tree takes the place 
 
 Of vine-wed elms : soon shrubs and flowers will blow, 
 And with a copious fragrance fill the air 
 From beds of violets and myrtles where 
 
 The former master's gainful olives grow ; 
 
 Soon will the laurel-trees exclude the rays 
 Of the too fervid sun. It was not thus 
 Under the auspices of Romulus, 
 
 Or unshorn Cato, in our fathers' days. 
 99 
 
TOO THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Of small account the means of private men ; 
 
 Then public wealth was great. No wide arcade 
 To private houses lent a grateful shade, 
 
 And caught the northern summer breezes then. 
 
 Despising not the turf that grows at large, — 
 It was enjoined the buildings of the State 
 And temples of the Gods to decorate 
 
 With quarried marble at the public charge. 
 
XVI. TO GROSPHUS 
 
 Otium divos rogat in patenti 
 
 EST ! prays the mariner, by storm 
 Caught in the wide ^gaean sea — 
 When blackening clouds the skies deform 
 And lone stars glimmer fitfully. 
 
 R 
 
 For rest the furious Thracians cry, 
 The quivered Parthians pray for rest ; 
 
 Rest, Grosphus, neither gold can buy 
 Nor precious stones nor purple vest. 
 
 In vain your treasures you display 
 Or lictor's summonses to quit — 
 
 The cares and tumults still will stay 
 That round the gilded ceilings flit. 
 
 101 
 
102 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 On little he lives well, indeed, 
 
 Whose father's modest salts are bright 
 
 On his scant board ; nor care nor greed 
 Deprives him of his sleep at night. 
 
 Why boast of aims unlimited, 
 
 Doomed to so brief a life ? And why- 
 Change for warm clime ? His country fled, 
 What exile from himself can fly ? 
 
 Vile care ascends the brass-beaked ships, 
 Nor lags the mounted knights behind, 
 
 The swiftness of the stag outstrips, 
 And cloud-compelling Eastern wind. 
 
 The mind rejoicing in to-day 
 
 No morrow's troubles need molest : 
 
 With gentle smiles drive ills away ; 
 For nothing is completely blest. 
 
 Age wastes Tithonus lingeringly ; 
 
 Achilles, glorious, swiftly dies ; 
 The hour perchance may give to me 
 
 A boon that it to you denies. 
 
TO GROSPHUS 103 
 
 A hundred flocks your meadows graze ; 
 
 Sicilian heifers round you low ; 
 For chariots fit, your filly neighs ; 
 
 Your vats with Tyrian purples glow. 
 
 Fate never false vouchsafes to me 
 Contentment with a small domain, 
 
 The lyric power, — the faculty 
 To conquer malice with disdain. 
 
XVII. TO MAECENAS 
 
 Cur me querelis exanimas tiiis ? 
 
 WHY wilt thou worry me with thy complaining ? 
 Why fear, Maecenas, ills that may betide — 
 That thou shouldst go before, and I remaining 
 Lament for thee, my pillar and my pride. 
 
 If our united lot the Fates should sever. 
 And snatch my spirit's better part away, — 
 
 Thou lost ! of life's delights bereft forever. 
 Why should my other half its flight delay ? 
 
 One hour the common doom shall find us sharing ; 
 
 Beheve me that I take no faithless oath, — 
 In our complete companionship preparing 
 
 For the last journey that awaits us both. 
 
 104 * 
 
TO M^CENAS 105 
 
 We will not part, — of hell's worst brood defiant, 
 Despite Chimasra with her tongue of fire. 
 
 And Gyges too, the hundred-headed giant ; 
 I go where Justice and the Fates require. 
 
 Whether the Scales or Scorpion is ascendant, 
 Or Capricornus rules the Hesperian brine. 
 
 On the same horoscope our lives dependent, 
 
 My fortunes always have been linked w'ith thine. 
 
 In strange accord our natal stars united ; 
 
 For when malignant Saturn menaced thee, 
 Refulgent Jupiter thy pathway lighted 
 
 And saved thy life for honors yet to be, — 
 
 When at the theatre thy restoration 
 
 Was greeted by the crowd with three times three 
 Mine was no less a cause of gratulation 
 
 That Faunus turned aside the falling tree — 
 
 Of witty men and wise the guardian, Faunus ! 
 
 Bring forth thy victims, build thy votive shrine — 
 To keep our vows, ills thus averted warn us ; 
 
 A lamb will answer well enough for mine. 
 
XVIII. VANITY OF RICHES 
 
 Non ebur neqiie aureuni 
 
 NO ivory or gold 
 In my abode on fretted ceilings gleams 
 Numidian marbles hold 
 On lofty columns no Hymettian beams. 
 
 Not as an unknown heir 
 Do I the wealth of Attalus assume ; 
 
 Nor splendid purples wear 
 That noble clients weave in Spartan loom. 
 
 But plain integrity 
 Is mine, and talent of a liberal vein ; 
 
 And humble though I be 
 The wealthy seek me and my friends remain. 
 1 06 
 
VAA'ITY OF RICHES lO/ 
 
 And now for nothing more 
 Do I the Gods entreat, nor powerful friend 
 
 Beg to increase my store ; 
 With one small Sabine farm my wishes end. 
 
 Day chases after day, 
 And the new moons go on to wane and die ; 
 
 But as life slips away, 
 You, at death's door, carved blocks of marble buy 
 
 For you the shore lacks room, 
 You push the banks at Baiae on the wave ; 
 
 Regardless of your doom. 
 You build a palace, and forget your grave. 
 
 Nay more, incessantly 
 You raze the landmarks of your neighbors' grounds ; 
 
 Though they your clients be, 
 With greed insatiate you o'erleap their bounds. 
 
 In foreign climes to roam, 
 Their gods and children to their bosoms held. 
 
 From the ancestral home 
 The wretched wife and husband are expelled. 
 
I08 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Be sure, no gilded hall 
 More certainly its affluent lord awaits 
 
 Than one reserved for all, 
 Bounded by grasping Pluto's prison gates. 
 
 Why more ? Impartially 
 Doth Earth the dust of prince and pauper hold, 
 
 Nor could Prometheus buy 
 Release from Charon with his wit and gold. 
 
 Proud Tantalus and all 
 His race in strictest durance he restrains ; 
 
 Called, or without a call, 
 He speeds the poor, absolved from all their pains. 
 
XIX. TO BACCHUS 
 
 BaccJmm m remotis carmina rupibus 
 
 MID the far rocks sat Bacchus, teaching songs : 
 I saw him — trust me, men of future years ! 
 A group of Ustening Nymphs about him throngs, 
 And Satyrs» with goats' feet and pointed ears. 
 
 The cry of Evoe ! Evoe ! fills the air — 
 My heart is trembling with a panic fear 
 
 And Bacchic rapture. Spare me. Liber, spare, 
 Thy frightful thyrsus turn aside and hear ! 
 
 Forgive ! It is my province now to sing 
 
 The revels of the frenzied Thyiades — 
 The copious streams of milk, — and earth's wine- 
 spring. 
 And honey dropped from hollow trunks of trees. 
 109 
 
no THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 And I may sing too of the happy spouse, 
 By thee an added honor to the skies, 
 
 The heavy fall of Pentheus' ruined house, 
 And the fell stroke by which Lycurgus dies. 
 
 Thou swayest the rivers, thou the barbarous sea. 
 And in the distant mountains, moist with wine, 
 
 With wreathed vipers thou dost harmlessly 
 The tresses of thy Bacchanals entwine. 
 
 When the fell Giants scaled the upward track 
 Thy father's realm in impious rage to storm, 
 
 Thy claws and dreadful fangs hurled Rhoetus back 
 Thy godhead hidden in a lion's form. 
 
 Though called more fit for game and roundelay 
 And jests — and even held of small account 
 
 In war — thou wast as potent in the fray, — 
 Alike in peace and battle paramount. 
 
 Even Cerberus to thee could wish no harm 
 Bright with thy golden horn, adornment meet ; 
 
 The triple-headed monster felt thy charm, 
 
 And wagged his tail, and fawned, and licked thy 
 feet. 
 
XX. TO MAECENAS 
 
 Non usitata nee tenuiferar 
 
 ON strong, unwonted wing shall I, 
 Bi-formed, half bard and half a bird, 
 Be wafted through the liquid sky, 
 
 Where Envy's voice is never heard ; 
 On earth no longer shall I stay, 
 But from the cities soar away. 
 
 I shall not perish, though I be, 
 They say, of pauper parents born ; 
 
 While called, Maecenas, dear by thee, 
 I well may brave the vulgar scorn ; 
 
 I shall not fill an earthly grave, 
 
 Nor prison by the Stygian wave. 
 
 Even now with folds of rugged skin 
 I see my nether limbs arrayed, 
 
112 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Even now the downy plumes begin 
 Fingers and shoulders to invade; 
 To a white bird transfigured I 
 Am ready to essay the sky. 
 
 On swifter than Icarian wing 
 
 I hover where the Bosphorus roars, 
 
 And my canorous note shall ring 
 Along Gsetulia's burning shores, 
 
 And pierce the Hyperborean plains 
 
 Where an eternal winter reigns. 
 
 Me — shall remote Gelonians know. 
 And Parthians, who disguise the fear 
 
 With which they face their Roman foe, - 
 My song the Colchians shall hear — 
 
 Some time to learned Spaniards known. 
 
 And to the men who drink the Rhone. 
 
 Away — all notes of hireling woe ! 
 
 All trappings of funereal gloom — 
 The clamorous dirge, the ghastly show — 
 
 There is no tenant of my tomb : 
 Superfluous are the honors spent 
 Above an empty monument. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 I. A CHORUS OP^ VIRGINS AND 
 YOUTHS 
 
 Odi profamtm vulgus et 
 
 arceo 
 
 I HATE and banish hence the crowd profane ; 
 Keep silence ; maids and boys, to you I sing. 
 The Muses' priest, I to their altar bring 
 Songs of a sacred and unwonted strain. 
 
 Monarchs their subject flocks in fear obey; 
 Jove, who on Titan foes in triumph trod, 
 Illustrious, moves all Nature with his nod, 
 
 And governs monarchs with imperial sway. 
 
 One man plants larger vineyards than his brother ; 
 Striving for votes, this in the Campus stands 
 And boasts a better fame and purer hands — 
 
 And this a nobler lineage — than another ; 
 
114 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Of clients this may have a greater crowd : 
 It matters not, — all bow to equal laws ; 
 By lot from her capacious urn Fate draws 
 
 Names of the lowliest now, and now the proud. 
 
 Sicilian banquets yield him no delight 
 Who at the table sees above his head 
 A drawn sword hanging by a single thread ; 
 
 Him — harps and birds in vain to sleep invite. 
 
 The humble homestead of the husbandman 
 
 Disdaining not, sleep visits with sweet dreams ; 
 Nor shuns the shaded banks of running streams, 
 
 Nor Tempe's vale that gentle zephyrs fan. 
 
 The man who curbs his wishes by his needs, 
 And can enjoy enough, contentedly, 
 Looks with no fear on the tumultuous sea. 
 
 Nor rise of stormy stars nor setting heeds ; 
 
 Unruffled, though the vines are lashed with hail, 
 Or winter-killed ; and sterile fields complain 
 Of torrid stars ; and trees, of drought or rain^; 
 
 And all the false hopes of the harvest fail. 
 
A CHORUS OF VIRGINS AND YOUTHS II5 
 
 The affluent lord, fastidious of dry land, 
 
 Aids the contractors' workmen with his slaves. 
 And, crowding fishes in their native waves. 
 
 Sinks rock and rubble where his house may stand. 
 
 But fears and sad forebodings of the mind 
 
 Scale where the master mounts ; Care never quits 
 The brazen galley ; where the rider sits, 
 
 On the same saddle black Care rides behind. 
 
 If Phrygian marbles cannot soothe our grief, 
 Nor garments that with purple lustre shine, 
 Nor the rich juice of the Falernian vine. 
 
 Nor Achaemenian perfumes bring relief; 
 
 Say why a modern palace should I raise, 
 With pillars envied of the passers-by, 
 Or change my Sabine Valley — tell me, why ? 
 
 For wealth that only brings more anxious days. 
 
II. EDUCATION 
 
 Angustam amice pauperie??i pati 
 
 THE hardy youth, whose work in life should be 
 Sharp warfare ; who would manage steed and 
 spear, 
 To strike the savage Parthians with fear, 
 Must gladly bear with narrow poverty, 
 
 And pass his days beneath the open skies 
 
 In perilous deeds. The warring tyrant's wife 
 And betrothed daughter mark him in the strife, 
 
 From hostile walls, and breathe in blended sighs : 
 
 Alas ! unused to armies, who can shield 
 
 The princely suitor, should he cross the path 
 Of this fierce lion, and provoke the wrath. 
 
 That, red with carnage, scorns the bloody field ? 
 ii6 
 
EDUCATION 117 
 
 Sweet honor, for one's native land to die ! 
 Death follows on the adult coward's track, 
 Nor spares the trembling limbs and crouching back 
 
 Of youth unwarlike that from battle fly. 
 
 Virtue — that base repulse can never know, 
 Fulgent with honors incontaminate, 
 Lifts or lays down the fasces of the State, 
 
 And recks not how the winds of favor blow. 
 
 To men who merit immortality, 
 
 Virtue the gates celestial opens wide. 
 
 Points out the way to vulgar crowds denied, — 
 
 From the dull earth she spurns, alert to fly. 
 
 To faithful silence, too, its guerdon pay ! 
 I will not suffer him to share with me 
 House on the shore or pinnace on the sea, 
 
 Who could Love's sacred mysteries betray. 
 
 His laws neglected, Jove has oftentimes. 
 
 When with the sinful found, chastised the pure ; 
 And Vengeance, lame of foot, is slow, but sure 
 
 To catch the wicked running from his crimes. 
 
III. THE HONEST MAN 
 jfustiun et tenacem pj'Opositi virum 
 
 THE just man whom fixed purposes control, 
 No base commands of the mad populace, 
 No terrors frowning in a tyrant's face, 
 Affright, or shake his ever-constant soul — 
 
 Nor raging winds that rule the Hadrian Sea, 
 Nor bolts by Jove's red hand in lightning hurled 
 Amid the crash of a collapsing world 
 
 Unterrified, in his integrity. 
 
 Thus Pollux and wide-wandering Hercules 
 
 With patient striving reached the starry skies ; 
 Augustus with them at the banquet lies, 
 
 His lips with nectar purpled — at his ease. 
 
THE IIOXEST MAN 1 19 
 
 The meed deserving, father Bacchus, thus 
 The untamed tigers bore thee to the stars, 
 Wearing the yoke ; and thus the steeds of Mars 
 
 From Acherontine reahns bore Romulus : 
 
 What time the gods, in council met, applaud 
 The words of Juno heard so gratefully ; 
 "Troy! Troy! to chaste Minerva and to me 
 
 Doomed — from the time Laomedon by fraud 
 
 "Kept from the builder Gods their just reward ; 
 
 Her towers have fallen and crumbled in the dust ; 
 By a strange woman and false umpire's lust 
 Doomed — with her faithless race and faithless lord. 
 
 " Superb, the treacherous guest no longer shines 
 For the Lacoenian adulteress. 
 Nor does the perjured house of Priam press, 
 With Hector's might, the gallant Argive lines. 
 
 The war has ceased our discords made so long, — 
 My anger with it ; I will now restore 
 My grandson, whom our Trojan priestess bore, 
 
 To Mars, unmindful of my hate and wrong. 
 
120 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 " Him will I welcome to these bright retreats, 
 To our serene, celestial fellowship ; 
 With us shall he nectarean juices sip, 
 Enrolled among the ranks that fill these seats. 
 
 " While between Ilion and Rome the waves 
 Shall rage athwart the wide dividing main, 
 Where it may please them let the exiles reign ; 
 And while on Paris' and on Priam's graves 
 
 Herds leap and graze at will, and wild beasts breed 
 Their cubs unharmed, the Capitol shall stand 
 Refulgent, — Rome, proud queen of every land. 
 
 Impose her edicts on the vanquished Mede. 
 
 " Her name shall be a terror far and wide 
 
 To earth's remotest bounds — from Calpe's Strait 
 To fields Nile's swelling waters irrigate, 
 Through continents estranging seas divide : 
 
 " Stronger when leaving gold within the mine, 
 
 There better placed, — despised and so unsought, 
 Than gathering gold for human uses wrought, 
 With right hand plundering everything divine. 
 
THE HONEST MAN 121 
 
 " Whither the Hmits of the world attain, 
 
 Her arms shall reach, and Rome exult to see 
 Lands where the solar fires hold revelry, 
 And lands where clouds prevail, and mists and rain. 
 
 " All earth shall own the Roman's warlike powers, 
 This law unbroke — that no ancestral pride, 
 No filial love, whatever may betide. 
 Shall reconstruct Troy's tenements and towers. 
 
 Renascent Troy shall see the deadly strife 
 Renewed, and with a mournful augury ; 
 While the victorious bands against her I 
 
 Myself will lead, Jove's sister and his wife. 
 
 " If thrice her barren walls should rise again 
 
 By Phoebus' aid, thrice shall they be o'erthrown 
 By my brave Argives ; thrice the wife bemoan, — 
 A weeping captive, — son and husband slain." 
 
 But strain like this no sportive lyre beseems ; 
 
 Whither dost tend, rash Muse? Prithee, cut short 
 The attempt Olympian speeches to report. 
 
 Nor by lig-ht measures lessen mighty themes. 
 
IV. TO CALLIOPE 
 
 Descende ccelo et die age tibia 
 
 DESCEND from heaven and a long lay inspire, 
 My queen, Calliope — whether thy choice 
 Be for the pipe with a clear ringing voice, 
 Or thou prefer the chords of Phoebus' lyre. 
 
 Hear you ? or does a charming phantasy 
 Delude me ? for I seem to hear — and stray 
 Through sacred groves where genial breezes play, 
 
 And running waters murmur pleasantly. 
 
 When lost on Vultur, the Apulian steep. 
 
 Wandering beyond my own Apulia, 
 
 The doves brought leaves to screen me where I lay 
 Thus ran the legend — wearied and asleep. 
 
TO CALLIOPE 123 
 
 It was a marvel all the country round ; 
 In Bantine meadows, in the little nest 
 Among the rocks on Acherontia's crest, 
 
 And in Forentum's fertile lower ground : 
 
 That I should slumber sweetly in the wild, 
 'Mid bears and vipers, and escape unharmed, 
 My life by laurels and by myrtles charmed — 
 
 The fearless boy a God-protected child. 
 
 Yours, Muses, yours ! now and forevermore 
 Whether I dwell on cool Praeneste's peak, 
 Or Sabine hills, or Tibur's valley seek, 
 
 Or the bright atmosphere of Baiae's shore. 
 
 Friend to your founts and choirs, and you to me ! 
 For me was stemmed Philippi's adverse tide, 
 The accursed tree's fell blow w^as turned aside, 
 
 And my bark saved on the Sicilian sea. 
 
 While you are with me, as a mariner 
 
 I will defy the stormy Bosphorus' wrath. 
 Nor shall the many perils of the path 
 
 My steps from Syria's burning sands deter 
 
124 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Inviolate, I will see the Scythian river; 
 
 Britons, with strangers famed for savage deeds ; 
 
 Concanians revelling in the blood of steeds ; 
 And the Gelonian with his well-filled quiver. 
 
 What pleasures you to lofty Caesar yield, 
 
 When, his tired cohorts cantoned in the towns. 
 Repose in your Pierian grotto crowns 
 
 His toils and triumphs in the battlefield ! 
 
 You gentle counsels give, and in the gift 
 Rejoice. We know the impious revolt 
 Of the huge Titans, and the thunderbolt 
 
 That on the embattled host fell sure and swift ; 
 
 Hurled by the hand of Him whom all obey - 
 Who o'er the stable earth and stormy sea, 
 And cities, and the realms of misery, 
 
 Rules gods and mortals with impartial sway. 
 
 When the young giants in rebellion strove. 
 In brute force trusting, and with fury wdld. 
 On Pelion's height, leaf-clad Olympus piled, 
 
 Great was the horror it inspired in Jove. 
 
TO CALLIOPE 12; 
 
 But what could threats and violence avail, 
 When Rhaetus, Mimas, all the savage crew, 
 Enceladus, who trees uprooted threw, 
 
 Frightful Porphyrion and Typhoeus quail — 
 
 Rushing against Minerva's sounding shield ; 
 Here Vulcan stood, impatient for the fray, 
 The matron Juno here, while Patara 
 
 And Delos sent Apollo to the field : 
 
 Whose bow is on his shoulders ever laid. 
 Who bathes his flowing locks in crystal dew 
 Of Castaly, who Lycia's thickets haunts, — and who 
 
 Finds home and altar in his native glade. 
 
 Force lacking wisdom falls by its own weight ; 
 Force tempered by refinement Gods approve. 
 And lift to lofty heights ; forces that move 
 
 Men's minds to deeds of wickedness they hate. 
 
 How true this precept is let Gyas tell, 
 The hundred-handed; and Orion too, 
 Who dared the maiden huntress to pursue, 
 
 And pierced by Dian's virgin arrow fell. 
 
126 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Earth mourns the monsters prisoned in her caves, 
 And grieves for offspring to wan Orcus sent 
 By Hghtning ; nor is flaming yEtna rent 
 
 By the swift fire that underneath them raves. 
 
 The heart of Tityos still the vulture tears, 
 His lust chastising, warden of his pains ; 
 And the dire burden of three hundred chains 
 
 The libertine Pirithous ever bears. 
 
V. REGULUS 
 
 CcbIo tonanteni credidimus yovem 
 
 WE hear Jove thundering and believe he reigns 
 In heaven ; on earth a present deity 
 Shall our imperial Augustus be — 
 Britain and Parthia widening his domains. 
 
 Have Crassus' soldiers truckled to their fate ? 
 Can Marsians and Apulians lead base lives, 
 Slaves to the sires of their Barbarian wives — 
 
 (Alas, the inverted morals of the State !) 
 
 And under Parthian tyrants make a home. 
 Their name, their robe, the sacred shields forget 
 And Vesta's shrine, whose fires are burning yet, 
 
 Jove's temple still the Capitol of Rome ? 
 127 
 
128 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Wisely the mind of Regulus foresaw, 
 
 Rejecting base conditions, that the State 
 Would only rear a race degenerate, 
 
 And ruin on the coming ages draw — 
 
 Unless our captive youth unpiiied die. 
 
 "I saw," he said, "the Roman ensign hung 
 In Punic temples ; saw the weapons wrung 
 
 In bloodless battle from our soldiery, 
 
 " And Roman citizens with elbows bound 
 Behind their backs ; while so secure our foes. 
 Wide-open city gates they scorn to close. 
 
 The fields our arms laid waste with harvests crowned ! 
 
 " Ransomed by gold, forsooth, he will come back 
 A braver soldier ! You but add a cost 
 To shame. The fleece that has its color lost 
 
 Dyed red, its pristine white will ever lack : 
 
 " In hearts of men degraded, to restore 
 Her former state true Valor does not care. 
 If the hind fights when rescued from the snare 
 
 That man will be more daring than before 
 
REGULUS 129 
 
 Who trusts to a perfidious enemy ; 
 Will crush in other conflicts Punic bands 
 Who once has felt their shackles on his hands, 
 
 And with a craven's instinct feared to die ! 
 
 " This man, not knowing where true safety lies, 
 
 Has mingled peace with war, and ours the shame ! 
 O mighty Carthage, loftier in thy fame 
 On Italy's dishonor thus to rise." 
 
 Shrinking, they say, from his chaste wife's embrace, 
 And from his little children, — like a slave. 
 Stripped of all civil rights, with aspect grave, 
 
 He fastened on the ground his manly face ; 
 
 Until the wavering Fathers of the State 
 Yield to advice man never gave before ; 
 When, girt by friends who their great loss deplore, 
 
 The illustrious exile hastens to his fate. 
 
 Of the sad sequel he had nought to learn, 
 
 The awaiting torture and the savage doom, — 
 Yet gently and with steady step made room, 
 
 Through the dense throng obstructing his return, 
 
30 
 
 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Not otherwise than he would wend his way, 
 Seeing some client's tedious business close, 
 On his Campanian farm to seek repose, 
 
 Or in his villa on Tarentum's bay. 
 
VI. TO THE ROMANS 
 
 Delicta majorum immeritus lues 
 
 SINS of the fathers thou must expiate — 
 Till, Roman, thou restore the crumbling fanes 
 And images begrimed with smoke and stains, 
 And all the sacred places of the State. 
 
 The Gods all things originate and end ; 
 
 To reverence of them thou owest thy sway ; 
 
 Thou rulest through the Gods thou dost obey ; 
 The Gods neglected countless evils send. 
 
 The bands of Pacorus and Monaeses twice 
 Have bravely our ill-omened onsets crushed. 
 And added, with their gainful victories flushed, 
 
 Rich booty to their collars of small price. 
 131 
 
52 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Of Rome how imminent the overthrow ! 
 
 By feud and faction torn, and doomed to meet 
 The double terrors of the ^thiop fleet, 
 
 And arrows hurtUng from the Dacian bow. 
 
 Fertile in crime, the age dishonored first 
 The vows of marriage, homes, and families, 
 Exhaustless spring of all calamities 
 
 Which on the people and the country burst. 
 
 To wanton measures in the Ionian dance 
 The ripened virgin dearly loves to whirl, 
 Expert in amorous arts : the budding girl 
 
 On stripling sweethearts casts no furtive glance. 
 
 Ere long she flirts with many a younger spark 
 At her lord's table, while he quaffs his wine, — 
 And recks not whether choice or chance assign 
 
 To whom she gives her kisses in the dark ; 
 
 But with her conscious husband's eye upon her, 
 Rises obedient to the broker's beck 
 Or the rich captain of some Spanish deck, ». 
 
 Who brings the costly wage of their dishonor. 
 
TO THE ROMAXS 1 33 
 
 Not from such parents sprung, mother or sire, 
 The youth that great Antiochus withstood, 
 Smote Pyrrhus, stained the sea with Punic blood, 
 
 And sealed the fate of Hannibal the dire. 
 
 But a brave race and virtuous filled the land, 
 Husbandmen-soldiers, taught to till the soil 
 With Sabine plough, and used to manly toil ; 
 
 Obedient to a mother's stern command 
 
 They bring their fagots home, their work not done. 
 When mountain shadows lengthen toward the East, 
 And wearied oxen from the yoke released 
 
 Browse in the quiet of the setting sun. 
 
 Its course the world from base to baser runs. 
 Our fathers' worse than their ancestral times ; 
 Our own polluted by still greater crimes — 
 
 To be eclipsed in baseness by our sons'. 
 
VII. TO ASTERIE 
 
 Quidfies, Asterie^ que77i tibl ca7ididi 
 
 WHY weep, Asterie, for the youth 
 Whom the white Zephyrs will restore 
 In spring — thy Gyges — fast in truth, 
 With riches from the Pontic shore ? 
 
 Wind-driven, when the starry lights 
 Of Capra, storm-invoking, shone ; 
 
 In Oricum, the frigid nights 
 He passes, sleepless and alone. 
 
 All arts his teasing hostess tries ; 
 
 A cunning messenger is sent, 
 To say how wretched Chloe sighs. 
 
 And capture him by blandishment. 
 134 
 
7'6> ASTER IE 135 
 
 He tells what came in older times 
 From slight of a perfidious wife ; 
 
 How Proetus' faith in fabled crimes 
 Cost cold Bellerophon his life. 
 
 He tells how nearly blood was spilt, 
 When Peleus shunned Hippolyte ; 
 
 With lessons of historic guilt, 
 
 That teach such things again may be. 
 
 In vain. To voices such as these. 
 
 He 's deaf as Icarus' rocks. But thou ! — 
 
 Beware — lest Enipeus please 
 
 More than behoves a neighbor now : 
 
 Though none with equal mastery 
 
 His courser through the Campus guides ; 
 
 Nor any swimmer swift as he 
 
 May wrestle with the Tuscan tides. 
 
 Thine house at evening twilight close ; 
 
 Nor stir abroad ; nor heed the strain, 
 With music mixed, that sings his woes ; 
 
 He calls thee prude, — a prude remain ! 
 
VIII. TO MAECENAS 
 
 Martiis ccelebs quid aga?n Kaleiidis 
 
 YOU wonder what it means, a bachelor 
 Should keep the Matron's feast day, — and 
 inquire 
 What all these censers and these flowers are for, — 
 This incense, this turf altar, and its fire, — 
 
 You, with all lore of either language filled ! 
 
 I vowed the day to Bacchus to devote, 
 (When by the falling tree so nearly killed) 
 
 And spread a feast for him and slay a goat. 
 
 In each recurring year, this festal day 
 
 The pitch from the astricted cork shall strip, 
 
 And pierce a cask, in garret stowed away 
 To drink the smoke, in Tullus' consulship. 
 136 
 
TO MyECEA'AS 13/ 
 
 A hundred cups, Maecenas, for your friend. 
 Drink to his safety. With the morning Ught, 
 
 The lamps still burning, shall our session end ; 
 Far hence all anger and all noise to-night. 
 
 Touching the State dismiss all anxious care ; 
 
 Slain are the troops of Dacian Cotiso ; 
 In civil broils the Parthians prepare 
 
 To bring upon themselves a weight of woe ; 
 
 Now the Cantabrian of the Spanish coast, 
 
 Our ancient foe, the first time wears our chains ; 
 
 And now with bow unstrung the Scythian host 
 Retreating lingers on the harried plains. 
 
 You for the public weal need have no fear, 
 So do not worry with your own affairs ; 
 
 Enjoy the pleasures that await you here 
 
 And for the present hour take leave of cares. 
 
IX. AN AMOEBEAN ODE 
 
 Donee grains erain tibi 
 HORACE 
 
 IN old times when thou gav'st me thy heart with 
 thy charms, 
 And none other encircled thy waist with his arms, 
 When the whitest of necks on my bosom reclined, 
 There never was kingdom so much to my mind. 
 
 LYDIA 
 
 When thy heart was on fire with no other she. 
 And Chloe the charmer was nowhere to me, 
 Then Lydia was happy, and Lydia's fame 
 In its lustre eclipsed Roman Ilia's name. 
 
 HORACE 
 
 It is true, Thracian Chloe I fondly admire, 
 She is versed in sweet measures and skilled on the lyre, 
 My life any moment I gladly would give, ^ 
 
 Might the fates only suffer her spirit to live. 
 
A A' AMCEBEAN ODE 1 39 
 
 LYDIA 
 
 Son of Ornytus, Calais, worthy his sire, 
 And his Lydia burn with a mutual fire ; 
 
 Oh, had I two lives I would give them with joy. 
 So the fates spare the life of my Thurian boy. 
 
 HORACE 
 
 But what if our old love should kindle again, 
 And our lives should be linked in a solider chain ? 
 If my golden-haired Chloe were shown to the door. 
 And the cast-away Lydia queen as before ? 
 
 LYDIA 
 
 Though he were more beauteous and bright than a 
 star, 
 
 Thou light as a cork, even lighter by far, 
 
 Wert thou stormy and false as the waves of the sea. 
 With thee I would live, I would perish with thee. 
 
w 
 
 X. TO LYCE 
 
 Extremmn Tanain si bibe?'es, Lyce 
 
 7ERE you born of the Danube's cold waters to 
 drink, 
 
 As the barbarous wife of a Scythian boor, 
 In this Norther you 'd not be so cruel, I think, 
 
 As to leave me stretched out on the sill of your door. 
 
 How the gate creaks and slams as it swings to and 
 fro ; 
 You hear the winds whistle and roar through the 
 trees ; 
 They shake the fine houses, and even the snow 
 In the crisp air of night is beginning to freeze. 
 
 Pride, hateful to Venus, you 'd better suppress ; 
 
 When the rope breaks, the wheel will its circuit re- 
 trace ; 
 A Tuscan will never her suitor distress, — ^ 
 
 No Penelope ever was born of your race. 
 140 
 
TO LYCE 141 
 
 But if neither gifts nor entreaties prevail, 
 
 And in spite of them all you will cruel remain, 
 
 If the cheeks of your lovers grow lividly pale, 
 
 And the singing girl meshes your husband in vain, 
 
 Spare your suppliants, Lyce ; come down in your pride, 
 Be less hard than the oak and less cold than tlie 
 snake ; 
 
 Time will come, I '11 not patiently lie on my side 
 On the sill in the hail and the rain for your sake. 
 
XL TO MERCURY 
 
 Mercuric nain te docilis magistro 
 
 O MERCURY, who taught so well 
 Amphion to move stones with song, 
 And thou, O seven-stringed shell, 
 The echoes of whose strains so long 
 
 Were mute and joyless, but which now 
 At fanes and rich men's feasts we hear ; 
 
 In aptest measures tell me how 
 To reach obdurate Lyde's ear. 
 
 She, like a filly young and free 
 Frisking and leaping in the fields, 
 
 Fearing a touch — her liberty 
 
 Neither to spouse nor lover yields. 
 142 
 
TO MERCURY 1 43 
 
 Tigers and trees thy voice obey, 
 
 And rapid rivers, at tliy call 
 Entranced and calmed, their course delay ; 
 
 Fierce Cerberus, guardian of the Hall, — 
 
 Tho' on his three-tongued head are wreaths 
 Of hissing snakes, and from his throat 
 
 Foul venom issues as he breathes, — 
 Was quelled by thy melodious note- 
 
 Even Tityos and Ixion smiled 
 
 Against their will ; dry stands the urn 
 Of Danaus' daughters, while beguiled 
 
 By song, from their hard toil they turn. 
 
 Let Lyde hear their crime, — their fate 
 A sieve-like water-jar to fill ; 
 
 Day after day they work and wait — 
 In vain — the jar is empty still. 
 
 Thus sinners meet their doom in hell. 
 
 Could any deed be more abhorred ! 
 More impious than words can tell, — 
 
 They gave their husbands to the sword ! 
 
44 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 One only, famed in every age, 
 
 Worthy the nuptial torch and vows, 
 
 Braving a perjured father's rage. 
 
 Was nobly false and saved her spouse. 
 
 " Rise up ! " she to her husband said, 
 
 " Rise up, lest the long sleep befall, — 
 From those thou hadst no cause to dread 
 Our father and our sisters all. 
 
 " Who, as a lioness her 
 
 prey, 
 
 Each would a victim rend ; but I 
 W^ill prove more merciful than they. 
 Nor shalt thou captured be or die. 
 
 " Me shall a father load with chains, 
 For mercy to a husband shown ; 
 An exile to Numidian plains. 
 His fleet shall carry me alone. 
 
 " Fly while thou canst by land or wave, 
 While night and Venus favor thee; 
 And on my sepulchre engrave 
 Some tribute to my memory." 
 
o 
 
 XIII. TO THE FOUNTAIN OF 
 BANDUSIA 
 
 O fons Bandusice splendidior vitro 
 
 CRYSTAL Bandusia, fountain of ours, 
 Worthy of sweet wine and not without flowers, 
 
 On thine altar to-morrow 
 
 A kid comes to sorrow. 
 
 Buds of young horns on his forehead are swelling. 
 Proudly of love and love's battles foretelling, 
 But his hopes are all vain, 
 Thee his red blood shall stain. 
 
 No rage of the dogstar thy freshness invades. 
 Steers tired of the plough seek repose in thy shades, 
 
 Straying flocks at thy brink 
 
 Of the cold waters drink. 
 145 
 
146 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Famed among fountains thou ever shalt be, 
 While with oaks overhanging ennobled by me 
 Thou shalt prattle and leap 
 Down the rocks to the deep. 
 
XIV. TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE 
 
 Herculis ritu modo didus, O plebs 
 
 PEOPLE of Rome — it is not many days 
 Since you were saying " Caesar buys in Spain 
 Glory with death." Now he comes home again 
 Like Hercules, a conqueror crowned with bays. 
 
 Let his wife joyous in her peerless spouse, 
 His sister proud of the illustrious chief, 
 And matrons grateful for their sons' relief, 
 
 With supplicants' fillets decorate their brows, 
 
 And thanks and homage in the temples pay 
 
 To the just Gods ; and new-wed maids and boys 
 Follow with reverence, hushed all idle noise, 
 
 As in their train you tread the Sacred Way. 
 147 
 
148 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 This clay — indeed a festal day to me — 
 Siiall banish cares : I have no fear for life 
 From foreign warfare or domestic strife, 
 
 While Caesar reigns supreme by land and sea. 
 
 Go, boy, and wreaths and perfumes bring to us 
 And wine, that recollects the Marsian war, — 
 If it so happen that a single jar 
 
 Escaped the raid of roving Spartacus : 
 
 And bid sweet-voiced Neaera not delay 
 Her perfumed tresses in a knot to tie, — 
 And if the surly janitor deny 
 
 His mistress, wrangle not but come away. 
 
 This might have angered me in my hot years 
 When Plancus was our consul, not to-day ; 
 For passions slacken as our locks grow gray, 
 
 And in love's tiffs and frays no fire appears. 
 
XVI. TO MiECENAS 
 
 Inclusam Danaen turris aetiea 
 
 IMPRISONED Danae the brazen tower, 
 Its massive oaken doors, the watch-dog's bark, 
 Might have protected from the roving spark 
 Who scales Love's ramparts at the midnight hour, 
 
 If Jove and Venus had not laughed at old 
 Acrisius, of his maiden charge in fear ; 
 Full well they knew the way was safe and clear 
 
 For any god transmuted into gold. 
 
 Gold glides through pliant files of sentinels, 
 Gold loves to cleave and crush the solid rock 
 More potent than the riving thunder shock, 
 
 The Argive Augur's hapless house it fells, 
 149 
 
150 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Philip, the subtle man of Macedon, 
 
 Opened by bribes strong cities' hostile gates, 
 And undermined the kings of rival States ; 
 
 By bribes rough captains of the sea are won. 
 
 Increasing heaps of gold Care sits beside, 
 Hungering for greater. I, with reason, dread 
 Above the crowd to lift my modest head, 
 
 Like thee, Maecenas ! of our knights the pride. 
 
 The more we mortals to ourselves deny, 
 
 The more the Gods bestow. The little band 
 Who covet naught, I join with empty hand, 
 
 And from the rich a glad deserter fly. 
 
 Nobler by far my mean estate I hold, 
 
 Than had I hoarded from her fertile fields 
 In my own granaries all Apulia yields. 
 
 And lived a pauper with uncounted gold. 
 
 The brook that skirts my meadow, and my few 
 Acres of wood, the crops my farm affords. 
 Give me more sweet contentment than the lor^s 
 
 Of Libya's richest province ever knew. 
 
TO M^CENAS 151 
 
 Happier my lot ! though no Calabrian bees 
 Their honey hive for me ; no fleeces fine 
 Grow thick in Gallic pastures ; and no wine 
 
 Mellows in well-sealed jars on Formian lees. 
 
 My home knows naught of sordid poverty, 
 
 And had I need of more, more you would give ; 
 By narrowing my desires, I better live 
 
 On my revenues, scanty though they be, 
 
 Than if o'er one continuous stretch of land 
 
 Lydian and Phrygian kingdoms owned my sway. 
 They who crave much, much lack ; the blest are 
 they 
 
 To whom God gives enough with sparing hand. 
 
XVII. TO LAMIA 
 
 ^li vetusto twbilis ab Lama 
 
 /I ^LIUS of ancient Lamus^ noble race, — 
 / I ^ (Root of the famous genealogic tree 
 
 Whose branches spread so in our history, 
 To which all Lamias their Hneage trace ; 
 
 From that original no doubt you spring, — 
 Lamus who built the walls of Formia, 
 And, where the waves of Liris wash away 
 
 Marica's banks, reigned far and wide the king :) 
 
 To-morrow's Eastern storm, of many leaves 
 
 Shall strip the grove, and worthless sea-weed strow 
 On barren shores — unless the long-lived crow 
 
 With augury of coming rain deceives : ^ 
 
 152 
 
TO LAMIA 
 
 53 
 
 Get the dry wood together while you may ; 
 Your guardian Genius care for with good wine 
 To-morrow, and a tender two-month swine, — 
 
 And with the servants make a holiday. 
 
XVIII. TO FAUNUS 
 
 Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator 
 
 FAUNUS ! of whom the nymphs are shy, 
 And from thy rude caresses fly, 
 Tread lightly thou my sunny fields, 
 And spare the nurslings nature yields. 
 
 As every year its round fills up 
 
 I slay a kid, and fill the cup 
 
 To Venus and her friend with wine, 
 While incense smokes thy ancient shrine. 
 
 When comes thine own December day 
 
 The flocks in grassy meadows play ; 
 And oxen from the yoke released 
 Share with the villagers thy feast. 
 154 
 
7V FA UN US 155 
 
 The vagrant wolf lambs fearless see, 
 
 The wood its foliage sheds for thee ; 
 And dancing peasants love to beat 
 The earth they hate with rhythmic feet. 
 
XIX. TO TELEPHUS 
 
 Quantum distet ab Iiiacho 
 
 FROM Inachus how many years have rolled by, 
 To Codrus who dared for his country to die, 
 Of ^acus' race, and the heroes who fell 
 In the battles they fought about Ilium, — you tell 
 
 But as to the price of a prime Chian wine. 
 Or who will afford us a house where to dine, 
 
 Who will temper our bath, and at what time of day, 
 And how to keep warm, — you have nothing to say. 
 
 To the new Moon, and quickly to Midnight a cup. 
 And a bumper to Augur Murena fill up ; 
 Mix, each to his liking, the water and wine, 
 And pour in the goblets three measures or nine. 
 156 
 
TO TELEPHUS 1 5/ 
 
 Thrice three for the uneven tale of the Muses 
 The bard who is fond of them never refuses, 
 
 But the Grace and her sisters, undraped though 
 they be, 
 
 For fear of a quarrel forbid more than three. 
 
 We are in for a frolic shall last the whole night, 
 Now and then to be mad is to me a delight ; 
 
 The pipe of Cybele, O, why is it mute ? 
 
 And why hang in silence the lyre and flute ? 
 
 Niggard hearts I detest, — scatter roses, my boys, 
 Sing and shout till old Lycus shall envy our noise ; 
 And the neighbor he covets for better or worse ;- 
 It is not a sweetheart he needs, but a nurse. 
 
 Thee, Telephus, bright with thy thick flowing hair. 
 Who well may with Vesper in beauty compare, — 
 Thee, Rhode, a maid ripe and rosy, admires, — 
 While I am consumed by my Glycera's fires. 
 
XXIII. TO PHIDYLE 
 
 Ccelo supinas si tuleris manus 
 
 THY palms to heaven in prayer and praise, 
 Lift up, my rustic Phidyle, 
 With every new moon's earliest rays ; 
 
 And, humble though thine offering be 
 Of first fruits or a greedy swine 
 Or incense on thy Lares' shrine, 
 
 No pestilential Afric gust 
 
 Shall blight the harvest of thy fields ; 
 No mistral blast, no mildew rust 
 
 The clusters that thy vineyard yields ; 
 Nor need thy tender nurslings fear 
 The deadly Autumn of the year. 
 
 On Algidus, 'mid oaks and holms, 
 Or browsing Alba's grassy plain, 
 158 
 
TO PHIDYLE 159 
 
 The peaceful herd unconscious roams, 
 
 Whose blood the pontiff's axe shall stain ; 
 For due oblations of the State 
 A people's crimes must expiate. 
 
 The sacred temple's public shrine 
 Demands a slaughtered hecatomb, 
 
 But such is not for thee or thine ; 
 The little gods that guard thy home 
 
 Desire no costlier gifts from thee 
 
 Than myrtle wreaths and rosemary. 
 
 No ! let thy hand the altar touch, 
 Empty of gifts, unstained by guilt, — 
 
 A grateful heart avails as much 
 As if a victim's blood were spilt ; 
 
 Thou with the Gods thy peace shalt make 
 
 With crackling salt and pious cake. 
 
XXIV. CUPIDITY 
 
 Intactis opulentior 
 
 WITH larger wealth endowed 
 Than virgin India or rich Araby, 
 Though thy foundations crowd 
 Alike the Tuscan and Apulian sea ; 
 
 If in thy roof-tree Fate, 
 Ruthless, has driven her adamantine nails, 
 
 Thy head to extricate 
 From fears or snares of Death no gold avails. 
 
 The Scythians live better, 
 Who carry round their homesteads in their carts ; 
 
 No formal customs fetter 
 The hardy Getse, no corrupting arts. ^ 
 
 160 
 
CUPIDITY l6l 
 
 But for a single summer 
 They till their acres, without metes or bounds, 
 
 Permitting the new-comer 
 To crop his corn and fruits on the same grounds ; 
 
 The blameless matron cares 
 For her step-children with a mother's love ; 
 
 The dowered wife forbears 
 To trust a lover, or her lord reprove. 
 
 That dower, her sole estate. 
 Is the ancestral virtue, Chastity, 
 
 Ever inviolate ; 
 A fault is sin ; sin's wages is to die. 
 
 Oh ! who will make his aim. 
 By quelling impious feuds and civic rage, 
 
 To carve the deathless name 
 Of Father of his Country on the age ? 
 
 Wild license dare to tame, 
 Dear to posterity ! Alas, our crime ! 
 
 To envy living fame. 
 And praise the virtues of an elder time, 
 
1 62 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 What boots it to complain 
 If cunning crime escapes its due requital ? 
 
 And human laws, how vain ! 
 Without the morals that must make them vital, 
 
 If men for gainful trade 
 Pursue its quest where tropic fervors glow, 
 
 Or Borean realms invade, 
 And regions stiff with ice and \vhite with snow^, 
 
 Or stormy seas cut through, 
 To shun the great disgrace of poverty, — 
 
 And all things bear and do — 
 Deserting Virtue's path that leads on high. 
 
 If we our sins deplore, — 
 Or let us hurry to the Capitol 
 
 \\'ith all our precious store 
 (While clamoring crowds the sacrifice extol) 
 
 Gems, stones, and useless gold ; 
 Or let us throw them in the nearest sea, — 
 
 For justly do we hold 
 Our rankest evil base cupidity. 
 
CUPIDITY 163 
 
 Youth's tender minds have need 
 Of sterner studies ; our enervate race 
 
 No longer sit the steed 
 Or love the manly pleasures of the chase. 
 
 But, more expertly, they 
 Troll the Greek hoop, and with unlawful dice 
 
 At games of hazard play ; 
 The sire, meanwhile, by fraudulent device 
 
 Robs co-heir, partner, friend. 
 For an unworthy son to swell his store ; 
 
 But avarice in the end 
 Can only find enough — in something more. 
 
XXVI. TO VENUS 
 
 Vixi puellis nuper idoneus 
 
 I LIVED for the girls and was true to their charms, 
 And I battled it not without glory ; 
 But discharged from the war with my lute and my 
 arms, 
 This wall here shall rubric my story : 
 
 It guards the left side of the Venus who rose 
 From the sea, so enchantingly gracious : 
 
 Here hang up your torches and crowbars and bows 
 To the doors shut against them minacious. 
 
 Holding Memphis the snowless and Cyprus thine isle, 
 
 Venus, goddess, accept the oblation ; 
 The most leal of thy subjects, queen, give me thy 
 smile, — ^ 
 
 And proud Chloe — a slight flagellation. 
 164 
 
XXVII. TO GALATEA 
 
 Imp io s parr ce recinentis omen 
 
 ILL-OMENED, let a tawny fox, 
 A bitch with whelps, a screeching jay, 
 Or gray wolf from Lanuvian rocks, 
 Lead wicked travellers on their way. 
 
 And if they make a lucky start 
 
 With happy omens, — may a snake 
 
 Athwart the road like arrow dart, 
 
 And frightened nags the journey break. 
 
 A watchful augur, I, at least 
 
 When my friend's safety wakes my fears, 
 Invoke the raven from the East 
 
 Ere the storm-boding bird appears. 
 
 165 
 
1 66 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 May neither woodpecker nor crow 
 Bode, Galatea, harm to thee ; 
 
 Be happy, wheresoe'er thou go, 
 
 And while thou live, remember me. 
 
 Behold in what a boisterous blow 
 Orion sinks. The Hadrian bay 
 
 When black with clouds too well I know, 
 And how the white West winds betray. 
 
 Let wives and sons of enemies 
 
 Thrill with the rising South-wind's roar, 
 When seas reflect the darkened skies 
 
 And surges lash the trembling shore. 
 
 Europa brave, her snow-white form 
 Entrusted to the faithless bull, 
 
 Grew pale at the impending storm 
 And the deep sea of monsters full. 
 
 She who in meadows found delight 
 
 And wove for Nymphs the votive wreath, 
 
 Saw nought, when fell the dusky night. 
 But stars above and waves beneath. 
 
TO GALATEA 16/ 
 
 But when she reached the Cretan shore 
 Whose hundred towns its power proclaim, 
 
 Father," she cried, " O mine no more ! 
 Lost is the daughter's pious fame ! 
 
 " Whence, where come I ? For virgins' shame 
 One death is Ught. Do I lament 
 A real crime ? or, free from blame, 
 Am I the dupe of visions sent 
 
 " Through dreamland's gate of ivory? — 
 And better wer't to pass long hours 
 In tedious traverse of the sea 
 
 Than in the meadows culling: flowers ? 
 
 " Let me but once behold again 
 
 That monster, late to me so dear. 
 No mercy shall my hand restrain, — 
 I '11 smite him with the sword and spear. 
 
 " Shameless my father's roof I fly. 
 Shameless I still my death delay ; ■ 
 O that some God would grant that I 
 Might naked among lions stray ! 
 
1 68 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 " Before the blood deserts my cheek 
 And flesh and color fall away, 
 With all my beauty left, I seek 
 To be the tigers' dainty prey. 
 
 I hear my absent father's voice : — 
 
 ' Why, vile Europa, shrink from death ? 
 
 Hang from yon ash if that 's thy choice, 
 Thy girdle soon will stop thy breath. 
 
 " * Or if thou fancy death at sea, 
 
 Sharp reefs and rocks the billows stud ; 
 To the swift storm abandon thee 
 Unless, though born of royal blood, 
 
 " * Thou choose for some barbaric dame 
 
 To toil and spin.' " — With jesting tongue 
 And artful smile then Venus came 
 And Cupid with his bow unstrung. 
 
 When she had jeered enough, " Abstain," 
 She said, " from all this ire and hate. 
 
 The odious bull will come again, — 
 If thou his horns wouldst lacerate ! 
 
TO GALATEA 1 69 
 
 " Know that of Jove Supreme thou 'rt wife : — 
 Cease then thy sobs ; a splendid fame, 
 If well thou bear it, crowns thy life : 
 
 One half the world shall bear thy name." 
 
XXIX. TO M^CENAS 
 Tyrrhena regU7n pj'ogenies^ tibi 
 
 OF Tuscan kings the progeny, 
 An unb reached cask of mellow wine, 
 Maecenas, I 've reserved for thee, 
 
 With roses round thy brow to twine. 
 And from the balsam pressed with care 
 The choicest perfumes for thy hair — 
 
 All ready. Come without delay. 
 Nor always muse in waking dreams 
 
 Over the slopes of ^sula, 
 
 And Tibur with its many streams, 
 
 And cliffs where memories still abide 
 
 Of Telegon the parricide. 
 
 Fly from the affluence that palls 
 With its fastidious luxury ; 
 
ro M^CENAS I'Ji 
 
 Thy palace with the lofty walls 
 
 That cleave the clouds and near the sky, — 
 Escaping in my humble home 
 The smoke and wealth and noise of Rome. 
 
 Changes are grateful to the rich, 
 And oftentimes a neat repast 
 
 Is spread at poor men's tables which 
 By lavish wealth is unsurpassed. 
 
 Feasts without purple hangings there 
 
 Have smoothed the ruffled brow of care. 
 
 The father of Andromeda 
 
 Reveals his lately hidden fire ; 
 
 Now Procyon sheds a fiercer ray, 
 Precursor of the dog-star's ire — 
 
 And with the rampant Lion's blaze 
 
 The summer sun brings scorching days. 
 
 Now, watchful of his drooping flock, 
 
 The wearied shepherd seeks the shades, 
 
 The running stream and sheltering rock 
 In rough Silvanus' briery glades, 
 
 But on the river-bank no air 
 
 Invades the silence slumbering there. 
 
1/2 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 But THEE, immersed in state affairs, 
 Our city's perils overwhelm — 
 
 Thy fears the furthest Orient shares, 
 With Bactra, Cyrus' ancient realm — 
 
 And the wild race that bivouacs on 
 
 The raided borders of the Don. 
 
 The time to come God wisely shrouds 
 From mortal eyes in darkest night, 
 
 And smiles when man would pierce the clouds 
 And bring His hidden ways to light : 
 
 Seek not the future — study how 
 
 To make the most and best of Now. 
 
 For Life is like the river's tide, 
 
 Whose waters now mid-channel keep, 
 
 And on a glassy surface glide 
 Serenely to the Tuscan deep — 
 
 But when a raging deluge fills 
 
 And overflows the quiet rills — 
 
 Houses, uprooted trees, and flocks 
 Are swept together from the shores, — 
 
 Through piles of water-eaten rocks 
 With clamorous din the torrent roars, 
 
TO MAECENAS 1 73 
 
 And echo, from the mountains round 
 And neighboring woods, repeats the sound. 
 
 A happy life that mortal leads 
 Who, master of himself, can say, 
 
 As rolling year to year succeeds, 
 
 Come what come will I 've lived to-day 
 
 To-morrow God may fill the sky 
 
 With cloud or sunshine — what care I ? 
 
 The past He cannot render vain. 
 Nor aught that once is done undo ; 
 
 Nor things imperfect reordain. 
 
 Nor things concluded shape anew ; 
 
 Nor for a fleeting moment stay 
 
 What once the hour has swept away. 
 
 Fortune her cruel business plies. 
 And insolently plays her play ; 
 
 Nor caring who may fall or rise, — 
 Delights to flatter and betray ; 
 
 Benignant though at times she be, 
 
 To others now, and now to me. 
 
174 ^'^^^ ODES OF HORACE 
 
 \Miile she remains I praise her ; when 
 She shakes her wings — no longer mine 
 
 I wrap me in my virtue then, 
 
 And all her many gifts resign — 
 
 And cast, though dowerless she be, 
 
 My lot with honest Poverty. 
 
 'T is not my fashion in the sea 
 
 Encountering an Afric gale, 
 With creaking masts, — on bended knee 
 
 In abject fear to cower and quail, 
 And beg, with craven vows and prayers. 
 My Tyrian and Cyprian wares 
 
 May not enrich the greedy brine. 
 
 In keeping of my two-oared boat, 
 On me the Twins serenely shine, 
 
 The waves their burden kindly float, 
 And though the ^gean surges roar 
 Carry me safely to the shore. 
 
XXX. TO MELPOMENE 
 
 Exegi monumentum cere perennius 
 
 A MONUMENT more durable than brass — 
 Of height no regal pyramids surpass, 
 I have achieved a work that will outlast 
 The waste of waters or the northern blast. 
 I shall not wholly die, but much of me, 
 My better part, shall reach posterity. 
 No flight of seasons shall obscure my name. 
 But serial ages shall increase my fame. 
 While to the Capitol, to Time's last day, 
 Pontiff and vestal tread the sacred way. 
 It shall be told of one of humble birth. 
 Now potent with the magnates of the earth, — 
 Bred where he heard Ofanto's torrent roar, 
 When Daunus' subjects ploughed its arid shore, - 
 That he first wed — to him that praise belongs — 
 ^olian measures to Italian songs. 
 With guerdon crown desert, Melpomene, 
 And give the Delphic laurel wreath to me. 
 175 
 
BOOK IV 
 I. TO VENUS 
 
 Intermissa, Venus, din 
 
 WARS long suspended why renew ? 
 O spare me, Venus, spare, I prayl 
 Indeed I 'm not the man that knew 
 The gentle Cinara's queenly sway. 
 
 Mother severe of sweet desires ! 
 
 Verging on fifty years, I 'm slow 
 And hard to melt with amorous fires : 
 
 Where youth's bland prayers recall thee, -~ Go ! 
 
 And if thou seek a fitting heart, 
 A timely one to kindle thus, — 
 
 Hence with thy shining swans depart 
 And dwell with Paulus Maximus. 
 176 
 
TO VENUS 177 
 
 For he, a man of noble parts, 
 
 His voice in clients' causes tried. 
 Equipped with countless clever arts, 
 
 Shall bear thy standard far and wide. 
 
 When, with a victor's scorn, at gold 
 By a rich rival showered, he smiles, 
 
 A fane with citron roof shall hold 
 Thy marble form in Alban isles. 
 
 There clouds of incense shall ascend, — 
 And Berecynthian pipe and lute, 
 
 That with the songs their music blend. 
 Shall charm thee, not without the flute. 
 
 There to thy honor twice a day 
 
 Shall boys and maidens dance a round ; 
 Their white feet in the Salian way 
 
 With triple beat shall shake the ground. 
 
 Nor woman's love, nor youth's is mine, 
 Nor hope a mutual heart to find ; 
 
 I joy no more in bouts of wine, 
 
 Nor with fresh flowers my temples bind. 
 
178 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 But why, alas, my Ligurine, 
 
 Steals the rare tear-drop down my cheeks ? 
 Why rise, my broken words between, 
 
 The thoughts that only silence speaks ? 
 
 I hold you in my midnight dreams ; 
 
 Unkind you fly from my embrace 
 Over the Campus, through the streams, 
 
 Swift as a bird, — and still I chase. 
 
II. TO JULIUS ANTONIUS 
 
 Pindariim quisquis studet cemulari 
 
 HE who would walk in Pindar's ways 
 Strives for a Dsedalean fame ; 
 And on his wings of wax essays 
 To give some glassy sea a name. 
 
 Like mountain stream that swollen by showers 
 From bank and barrier bursts away, 
 
 Sublime and deep, — so Pindar pours 
 The torrent of his fervid lay. 
 
 To him, audacious bard, assign 
 Apollo's laurel, — whether he 
 
 Dashes in dithyrambic line, 
 
 Rolling new words in numbers free ; 
 179 
 
l80 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Or sings of gods and monarchs who 
 The blood of gods as heroes claim, 
 
 Who in just rage the Centaurs slew 
 
 And quenched the fell Chimaera's flame ; 
 
 Or them the Elean palm uplifts 
 
 To feel like gods — the men who vie 
 
 In ring or race, and win the gifts 
 A hundred statues would not buy ; 
 
 Or to the stars exalts some youth, 
 Snatched from a weeping bride away, 
 
 Whose strength and sense and golden truth 
 Shall live forever in his lay. 
 
 The Theban swan affects the sky, 
 And, wafted on the swelling breeze, 
 
 Soars through the clouds — but, Antony, 
 Like one of Mount Matina's bees 
 
 That roams in patient quest of flowers 
 Tibur's moist banks and groves along, 
 
 So I consume laborious hours 
 In fashioning my little song. 
 
TO JULIUS ANTON I US l8l 
 
 But you shall strike with larger quill 
 
 The lyre that sounds with Caesar's praise, 
 
 When he ascends the sacred hill, 
 
 Sygambria's victor, crowned with bays : 
 
 No better, greater gift, have Fate 
 
 And the good Gods bestowed on earth 
 
 Nor will, though they should re-create 
 The times that saw its golden birth. 
 
 And you shall sing, in lofty strain, 
 Of festive days and public sports 
 
 For brave Augustus come again — 
 Of crowded streets and empty Courts, 
 
 With you I then will lift my voice — 
 
 Should words worth hearing come from me ; 
 
 In Caesar's welcome all rejoice ; 
 
 O radiant Sun ! All praise to thee ! 
 
 And as we follow in your train, 
 lo Triumphe ! we will sing ; 
 
 Again we '11 sing it and again. 
 
 And to kind Gods our incense bring. 
 
1 82 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Ten bullocks and as many cows 
 For you must on the altar bleed ; 
 
 A little calf will pay my vows, 
 
 That frisks new-weaned upon the mead ; 
 
 The crescent that adorns his head 
 
 Like the moon's third-day fires is bright ; 
 
 His color is a tawny red, 
 But where he 's marked the spots are white. 
 
III. TO MELPOMENE 
 
 Que77i tu^ Melpomene^ semel 
 
 WHEN once Melpomene has smiled 
 Upon the cradle of a child, 
 He never will aspire to fame 
 
 As victor in an Isthmian game, 
 Nor look for glory in the lists 
 
 With the illustrious pugilists, 
 Nor to the goal his coursers steer, — 
 
 A bold and skilful charioteer ; 
 For him no martial exploit weaves 
 
 A crown of Delian laurel leaves, 
 Nor to his arms a triumph brings 
 
 For having quelled the rage of kings ; 
 But streams that fertile Tibur lave, 
 
 And groves that verdant tresses wave, 
 Shall with their scenic charms inspire 
 
 A master of the ^olian lyre. 
 For Rome, the queen of cities, deigns 
 
 To read and praise my lyric strains, 
 183 
 
184 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 And none with jealous eye regards 
 
 My place of honor with the bards. 
 And thou, O Muse, who rulest well 
 
 The sw^eet sounds of the golden shell, 
 And to mute fishes of the sea 
 
 Canst give the cygnet's melody, 
 To thee alone is due that I 
 
 Am marked of all the passers-by 
 As minstrel of the Roman lyre, — 
 
 Thy gifts alone my song inspire; 
 And if I please, the praise is thine, 
 
 Sweet lyrist of the sacred Nine. 
 
IV. DRUSUS 
 
 Qiialem ministrum fulminis alitem 
 
 LIKE a young eagle on the wing, 
 Armed with the thunderbolt of Jove, 
 Made by the King of Gods the king 
 
 Of all the feathered tribes that rove 
 The air, — his guerdon, as we read, 
 For capturing fair Ganymede, — 
 
 First, youth and native energy 
 
 To untried labors fire his breast, — 
 
 We see the tender fledgling try 
 A flight from the maternal nest ; 
 
 Next, vernal winds and cloudless days 
 
 Invite him to more bold essays j 
 
 And yet a while, and grown more bold, 
 Abroad by hostile impulse sent, 
 185 
 
1 86 TIIK ODES OF HORACE 
 
 He swoops upon the shepherd fold ; 
 But now, on feast and fight intent, 
 He seizes serpents in their lair, 
 And wrestles with them in the air : 
 
 Thus Drusus waging war, they saw, — 
 The mountaineer Vindelici, — 
 
 In Rhoetian Alps (but whence they draw 
 The custom immemorially 
 
 Of carrying in their attacks 
 
 The Amazonian battle-axe 
 
 On their right arms, I '11 not enquire, — 
 For all things one ought not to know) ; 
 
 But when by youth's address and fire 
 The conquerors of long ago 
 
 Are beaten in their turn, and feel 
 
 The force of his victorious steel, — 
 
 Thus bravely overthrown they find 
 What nurture adds to nature's gifts ; 
 
 That discipline, of heart and mind 
 Alike, to nobler manhood lifts ; 
 
 And heights to which the Neros grow 
 
 The training of Augustus show. 
 
DKrsrs 187 
 
 Brave men to gallant sires succeed ; 
 
 From good men are created good ; 
 Lives in the steer and in the steed 
 
 The virtue of ancestral blood ; 
 Nor do ferocious eagles mate, 
 Unwarlike doves to generate. 
 
 Instruction a new force imparts 
 
 To faculties inherited, 
 And, well directed, strengthens hearts 
 
 In virtue's ways and valor's bred ; 
 But when bad morals bring bad fame, 
 Good birth but aggravates the shame. 
 
 What thou, Rome, dost the Neros owe, 
 The banks of the Metaurus tell, — 
 
 Where they first quelled the invading foe, 
 And Hasdrubal defeated fell ; 
 
 The sunlight of that brilliant day 
 
 Drove our Italian clouds away. 
 
 That smiling dawn of glory ! when 
 We first were victors, since in wrath 
 
 The African with mounted men 
 
 Through Latium ploughed his bloody path, 
 
1 88 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 As flame flies thro' pine forest trees 
 And east winds sweep Sicilian seas. 
 
 Thenceforth in deeds of high emprise 
 
 The Roman youth have wrought and grown 
 
 In strength ; restored, the temples rise, 
 In Punic tumults overthrown, — 
 
 And statues of the Gods again 
 
 Adorn the desecrated fane. 
 
 Then Hannibal, the faithless, said : 
 " Deer, of rapacious wolves the prey, 
 
 We follow when we should have fled, — 
 For do the best that do we may, 
 
 The greatest triumph we can know 
 
 Is to elude — escape our foe. 
 
 Brave nation, that when Troy was burned, 
 And in the ashes all seemed lost. 
 
 To other lands their faces turned. 
 And, on the Tuscan billows tost. 
 
 Sons, aged sires, and Lares bore 
 
 To cities of the Ausonian shore. 
 
DRUSUS 189 
 
 " A race that, — like the black-leaved oak, 
 
 The growth of fertile Algidus, 
 Shorn by the two-edged axe's stroke, — 
 
 With a new strength repairs its loss ; 
 In slaughter and defeat they feel 
 New courage bounding from the steel. 
 
 A prodigy ! and none so great 
 Since Hercules the Hydra slew 
 
 When, as he lopped the monster's head, 
 Straight from the wound another grew ; 
 
 Or Jason's feat, or Cadmus' when 
 
 From dragon's teeth sprang armed men. 
 
 " Plunge it in depths profound, — it will 
 Again with greater beauty rise ; 
 Fight it, — and gloriously still 
 
 The unscathed victor it defies. 
 And hostile legions puts to rout — 
 In battles wives will talk about. 
 
 " Couriers to Carthage, proud to spread 
 News of my triumphs, I again 
 Shall never send, — for Fortune fled 
 Our camp when Hasdrubal was slain ; 
 
1 90 
 
 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Perished ! the glories of our name, — 
 Perished ! all hope of future fame." 
 
 There 's nothing mortal that withstands 
 The prowess of the Claudian race, 
 
 For Jove himself upholds their hands 
 And clothes them with benignant grace, 
 
 While they, by care and counsel wise, 
 
 Above war's pangs and perils rise. 
 
VL TO APOLLO 
 
 Dive^ quern proles Niobea magnce 
 
 GOD ! whose stern might to avenge a scornful 
 boast 
 Slew Niobe's children, giant Tityus felled, 
 And Troy's assailant, almost conqueror, quelled — 
 Phthian Achilles — of the Grecian host 
 
 Greatest of all — yet not of thee the peer, — 
 Although, the son of ocean Thetis, he, 
 Expert in arms alike by land and sea. 
 
 Shook Dardan walls with his terrific spear. 
 
 As cypress torn up by an Eastern storm, 
 Or pine-tree by the biting steel laid low. 
 Falls, far and wide its branches, even so 
 
 Fell prone in Teucrian dust his mighty form. 
 191 
 
192 THE ODES OE HORACE 
 
 He would not by an impious stratageni, 
 When Trojans took an ill-starred holiday 
 And Priam's halls with song and dance were gay 
 
 Enter the walls of Troy to capture them : 
 
 But for the captives ; — oh ! the cruel shame ! — 
 Without one pang of pity he would wreak 
 Vengeance on boys unable yet to speak, 
 
 And burn the babe unborn in Grecian flame, — 
 
 Had not, by genial Venus' prayer and thine, 
 Jove vowed yf^neas' fortune to restore, 
 That he might build upon another shore 
 
 Walls on which more auspicious stars should shine. 
 
 To guard the honor of the Daunian Muse, 
 O great Apollo, ever young and fair ! 
 Phoebus who bath'st in Xanthus' stream thy hair, 
 
 Thalia's teacher, do not thou refuse ! 
 
 Phoebus in me the art of song inspires, 
 
 Phcebus bestows on me the poet's name ! — 
 Maidens who from the purest lineage came, 
 
 And boys the offspring of Patrician sires, 
 
TO APOLLO 193 
 
 Wards of Diana, goddess of the bow 
 
 Wherewith the stags and lynxes she pursues ; — 
 Preserve the measures of the Lesbian Muse 
 
 And of my verse the cadence and the flow, — 
 
 Due songs according to Latona's son, 
 
 Due songs to her whose crescent splendors light 
 A fruitful harvest and denote the flight 
 
 Of months that in a swift succession run. 
 
 Thou, when a wife, shalt say, " I led the choir 
 Which at the banquet on Centennial Day, 
 Versed in his measures, sang the sacred lay 
 
 The poet Horace wedded to the lyre." 
 
VII. TO TORQUATUS 
 
 Diffugere nives^ redeunt jam gramina campis 
 
 THE snows have fled ; new foliage clothes the 
 ■\voods ; 
 Again the grasses make the meadows green ; 
 The seasons change ; and with subsiding floods 
 The tranquil rivers flow their banks between : 
 
 In merr}' dances dares, unclad, the Grace, 
 
 With her twin sisters and the Nymphs, to play. 
 
 With no immortal hope beguiles our race 
 
 The year, the hour, that steals the genial day. 
 
 The Zephyrs melt the cold ; the Summer treads 
 Herself too soon to perish — on the Spring ; 
 
 His fruits the apple-bearing Autumn sheds ; ^ 
 And inert Winter shortly rounds the ring. 
 194 
 
TO TORQUATUS 1 95 
 
 The seasons' losses the swift moons repair ; 
 
 But when we die and go where go we must, — 
 ^neas, Ancus, powerful Tullus, there, 
 
 Shall welcome us : — alas, but shades and dust ! 
 
 Who knows if Heaven that tenders us To-day 
 Will to our sum of life To-morrow spare ? 
 
 All that with liberal mind you give away 
 Escapes the greedy clutches of your heir. 
 
 When once you join the legions gone before, 
 And Minos utters his supreme decree, 
 
 Nothing, Torquatus, can your life restore, — 
 Nor birth, nor eloquence, nor piety. 
 
 In durance, chaste Hippolytus remains, — 
 Diana could not free him from the shades ; 
 
 To burst asunder dear Pirithous' chains, 
 Theseus in vain Lethean realms invades. 
 
VIII. TO CENSORINUS 
 
 Donarem pateras grataque cominodiis 
 
 VASES and bowls of bronze I would bestow 
 On friends beloved and cherished, one and all, 
 And, Censorinus, you must surely know 
 That not to you my poorest gifts would fall. 
 
 I would give freely Grecian tripods, such 
 
 As stalwarts won in Pythian games well fought, 
 
 Pictures with hues that show Parrhasius' touch, 
 Statues of men and gods by Scopas wrought : 
 
 Such is my will, and such my way would be 
 If I were rich in works of art like these ; 
 
 You do not lack them, and your mind is free 
 To find in other arts the power to please. 
 196 
 
TO CENSORINUS 1 97 
 
 Songs you delight in. I can give you songs, 
 
 And fix the value of the thing I give : 
 To storied marble no such worth belongs, 
 
 In which the spirits of dead leaders live ; 
 
 For not the swift retreats of Hannibal, — 
 
 His threats flung back, — nor the avenging flame 
 
 That wasted Carthage, nor the exploits all 
 That gained victorious Scipio his name, — 
 
 Not these emblazoned such enduring praise. 
 The meed of worth and valor, as he found 
 
 When the Calabrian Muses tuned their lays 
 And uttered strains of no uncertain sound. 
 
 The laurel wreath would wither on your brow 
 Were deeds unwrit in story ; what to us 
 
 Would be the son of Mars and Ilia now 
 If envious Silence obscured Romulus ! 
 
 ^acus, rescued from the Stygian wave. 
 Of virtue and the world's esteem possest, 
 
 The tongues of powerful bards avail to save 
 And place him in the islands of the blest. 
 
198 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 The Muse bids live the man deserving praise, 
 And him in Heaven the muse beatifies ; 
 
 Thus Hercules, renowned for toilsome days, 
 At Jupiter's much-envied banquets lies ; 
 
 Thus the twin stars, the sons of Tyndarus, 
 
 From the sea's depths snatch vessels tempest- 
 wrecked j 
 The vows of men to good conclusions thus 
 
 Bacchus conducts, — his brows with vine-leaves 
 decked. 
 
IX. TO LOLLIUS 
 
 Ne forte credas mteritura^ quce 
 
 THINK not the words will perish that I sinf 
 Born where the waters of Ofanto roar ; 
 Words which, by poet's art unknown before, 
 Set to the lyre are echoed from its string. 
 
 Maeonian Homer holds the upper seat, 
 But palms to Pindar we do not refuse ; 
 Nor to the Cean or Alcaeic muse. 
 
 Nor grave Stesichorus laudation meet. 
 
 Nor gay Anacreon's songs of olden days 
 
 Has age destroyed ; the words that love inspires 
 Outlive their utterance ; and still live the fires 
 
 ^Eolian Sappho kindled in her lays. 
 199 
 
2CX) THE ODES OE HORACE 
 
 Helen of Lacedaemon not alone 
 
 Has lusted for a paramour's smooth tresses, 
 Enamored of the gold-inwoven dresses, 
 
 The retinue and splendor of a throne. 
 
 Troy more than once was vexed ; from bow of Crete 
 Teucer was not the first his shafts to aim, 
 Nor Sthenelus the first to conquer fame, 
 
 Nor grand Idomeneus by martial feat ; 
 
 But the Muse told their story. Not the brave 
 Deiphobus, and not the fiery Hector, 
 Of modest wives and children the protector. 
 
 Was first with thousand wounds to find a grave. 
 
 Of valiant men a countless multitude 
 
 Lived before Agamemnon — yet none weep 
 Their fate ; no sacred bard disturbs their sleep, 
 
 And night's long, silent shadows o'er them brood. 
 
 Valor unsung, unknown, from obscure sloth 
 Differs but little ; should I silent be, 
 Nor on my page the tribute render thee 
 
 Due thy deserts, 't were grievous wrong to both. 
 
TO LOLL/ US 201 
 
 Thy many labors, Lollius, for the State 
 Oblivion must not hide ; thou hast a mind 
 Wise in affairs, to no excess inclined, 
 
 Firm in bad fortune, nor in good elate ; 
 
 Stern foe of fraud and avarice, abstaining 
 With care from that solicitude for pelf 
 Which seeks to centre all things in itself. 
 
 Not consul one year only, but remaining 
 
 At all times consul, while the proffered bribes. 
 Loyal and true, the magistrate rejects, — 
 The honest, not the gainful way elects. 
 
 And routs, victorious, sin's opposing tribes. 
 
 The man of wealth we do not rightly call 
 A happy man ; much happier he who knows 
 How to enjoy the good that Heaven bestows, 
 
 Accepts its gifts and wisely uses all ; 
 
 Endures in patience cruel poverty, 
 
 And deems dishonor worse by far than death ; 
 
 For friends and country yields his latest breath, 
 Living for them, he dares for them to die. 
 
XI. TO PHYLLIS 
 
 (with variations) 
 Est mihi nonum superantis a?i?ium 
 
 I'VE a cask in my garret of Alban wine 
 And the years it has mellowed are more than 
 nine ; 
 With you, my dear Phyllis, this grape-juice I 'd share, 
 There is plenty for both and a little to spare. 
 
 In the same garden plot where my roses are blowing, 
 Curled parsley and ivy for garlands are growing ; 
 For nothing can heighten the charms of my fair 
 When she beams with a simple green wreath in her 
 hair. 
 
 The house smiles with silver ; a tankard and tray, 
 With two polished goblets, make quite a display ; 
 With sprigs of verbena the altar is crowned 
 And covets the lamb for the sacrifice bound. 
 
TO PHYLLIS 203 
 
 All hands are in motion — no end to the noise ! 
 Here and there run the girls and get mixed with the 
 boys ; 
 From the fire in the kitchen, the sparks how they 
 
 fly! 
 While the quivering flames roll the smoke to the 
 sky. 
 
 The delights of your visit I ask for the Ides, 
 That midway our sweet-budding April divides ; 
 Venus rose on this day from the foam of the sea, 
 To make earth Elysium for you, love, and me. 
 
 With me this is always a day of festivity, 
 
 For the light of it dawned on Maecenas' nativity ; 
 
 A day that is sacred, all others above, 
 
 To the pleasure and duties of friendship and 
 love. 
 
 While you run after Telephus, don't you forget 
 The young dude is, decidedly, not of your set ; 
 A girl rich and saucy the darling detains, 
 And, believe me, he loves to be hugging his chains. 
 
204 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Singed Phaeton's fate is a sad admonition 
 To all who indulge a high-flying ambition ; 
 
 And Bellerophon's too — he was scaling the skies, 
 When the Pegasus somerset opened his eyes. 
 
 Of these ancient fables the moral is plain, — 
 Never strive for a good you can never attain ; 
 Then profit, I pray, by the lesson they teach, — 
 That the grapes are all sour when out of your reach. 
 
 Come, queen of my sweethearts ! the last of your sex 
 My heart with the cyclone of passion to vex ; 
 
 Come — come, — to my lyre you shall carol sweet 
 airs, 
 
 And with music and song we will drive away cares. 
 
XII. TO VIRGIL 
 
 yam veris comites, quce mare temperant 
 
 SPRING comes with her companions, the gentle 
 western gales, 
 And smooths the waves of ocean and swells the idle 
 sails ; 
 The meadows now are frostless, and the streams no 
 
 longer flow 
 With the roar and with the burden of the winter's 
 melting snow. 
 
 The nightingale now builds her nest, the melancholy 
 
 bird, 
 And now, lamenting Itys, her plaintive notes are heard ; 
 Perpetual shame to Cecrops' house — the story that 
 
 she sings 
 Because she cruelly avenged the barbarous lust of 
 kings. 
 
 205 
 
206 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 To fatten on the tender grass, his sheep the shepherd 
 
 leads, 
 And treads his rural measures to the music of his 
 reeds : 
 The heart of Pan who loves the flocks, with tran- 
 quil pleasure fills 
 When he hears the dulcet music on Arcadia's 
 shaded hills. 
 
 The season makes us thirsty, and, Virgil, if you think 
 It would not be amiss pure Calenian to drink, — 
 
 The client you of noble youths will surely not de- 
 cline 
 
 To picnic with the perfumes if I put up the wine. 
 
 A little pearl-like box of nard a buxom cask secures 
 Which in Sulpician garrets now its precious grace 
 matures, — 
 Potent to dress expanding hopes in colors fresh and 
 
 fair. 
 And efficacious to dilute the bitter cup of care ! 
 
 If such delights you fancy, then answer to my call ; 
 Come, bring along your merchandise, come quickly if 
 at all, — 
 
TO VIRGIL 207 
 
 I don't intend to stain my cups unless you pay your 
 
 share, — 
 My house is not the palace of a double millionnaire. 
 
 Forget awhile pursuit of gain, and lay aside delay. 
 And, mindful of the funeral fires, be happy while you 
 may : 
 'Tis sweet at proper time and place to get a little 
 
 jolly, — 
 The very wisest thing in life is wisdom mixed with 
 folly. 
 
XIV. TO AUGUSTUS 
 
 Quce ciira patrum quceve Quiritium 
 
 WHAT popular or what patrician care, 
 By carved inscriptions and memorial pages, 
 Shall to the nations, through perpetual ages, 
 Thy name, Augustus, and thy virtues bear ? 
 
 Greatest of princes thou, where'er the sun 
 
 On habitable regions sheds a ray, 
 
 Whom tribes that never knew the Latin sway 
 Know by late deeds of war so bravely done : 
 
 For gallant Drusus, with thy soldiery. 
 
 Razed castles on tremendous Alpine heights, 
 And routed more than once in bloody fights 
 
 The Breuni swift and fierce Vindelici ; 
 
TO AUGUSTUS 209 
 
 While presently the elder Nero wages 
 
 War with the savage Rhaetian mountaineers, 
 And with imperial auspices appears 
 
 Conspicuous where the hottest battle rages ; 
 
 Showing in mortal combats how to quell 
 Men that would die rather than not be free ; 
 Victims to their wild love of liberty, 
 
 With wounds in front and face to heaven they fell. 
 
 And as the south wind tames the unbridled waves, 
 And clouds are severed in the Pleiads' dances, 
 Through paths of fire his uncurbed courser prances, 
 
 Where harried legions find their countless graves ; 
 
 Or like the Aufidus that roaring flows. 
 
 Bull-headed, through Apulian Daunus' realms, 
 And in resistless fury overwhelms 
 
 The crop which on its well-tilled border grows : 
 
 Thus Claudius in impetuous onset rushed. 
 The embattled legions cleft, nor lost a man ; 
 He strewed the field with corpses, rear and van, 
 
 And hordes of iron-clad barbarians crushed. 
 
2IO THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 But thou the plans and forces didst provide, 
 And thine the favoring gods, for on the day 
 Abandoned Alexandria suppliant lay, 
 
 And ports and empty palace opened wide. 
 
 Propitious Fortune once more crowned thy arms 
 In the third lustrum ; and to thy commands, 
 For victories achieved in other lands, 
 
 Awards renewing honors and fresh palms. 
 
 Till now untamed Cantabrians honor thee — 
 Indians and nomad Scythians and the Medes 
 Whither our standards fly thy fame precedes. 
 
 Guard of Imperial Rome and Italy. 
 
 Thee doth the Danube, and mysterious Nile 
 That hides its springs, obey ; swift Tigris, thee 
 Thine appanage the monster-bearing sea 
 
 That rages round the Briton's distant isle ! 
 
 Gallia, that faces death without a fear, 
 Iberia, that our arms so long withstood, 
 And the Sygambri who delight in blood — ^* 
 
 Their weapons cast aside — thy name revere ! 
 
XV. THE PRAISES OF AUGUSTUS 
 Phoebus vokntem p roe Ha me loqui 
 
 ON siege and battlefield I mused, 
 Of martial themes I wished to sing, 
 But Phoebus chid — my lyre refused 
 
 To speak, and mute was every string ; 
 He bade me furl my little sails, 
 Nor rashly tempt Tyrrhenian gales. 
 
 'T is thine, O Caesar, to restore 
 
 To wasted fields their wealth of corn ; 
 
 And standards that we lost of yore, — 
 From haughty Parthia's columns torn, 
 
 Bring back in triumph to our shrine — 
 
 Of Jupiter Capitoline. 
 
 Beneath thy sway we live in peace, 
 The double gates of Janus close. 
 
212 THE ODES OF HORACE 
 
 Outbursts of vagrant license cease, 
 
 And all is order and repose ; 
 Thy hand that stays the people's crimes 
 Restores the arts of olden times ; 
 
 Arts which have spread the Latin name, 
 Increased the might of Italy, 
 
 Founded the empire's matchless fame 
 And all embracing majesty. 
 
 Till they have spanned the earth's extent 
 
 From sunset to the Orient. 
 
 While we have Caesar at our head, 
 Serene custodian of the state, 
 
 No civil fury shall we dread. 
 Nor feuds that cities desolate ; 
 
 The rage that fires barbarian hordes 
 
 Shall never sharpen Roman swords. 
 
 Not they who dwell upon its banks 
 And the deep Danube's waters drink. 
 
 No faithless Parthian's quivered ranks. 
 No natives of the Tanais' brink, 
 
 No tribes about the Larian lake. 
 
 The Julian edicts dare to break. 
 
THE PRAISES OF AUGUSTUS 213 
 
 These themes I leave ; the lot be mine 
 
 On common and on festal days, 
 With Bacchus' gifts of flowers and wine 
 
 To mingle my congenial lays, — 
 And while our wives and children share 
 In offerings of praise and prayer, 
 
 We '11, like our fathers, celebrate, — 
 
 In songs that blend with Lydian pipes, — 
 
 The men in simple virtues great, 
 Our captains of the ancient types ; 
 
 Anchises, Troy — our themes shall be, 
 
 And genial Venus' progeny. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 BOOK I. THE FIRST ODE 
 
 THIS is received as the dedication of the first pub- 
 hshed collection of Horace's Odes ; but whether that 
 collection embraced two or three books is undetermined. 
 That this Ode is obviously a prologue, and the last Ode 
 of the second book well adapted for an epilogue, would 
 seem to warrant the conclusion of the scholiasts, that the 
 first two books of Odes were published together before 
 the third. But it is the opinion of modern students that 
 the three first books were published together. And the 
 last Ode of the third book seems, even more than the final 
 Ode of the second book, to form the close of a collection. 
 Bentley's hypothesis that each book was published sepa- 
 rately meets with little favor. 
 
 ["Note. — The following article begun by Mr. Sargent, on the 
 reading adopted in line 29 of this Ode, was left incomplete. 
 Notes found among his papers have been arranged and ap- 
 pended to it.] 
 
 In translating this first Ode I have adopted the conjec- 
 ture of ' te ' instead of ' me ' in the 29th line : — 
 Te doctarum hederae praemia frontium 
 Dis miscent superis. 
 215 
 
2l6 APPENDIX 
 
 All the early manuscripts and all the early editions have 
 'me.' The 'te' is purely conjectural, without any writ- 
 ten authority, resting entirely on the taste and judgment 
 that are used in looking out the true lection. In under- 
 taking to determine the true reading, we inquire first what 
 is the purpose of the Ode. It is a dedication. In the fol- 
 lowing analysis, using the proposed emendation, there 
 seems to be sequence and congruity : — 
 
 Men have divers tastes, and some win the prizes that make of 
 great masters gods, — one in racing, others in politics, speculat- 
 ing, agriculture, commerce, war, hunting. Your taste is for 
 letters in which you have won ivies that entitle you to mix with 
 the celestial gods. I am a poet, and while the muses aid me I 
 am removed from the common crowd and haunt the cool groves 
 with the satyrs and nymphs, the semi-deities. But if you, my 
 patron, who are a competent judge, rank me among the lyric 
 poets, I shall be so proud as to hit the stars with my head. 
 
 Here there is no difficulty or confusion. But, in the first 
 place, the old reading makes, as the commentators admit, 
 a repetition of the same idea with variations. And then it 
 makes the dedication a glorification of the writer himself. 
 He loses sight of his patron altogether and bursts out into 
 a rhapsody of self-praise. Is it reasonable to suppose that 
 a devoted friend and a man of sense would be guilty of 
 such gaucherie ? We have ' me ' — ' me ' — ' me ' — all in 
 the last eight lines. Is it possible that in the conclusion 
 and climax of such an Ode it should be all egotism, — 
 ' me ' in the beginning, ' me ' in the middle, and ' me ' and 
 ' I ' in the end? It reminds one of a more pardonable ego- 
 tism in the line of the ^neid — 
 
 Me, me, adsum, qui feci, in me convertite ferrum.i 
 1 ix. 427. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 217 
 
 But it may be said, perhaps it has been said, that there 
 is a complimentary reference to Maecenas in the last two 
 lines, where the poet attributes such virtue and value to 
 his verdict on the lyric merits of Horace. But such refer- 
 ence without something in the Ode to indicate on what it 
 was founded amounts to nothing. Why was the opinion 
 of M^cenas of so much weight? Because he was a scion 
 of old kings, or because he was the patron of the poet ? 
 Maecenas did not care a straw for his descent, and if any 
 compliment is contained in the second line it was as much 
 a compliment to the merits of the author as to the discern- 
 ment of the critic. In this complimentary Ode, then, there 
 is no compliment to M^cenas, unless he is the person 
 alluded to as the wearer of the ivies. 
 
 This difficulty has always been felt by the commenta- 
 tors, who have in vain endeavored to explain it away. 
 Bonfini, who printed his commentaries in Rome as early 
 as 1 5 19, says that different people may make of this pas- 
 sage what they please : ' I think, indeed,' he adds, ' that 
 nothing was farther from Horace's thoughts than to claim 
 for himself divine honors, and to mix himself with the gods, 
 and especially in his very first Ode to subject himself to 
 the charge of arrogance, not to say foolhardiness and in- 
 solence. It is usual for persons who have an excessive 
 desire for anything to indulge in that manner of speech, — 
 as if a young man who was immoderately fond of his mis- 
 tress should say, " If I should possess my mistress I am 
 blessed," — not because he would be blessed in reality, 
 but because he might seem blessed to himself.' This is 
 certainly not a satisfactory rebuttal of the charge the com- 
 mentators would formulate in the absence of this explana- 
 tion. Now what is the distinct averment in the passage.^ 
 
2l8 APPENDIX 
 
 It is that some one by virtue of the ivies which are the 
 reward of learned men mixes with the gods. We have 
 seen why the some one should not be Horace, but Horace 
 it was held to be, — with mitigation and apology and ex- 
 planation, — from the first inception of the blunder down 
 to the first quarter of the eighteenth century. 
 
 I have no great fondness for the discussion of various 
 readings. I fully concur with Hallam in the opinion that 
 'those who annex an exaggerated value to correcting an 
 unimportant passage in an ancient author, or, which is 
 much the same, interpreting some worthless inscription, 
 can hardly escape the imputation of pedantry.' But this 
 is not an unimportant passage. It is by far the most im- 
 portant correction that has ever been made in the text of 
 Horace. All the early MSS. without exception repeat the 
 blunder of the copyist who first made it. All the printed 
 copies, without exception, from the first without date down 
 to the year 1721, confirm the error. The latest and most 
 esteemed English editors, — Valpy, Wickham, Page, Mil- 
 man, Macleane, Yonge, Long, Munro, and the rest of 
 them, — have pinned their faith on Orelli, and readopted 
 the text of the old manuscripts. 'Me' seems to be rein- 
 stated by Horatian commentators, and yet it is capable of 
 demonstration that the reading is erroneous, and so clearly 
 erroneous as to be incapable of intelligent vindication. 
 
 The correction is purely conjectural, and we are just on 
 the threshold of our study, with the inquiry whether or not 
 a merely conjectural emendation is ever justifiable. The 
 answer to this is that all the commentators frequently 
 accept readings purely conjectural. Of the emendations 
 of Horace proposed by Bentley, no less than one hundred 
 and fifty-two were conjectural, and Bentley is lauded to 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 219 
 
 this day as the most learned of British critics and commen- 
 tators. Alexander Cunningham, the critic of Bentley, 
 suggests fifteen conjectures, and other editors have taken 
 their turn at guessing what Horace might have said — if 
 he had been of their way of thinking — from the scholiasts 
 down to Macleane and Wickham. True it is that Mac- 
 leane says, in somewhat slovenly English, ' I have in no 
 single instance adopted a conjecture of Bentley's or any- 
 body else's, nor have I proposed any myself.' This, 
 however, is not an accurate statement, for he not only 
 accepts conjectural readings, but distinctly points them 
 out as conjectural. I think the weight of authority is that 
 a conjectural reading is clearly admissible, even against 
 all the texts, if it is so fortified that there is no reasonable 
 doubt of its accuracy. 
 
 Now let us dissect the original and ascertain the abso- 
 lute meaning of the Latin words. ' Hederae ' means ' the 
 ivies ' — plain ivies or garlands of ivy, such as wreathed 
 the thyrsus of Bacchus, or were worn by the followers of 
 the god in their dances and processions. The ivy was 
 sacred to Bacchus, and it seems to have been employed in 
 making victorious wreaths for all manner of men and 
 women distinguished for any accomplishment. It was 
 never specially the reward of poets, for whom the laurel was 
 the specific crown. When Horace invites his friend Pom- 
 peius Varus ^ to visit him he invites him to repose under 
 the poet's laurel. When he speaks of Pindar,^ he asso- 
 ciates him with the laurel of Apollo, and in his appeal to 
 Melpomene, in the closing Ode of the third book, he begs 
 her to crown him with the Delphic laurel. The laurel was 
 the meed of the patriot, bought by his blood on the field of 
 1 Book II. 7. 2 Book IV. 2. 
 
220 APPENDIX 
 
 battle, — the honor of the triumph was represented by the 
 laurel. The horns of Bacchus were crowned with grape- 
 vines, his locks with ivy. Green youth and beauty were 
 garlanded with ivy. Horace tells Phyllis i that there is 
 plenty of ivy in the garden, and that youth rejoices in 
 the green ivy. He tells Julius Florus 2 that in eloquence, 
 law, or poetry, he will win the victorious ivy. I think we 
 may safely say, then, that there is no ground whatever for 
 the assumption that the ivy was the pecuhar crown of 
 poetry, any more than that Bacchus was the peculiar 
 patron of the poets. When Virgil awards the ivy as a 
 poetical reward,^ it is to the immature and rising, — the 
 nascent poets that he awards it, — not a 'poet,' but growing 
 to be one. There is no instance in which the ivy is recog- 
 nized as distinctively a poetic crown. No reason can be 
 assigned why Horace should not have assigned that crown 
 to Maecenas as a man of learning, without reference to his 
 merits as a poet. Compare Pope's couplet — 
 Immortal Vida, on whose honored brow 
 The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow. 
 
 The ivy crowns of Bacchus were the meed of all learned 
 brows, and when Augustus formed the library in the tem- 
 ple of Apollo on Mt. Palatine, the statues of the famed 
 poets were crowned with ivy wreaths. Hence Persius, — 
 
 Quorum imagines lambunt hederas sequaces,* 
 and Juvenal — 
 
 Ut dignus venias hederis, et imagine macra. ^ 
 And now as to 'doctarum.' To defend the ancient 
 reading the commentators have been compelled to assume 
 
 1 Book IV. II. 3 Eel. VII. 25 ; VIII. 13. 
 
 2 Ep. I. 3. 25. 4 Prol. 5. 5 Sat. 7. 29. 
 
APPENDIX 22 1 
 
 that ' doctus ' is an epithet so universally connected with 
 poets as to be peculiarly applicable and exclusively appli- 
 cable. In his very excellent dictionary of the Latin 
 tongue, which I have consulted in very numerous instances 
 with satisfaction, Professor Lewis falls into this familiar 
 mistake. In defining ' doctus ' he gives as the meanings 
 by metonomy, — ' Of things — learned, sage, skilful : 
 f routes i. e. a poefs^ Horace, Book I. i, 29.^ This is sim- 
 ply begging the question. ' Id est ' suggests ' est id ? ' 
 Why specially a poet's ? Where in Latin authors is the au- 
 thority for making ' doctus ' a synonym for ' poet ' ? We 
 know the epithet has been applied to Catullus (Tibullus, 
 III. 6, 41 ; also by Martial), as it was applied to other 
 Romans who were familiar with the Greek language and 
 literature. So it was applied to Hesiod, who was a man 
 of extensive and varied learning. Catullus in repeated 
 instances applies the word 'docta' to some 'puella' of 
 whom he was enamored. The Greek ' sophos ' was some- 
 times applied to poets, in the sense of ' skilful.' So aot^l^ 
 aoiBSs and Homer's eSiSa|e Mova-a.^ 
 
 It has been objected that the expression 'doctarum 
 frontium' could not properly be applied to Maecenas. 
 But the epithet 'docte' is applied to Maecenas in the 
 eighth Ode of the third book (line 5), and in the nineteenth 
 Epistle of the first book (line i). That in the same collec- 
 tion of poems to which the first Ode is introductorj^, Hor- 
 ace styles his patron 'doctus — utriusque linguae,' abun- 
 dantly justifies the application of the epithet to Maecenas 
 in that introduction itself. Even Mitscherlich, who con- 
 fines the application of the epithet to poets, says, * Adhaesit 
 hoc sequiori tempore poetis epitheton ob variam doctrinam, 
 1 Odyssey, 8. 481. 
 
222 APPENDIX 
 
 antiquitatis, mythologiae, quae ab iis requirebatur : etiam 
 propter sermonis exquisitiorem cultum ac metri artem ; et 
 Romanis in primis propter literarum gr^ecarum interiorem 
 notitiam.' 
 
 ' Dis miscent superis ' the editor just cited compares with 
 an expression of Pindar,^ who uses it not of any degree of 
 deification, but of gaining prizes in the games. Dacier, 
 1689, and also Buncombe, 1757, say that Horace intended 
 by ' Dis miscent ' simply ' render me happy,' for other- 
 wise there is a manifest contradiction in the sequel when 
 he says that the suffrage of Maecenas raises him above the 
 skies. Buncombe allows that the conjecture is ingenious, 
 and the opposition not inelegant, ' or perhaps Horace was 
 jocularly expressing his high opinion of Poesy — "rallies 
 himself." If we suppose it means that Maecenas values 
 himself as an equal of the gods for his poetry, — it is an odd 
 compliment; while if we suppose Horace is speaking his 
 own sentiment, — he departs from the scheme of the Ode 
 merely to introduce a compliment to his patron.' But 
 what is the scope and object of a dedication if not to com- 
 pliment "^. 
 
 Vanderbourg says that all the interpreters agree in re- 
 garding Ode I as the prologue or dedication to Maecenas 
 of the first book Horace published. The scope of the 
 poem he thus expresses : * Chacun a son penchant qui le 
 domine. Moi, je mets ma gloire et mon bonheur k reusser 
 dans la poesie lyrique : si tu m'accorde ton suffrage, Mae- 
 cenas, je croirai m'elever aux cieux.' Vanderbourg feels 
 
 ^ Isthmian Odes, 2 : 29. '\v aOapdrois Pdvriai^dfxov TroTSes iv 
 Ti/xaTs ejuixOeu. The reference is to Theron and Xenocrates 
 gaining Olympic prizes; — lit. 'were mingled with immortals.' 
 Compare Horace's Ode 2 of Book IV. verse 5. — Ed. 
 
APPENDIX 223 
 
 obliged to diminish the claim of the poet. ' Horace 
 n'intend jouir du commerce des dieux que sur la terre, ce 
 qui s'explique par les vers suivants, — c'est dans les forets 
 qu'il assiste aux danses des nymphes et des satyres, etc., 
 — mais pour monter lui-meme aux demeures cdlestes, il a 
 besoin que le suffrage de Maecenas confirme les succes qu'il 
 se promet.' 
 
 Page, 1883, after saying ' Notice the pronoun jne put 
 first to indicate the transition from the pursuits of other 
 men to that which Horace makes the object of his ambi- 
 tion,' admits that ' the triple recurrence of the same idea 
 in verses 6, 30, and 36 is somewhat awkward.' He does 
 not appreciate Orelli's attempt to distinguish them. 
 
 Coming now to the authority for the emendation, we find 
 the conjecture ascribed to Dr. Francis Hare, a critic of 
 great learning and penetration, — successively Bishop of 
 St. Asaph (1727), and Chichester (1731). In his verse 
 translation of the Odes, he gives the passage thus : — 
 
 The wreath on learned brows bestowed, 
 Left thee, great patron, to a God. 
 
 He says, 'Without Te there is no notice of Maecenas. 
 There is extravagant exaltation of self and no compliment 
 to his patron. There is an absurd fall from heaven to 
 earth. These are faults Horace would not be guilty of. 
 The reading is fully agreeable to the whole design and 
 meaning of the Ode. There is in it an imitation of an ode 
 of Pindar in which the same antitheses are observed all 
 through. Pindar concludes with an antithesis between 
 himself and Hieron, king of Syracuse : — 
 
 Thine be the glory and the grace 
 To shine and conquer in the race ! 
 
224 APPENDIX 
 
 To conquer in thy praise and shine 
 The glory and the grace be mine ! ^ 
 
 Dr. P. Francis, father of the celebrated Sir Philip 
 Francis, writes in 1 753 : * We are obliged for this correc- 
 tion of Rutgersius. It seems necessary, even in the Con- 
 duct of the Ode, that Horace, after having marked the 
 prevaiHng Inclinations of mankind in general, should par- 
 ticularly mention the peculiar Passion of Maecenas, before 
 he speaks of his own. In the common reading, "me," the 
 Poet says, the crown of ivy raises him to converse with 
 Gods, Dis miscent superis, yet in the last Lines, he wishes 
 for the Judgment and Approbation of Maecenas to raise 
 him to Heaven. The Correction is not less probable, than 
 it is necessary, since the first letter of the line does not 
 appear in some Manuscripts. The Copyists probably 
 wrote many Lines without the first Letters, intending af- 
 tenvards to blazon them, and sometimes, as perhaps in this 
 Instance, they forgot them entirely.' 
 
 Francis renders, — 
 
 An Ivy wreath fair Learning's Prize, 
 Raises Maecenas to the Skies.^ 
 
 J. Valart, 1770, says, 'Sic primus edidit doctissimus 
 Hare. Nemo enim quod jam habet, is aliorum poscit.' 
 
 A marginal note in a copy of Horace says, ' FaciHs est 
 lapsus in veteribus libris exscribendis a T in M.' 
 
 Dr. Samuel Shaw in 1724, in his ' Syntax for Children,' 
 adopted the reading. In 1724 Williams, in the second edi- 
 
 1 Olympia, I. 115. 
 
 2 Of Francis's translations Dr. Johnson said, ' The lyrical 
 part of Horace can never be perfectly translated. Francis> has 
 done it the best. I '11 take his five out of six against them 
 aU.' 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 225 
 
 tion of Baxter's Horace, inserted 'te' in eight copies. In 
 1727 Welsted adopted it. 
 
 In Bower's ' Historia Literaria,' 1731, mention is made 
 of a new discovery ' lately communicated to us abroad by 
 a very learned critic,' but at page 235 concludes, 'This 
 emendation is not quite new — the reader will find some 
 hints of it in Janus Rutgersius.' 
 
 An extended discussion of the whole passage is to be 
 found in the ' Jahrbiicher fiir Philologie und Padagogik,' 
 II. 3, pp. 282-294 (1827), by J. C. Jahn, in a review of the 
 works of T. Kiessling and A. F. W. Leiste. Jahn gives 
 the following account of the origin and reception of the 
 conjecture. 'Rarely has a conjecture produced such a 
 sensation as the substitution of that Te for Me. Rutger- 
 sius, Hare, Des Fontaines, and whoever else had a share in 
 the suggestion, hardly dreamed that they would stir up so 
 much strife. And after what Cunningham, Dacier, Gesner, 
 Klotz, and others had adduced to the contrary, it would 
 all have been forgotten, if Wakefield and Fea, following 
 Broukhusius, Jones, and Markland, had not called it to 
 life again, and Fr. Aug. Wolf, especially, established it 
 on intelligent grounds. Such a leader must indeed find 
 followers, and who can wonder that Eichstadt, Grobel, 
 Wagner, and others, and at last even Stadelmann, sought 
 to further establish it ? That also Jack and the Tauchnitz 
 edition took it into the text happened not from their own 
 conviction, but because they followed Fea.' 
 
 In 1736 Signor Palavicini admits it in an Italian trans- 
 lation. Rev. John Jones, 1736, inserts it. He says 'me' 
 destroys the sense, or weakens it very much. Dr. Wm. 
 Broome, employed by Pope in his translating of the Iliad, 
 adopted it in 1 739 : — 
 
226 APPENDIX 
 
 For you the blooming ivy grows 
 Proud to adorn your learned brows. 
 Patron of letters you arise, 
 Grow to a God and mount the skies. 
 Humbly in breezy shades I stray, etc. 
 
 Also Dr. Watson's edition, 1741. 
 
 The edition of Sanadon published at Amsterdam and 
 Leipsic, 1756, has 'te.' It says, ' Rutgers a propose cette 
 legon, qui est excellente ' — ' Cette correction est ndces- 
 saire' — 'Maecenas tenoit un rang distingue sur le Par- 
 nasse, non-seulement par les Podsies, mais aussi parce qu'il 
 dtait comme le juge du merite Poetique et la dispensation 
 des recompenses.' 
 
 Daru (1816), and Louis Duchemin, French translators 
 (the latter 1846), adopt 'te.' 'If Me has the authority of 
 the MSS. the Te accords infinitely better with the se- 
 quence of ideas and with the delicacy of Horace. After 
 ranking himself with the gods, it is not natural that he 
 should claim a mere separation from the vulgar and pre- 
 tend to no more glory than he derived from the suffrage of 
 his benefactor. Maecenas was himself a man of letters, 
 had composed works in prose and verse, and on those 
 grounds alone could claim the ivy crown. Horace could 
 not do less than pay him the compliment. It is perfectly in 
 the spirit of a dedication. We do not correct Horace ; we 
 only restore him.' [R. Binet (1783), quoted by Duchemin.] 
 
 Tomaso Gargallo, who published an Italian translation at 
 Naples in 1820, in four volumes, since several times reprinted 
 in smaller form, uses ' te.' See the Polyglott Horace. 
 
 F. A. Wolf (1817), ' Analecta Literaria,' vol. i. pp. 261- 
 276, and ii. pp. 282, 283, 566-571, favors the emendation. 
 See also, 'Qu^stiones Venusinae,' No. VI., 'Gentleman's 
 
APPENDIX 227 
 
 Magazine,' September and December, 1835, and January, 
 1836. There is also in the British Museum a dissertation 
 by Dr. James Douglas. 
 
 The Abbe Fea (181 1) says: 'Horace writes, "You 
 are devoted to crowning poets and attaching them to you. 
 They gratefully in their songs enroll you among the benefi- 
 cent gods." Unless we adopt Te there is nothing compli- 
 mentary to Maecenas but the fact of his being descended 
 from kings, and that oil that account his friendship was an 
 honor and aid to Horace.' 
 
 A London edition, 1822, based upon Zeune's, placed 
 ' me ' in brackets, and was followed in this by the * Corpus 
 Poetarum Latinorum,' edited at Cambridge, England, in 
 1827. 
 
 In 1837 James Tate^ wrote, 'Te — the true reading- 
 after the assent of scholars generally given, may now take 
 its place as it were by acclamation.' 
 
 Lord Lytton in 1872, though he does not adopt the read- 
 ing in his translation, has an extended note on the subject. 
 After saying that there is much force in the arguments for 
 the reading, he concludes, — 'If the ivy crown may be 
 won by pleading causes or giving advice to clients, it can 
 be no inappropriate reward to the brows of a statesman so 
 accomplished as Maecenas.' 
 
 To sum up the argument from the internal evidence for 
 this conjectural reading:— It appears that Plorace could 
 hardly have avoided an allusion to his patron's favorite 
 pursuits, and also that the ivy wreath was not regarded as 
 the reward of poets exclusively. The epithet 'doctus,' 
 1 Horatiiis Restitiitiis, p. 118. London. 
 
228 APPENDIX 
 
 also, — not ' learned,' nor ' possessed of a poet's wisdom,' 
 but ' accomplished,' ' a man of letters,' i — seems especially 
 applicable to Maecenas, and is in fact used by Horace of 
 his patron more than once, and is the only epithet of the 
 kind apphed to him in Horace's extant works. A compli- 
 ment to Maecenas, expressed in such terms, would have 
 been peculiarly graceful and acceptable ; and it is put in 
 the terse form so characteristic of Horace, — one of his 
 
 . . . jewels five words long 
 That on the stretched forefinger of all time 
 Sparkle forever. 
 
 BOOK n. SECOND ODE 
 
 Under the title of 'Avarice Insatiate,' this ode was 
 introduced in ' Tracts for the Times ' as follows : — 
 
 ' Moderation in all things and the enjoyment of what one 
 has, without a greedy grasping for more, are among the 
 lessons inculcated by the " sweet moralist " (as Dr. Young 
 named him), whose vices were those of his age and whose 
 virtues are the virtues of all time. Sallust, to whom this 
 ode was addressed, was next to Maecenas the confiden- 
 tial friend of the emperor. The " brethren " with whom 
 Proculeius shared his patrimony are supposed to have 
 been Licinius Murena and Fannius Caepio, who lost their 
 fortunes in the civil wars. They were afterwards put to 
 death for a conspiracy to take the life of the emperor. A 
 late very learned and subtle expositor of the Odes, — Mr. 
 A. W. Verrall, Trinity College, Cambridge, — is of the 
 opinion that the personality depicted in the eighteenth Ode 
 of the second book as the antithesis or contrast to' that 
 1 Sat. I, 9. 7. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 229 
 
 of the poet was Licinius Murena, and that his career and 
 fate give their tone and color to several of the Odes in that 
 division of Horace's works. 
 
 ' There is a vast amount of research and ingenuity dis- 
 played in the book of Mr. Verrall, which is modestly 
 styled " Studies Literary and Historical in the Odes of 
 Horace." However one may hesitate about adopting his 
 conclusions, no one can fail to be struck by his intimate 
 knowledge of the Horatian era, and the power of combina- 
 tion and analysis with which he sustains his theories.' 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 The translations of the first Odes of this book were 
 published, each with a column or so of comments, in the 
 'Boston Transcript' in 1888 and 1889, under the title of 
 ' Six Heathen Homilies.' Only five, however, were com- 
 pleted and printed. The introduction to the first of these 
 Odes states that what led to their translation was the appli- 
 cation by James Russell Lowell at the celebration of the 
 anniversary at Harvard College of a part of one of these 
 Odes, the sixth, ' with obvious felicity,' to the type of char- 
 acter of the earlier generations of New England. Mr. 
 Sargent writes, ' It occurred to me to look into these Odes 
 to see how far other passages in them might furnish texts 
 for the times, and illustrations of prevailing topics, political 
 and social. These six Odes are supposed to have been 
 suggested by Augustus, or composed with his knowledge, 
 to influence opinion, or inform the people of the reforms 
 he had in contemplation, called for by the vices and abuses 
 that grew out of the civil wars and prevailed after their 
 close. They are all referred to the period between a. u. 
 
230 APPENDIX 
 
 c. 725 and 728, and are in aid of the efforts of the em- 
 peror and of Maecenas to moderate the excesses of the 
 wealthy, promote contentment among the less affluent and 
 the laboring classes, revive the military and patriotic spirit, 
 exhibit the triumphs of intellect over brute force, and dis- 
 countenance the immoralities of the times. 
 
 ' The six Odes are all written in the same kind of verse. 
 By some commentators they have been supposed to form 
 a single continuous poem. This was the view taken by 
 Diomedes in his account of the Horatian metres, and, as 
 Vanderbourg tells us, by the German commentator Pradi- 
 kow. Wickham concedes that there is a general unity of 
 purpose in the six Odes, as embracing the ends which a 
 good government would desire to compass in Rome, and 
 the promise that under Ccesar's regime they might be 
 obtained. But he thinks that the scholiasts carried their 
 notion of the connection of the several Odes too far, and 
 that they were separate poems, written at different periods, 
 that cannot be fixed with precision. 
 
 ' It is worth mentioning, perhaps, that the Christian scho- 
 liasts of the Middle Ages were inclined to regard Horace 
 as a veritable priest, a sort of saint, who, after the apothe- 
 osis announced by the seventeenth Ode of the second book, 
 exhorted the Roman youth in a series of sermons to re- 
 nounce mundane desires and lead a pious and regular life. 
 
 ' The first stanza of the first Ode is generally accepted as 
 an introduction to the great six.' 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 231 
 
 BOOK III. TWENTY-FOURTH ODE 
 
 This Ode, under the title of ' Cupidity our Bane,' is 
 introduced in ' Tracts for the Times ' as follows : — 
 
 ' The following Ode was called to mind by my reading 
 in the papers of the day a number of paragraphs that sug- 
 gested some of the self-repetitions of history. It is the 
 same with us as it was in Horace's day, and our rich men 
 are only aping the extravagances that were the subjects of 
 his censure in the times of the Augustan empire. One of 
 the paragraphs referred to was a commentary on the luxu- 
 rious living and prodigal expenditure that have of late 
 brought grief to so many households. The love of lucre 
 and the licentious extravagance of his time are dealt with 
 by Horace in a masterly way in this ode.' 
 
 Mr. Sargent concludes : * It was after committing the 
 above to paper that in calling on a friend ^ I found him 
 with a Horace in his hand. It was a copy of the beautiful 
 edition of the Didots of Paris, with its exquisite photo- 
 graphs, the text interpreted by the admirable annotation of 
 John Bond. His remark, as he laid down the volume, 
 was, " Here is what your people want," and my previous 
 conviction that substantial doses of it would do good even 
 to our clergymen was strengthened by this concurring 
 opinion.' 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold. 
 
PARAPHRASE OF 
 THE SECOND EPODE 
 
 Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis 
 
 [Mr. Sargent made humorous paraphrases of various odes, 
 adapted to special occasions. One only is here inserted, which 
 was written for a dinner of the Harvard Club in New York.] 
 
 Oh, what a happy fellow he 
 
 Who lets no cares of business bore him, 
 
 But from bills, banks, and brokers free. 
 Lives as his father lived before him ; 
 
 Contented, in his rural box, 
 
 To trim his trees, and fleece his flocks ! 
 
 He neither dreads the angry sea, 
 Nor fears the fireman-trumpet's call ; 
 
 He fags not at the mayor's levee, 
 Nor haunts the Courts of City Hall; 
 
 Scouting, as round his farm he trudges, 
 
 Injunctions from the Tammany judges. 
 
 Ere cherry blossoms deck the spray, 
 He sows his rye and ploughs for corn ; 
 
 Superfluous branches lops away, 
 
 And grafts the Duchess on the thorn ; 
 232 
 
PARAPHRASE OF SECOND ERODE 233 
 
 Or marries to the stately pine 
 Virginia's green but grapeless vine. 
 
 His jars the lucid honey fills, 
 
 The maple's luscious juice his pails ; 
 He sees his cattle range the hills, 
 
 Or hears them lowing in the vales ; 
 His Southdown lambkins, as they play, 
 Are making mutton every day. 
 
 When Autumn lifts his temples crowned 
 With clustered grapes and tasselled maize, 
 
 When buckwheat patches flush the ground. 
 And woods with gold and scarlet blaze, 
 
 Oh, then with what delight he sends 
 
 His pears and peaches to his friends ! 
 
 One basket. Doctor, goes to you, 
 
 Who give his casual aches relief ; 
 One to the preacher's wife ; and two 
 
 Requite the local journal's chief, 
 Who lustily his trumpet blows 
 For premiums at the cattle shows. 
 
 Sometimes, the silver brook beside, 
 
 He lies upon the clovered sod ; 
 The willows drip, the waters glide, 
 
 Birds sing, and he begins to nod. 
 His hours in Bachelor's Reveries pass, 
 Or in the dreams of Sparrowgrass. 
 
 Winter comes lowering from the North, 
 And clouds are white with snow and hail. 
 
234 APPENDIX 
 
 Then with much dog he sallies forth 
 
 To hunt the woodcock and the quail, 
 Or capture, in unlawful snare, 
 Rabbit and squirrel unaware. 
 
 Amid such joys of rural life, 
 
 What if his mistress fret and tease ! 
 
 If children bless him, and a wife. 
 Whose greatest pleasure is to please 
 
 (A wife stepped down from Plymouth Rock, 
 
 Or scion of the old Dutch stock). 
 
 With big dry logs she builds the fire ; 
 
 Expectant of her lord's return. 
 She heaps the hickory high and higher, 
 
 And waits the hissing of the urn. 
 While from the meadows where they browse 
 Pat drives the solid-colored cows. 
 
 And now the evening meal is spread, 
 The unbought banquet of the farm, — 
 
 Fruit marmalades, and sweet brown bread ; 
 While the good housewife thinks no harm 
 
 To give her home's toil-worn provider 
 
 A copious horn of this year's cider. 
 
 The oyster on the Eastern Shore 
 With Epicurean flavors smacks ; 
 
 I 've supped at Guy's in Baltimore 
 On devilled crabs and canvas-backs, 
 
 And relished more than tongue can tell 
 
 Pheasant and Spanish mackerel. 
 
PARAPHRASE OF SECOND ERODE 235 
 
 Away with dainties like to these ! 
 
 He loves the simples of the fields, 
 Cresses and parsley, corn and peas, 
 
 And all the stores the garden yields, 
 To garnish cutlets of his lambs, 
 And slices of his Berkshire hams. 
 
 Here, dragging the inverted plough 
 
 On drooping necks, his oxen come ; 
 Down from the mountain's sloping brow 
 
 His pastured sheep are hurrying home ; 
 While men and maids of Celtic race 
 Crowd round his shining fire-place. 
 
 Thus Jacob spoke, and left the street, 
 Shaking the gold-dust from his feet. 
 Called in his loans, sold out his stocks. 
 And bargained for a rural box ; 
 But ere a month had passed away. 
 He found that farming would not pay. 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ^li vetusto nobilis ab Lamo 152 
 
 yEquam memento rebus in arduis 75 
 
 Albi, ne doleas plus nimio memor 58 
 
 Angustam amice pauperiem pati 116 
 
 Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus 109 
 
 Beatus ille qui procul negotiis 232 
 
 Caelo supinas si tuleris manus 158 
 
 Caelo tonantem credidimus Jovem 127 
 
 Cum tu, Lydia, Telephi 27 
 
 Cur me querelis exanimas tuis ? 104 
 
 Delicta majorum immeritus lues 131 
 
 Descende caelo et die age tibia 122 
 
 Dianam tenerae dicite virgines 40 
 
 Diffugere nives, redeunt jam gramina campis 194 
 
 Dive, quem proles Niobea magnae 191 
 
 Donarem pateras grataque commodus . 196 
 
 Donee gratus eram tibi 138 
 
 Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume 97 
 
 Est mihi nonum superantis annum 202 
 
 Et thure et fidibus juvat 65 
 
 237 
 
238 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 Exegi monumentum aere perennius 175 
 
 Extremum Tanain si biberes, Lyce 140 
 
 Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator 154 
 
 Herculis ritu modo dictus, O plebs 147 
 
 Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides 51 
 
 Ille et nefasto te posuit die 94 
 
 Impios parrae recinentis omen 165 
 
 Inclusam Danaen turris aenea 149 
 
 Intactis opulentior 160 
 
 Integer vitae scelerisque piirus 42 
 
 Intermissa, Venus, diu 176 
 
 Jam pauca aratro jugera regiae 99 
 
 Jam satis terris nivis atque dirae 3 
 
 Jam veris comites, quae mare temperant 206 
 
 Justum et tenacem propositi virum 118 
 
 Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon \\ 
 
 Lydia, die, per omnes , li 
 
 Maecenas atavis edite regibus i 
 
 Martiis caelebs quid agam Kalendis 136 
 
 Mater s^va Cupidinum 38 
 
 Mercuri, nam te docilis magistro 142 
 
 Motum ex Metello consule civicum , 70 
 
 Musis amicus tristitiam et metus 47 
 
 Ne forte credas interitura, quae 199 
 
 Ne sit ancillas tibi amor pudori 'j^ 
 
 Nolis longa ferae bella Numantiae 92 
 
 Nondum subacta ferre jugum valet 79 
 
 Non ebur neque aureum 106 
 
 Non semper imbres nubibus hispidos v 88 
 
 Non usitata nee tenui ferar in 
 
 Nullus argento color est avaris ']'^ 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 239 
 
 Nunc est bibendum, nunc i^ede libero 5^ 
 
 Odi profanum vulgus et arceo j j - 
 
 O diva, gratum quae regis Antium ' ^^2 
 
 O fons Bandusiag splendidior vitro j , - 
 
 O matre pulchra filia pulchrior *. '. ! ^. . ^a 
 
 O navis, referent in mare te novi 20 
 
 O sspe mecum tempus in ultimum g^ 
 
 O Venus, regina Cnidi Paphique ".',!!.. - 3 
 
 Otium divos rogat in patenti jgj 
 
 Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens 60 
 
 Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus ^x 
 
 Persicos odi, puer, apparatus 69 
 
 Phoebus volentem proelia me loqui 211 
 
 Pindarum quisquis studet semulari i -n 
 
 Poscimur. Si quid vacui sub umbra . 
 
 56 
 
 Quae cura patrum quaeve Quiritium 208 
 
 Qualem ministrum fulminis alitem ig- 
 
 Quantum distet ab Inacho j -5 
 
 Quern tu, Melpomene, semel ^g^ 
 
 Quem virum aut heroa lyra vel acri 2" 
 
 Quid bellicosus Cantaber et Scythes go 
 
 Quid dedicatum poscit Apollinem 54 
 
 Quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi candidi 134 
 
 Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus 45 
 
 Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa 1 1 
 
 Septimi, Gades aditure mecum <S i 
 
 Scriberis Vario fortis et hostium i - 
 
 Sic te diva potens Cypri 6 
 
 Solvitur acris hiems 9 
 
 Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis arena; 48 
 
 Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas 22 
 
 Tyrrhena regum progenies, tibi 1 70 
 
240 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 Ulla si juris tibi perjerati 86 
 
 Velox amoenum saepe Lucretilem 36 
 
 Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum 20 
 
 Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe 44 
 
 Vixi puellis nuper idoneus 164 
 
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