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The Works of Horace
Page 4
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THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO VENUS.
After a long cessation, O Venus, again are you stirring up tumults?
Spare me, I beseech you, I beseech you. I am not the man I was under
the dominion of good-natured Cynara. Forbear, O cruel mother of soft
desires, to bend one bordering upon fifty, now too hardened for soft
commands: go, whither the soothing prayers of youths, invoke you.
More seasonably may you revel in the house of Paulus Maximus, flying
thither with your splendid swans, if you seek to inflame a suitable
breast. For he is both noble and comely, and by no means silent in
the cause of distressed defendants, and a youth of a hundred
accomplishments; he shall bear the ensigns of your warfare far and
wide; and whenever, more prevailing than the ample presents of a
rival, he shall laugh [at his expense], he shall erect thee in
marble under a citron dome near the Alban lake. There you shall
smell abundant frankincense, and shall be charmed with the mixed
music of the lyre and Berecynthian pipe, not without the flageolet.
There the youths, together with the tender maidens, twice a day
celebrating your divinity, shall, Salian-like, with white foot
thrice shake the ground. As for me, neither woman, nor youth, nor
the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to
bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But
why; ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle
down my cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words
with an unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught
[in my arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius;
thee I pursue, O cruel one, through the rolling waters.
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ODE II.
TO ANTONIUS IULUS.
Whoever endeavors, O Iulus, to rival Pindar, makes an effort on
wings fastened with wax by art Daedalean, about to communicate his
name to the glassy sea. Like a river pouring down from a mountain,
which sudden rains have increased beyond its accustomed banks, such
the deep-mouthed Pindar rages and rushes on immeasurable, sure to
merit Apollo's laurel, whether he rolls down new-formed phrases
through the daring dithyrambic, and is borne on in numbers exempt
from rule: whether he sings the gods, and kings, the offspring of
the gods, by whom the Centaurs perished with a just destruction, [by
whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful Chimaera; or celebrates
those whom the palm, [in the Olympic games] at Elis, brings home
exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents them with a
gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some youth,
snatched [by death] from his mournful bride—he elevates both his
strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues
him from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan,
O Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the
clouds: but I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that
laboriously gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature,
compose elaborate verses about the grove and the banks of the watery
Tiber. You, a poet of sublimer style, shall sing of Caesar,
whenever, graceful in his well-earned laurel, he shall drag the
fierce Sygambri along the sacred hill; Caesar, than whom nothing
greater or better the fates and indulgent gods ever bestowed on the
earth, nor will bestow, though the times should return to their
primitive gold. You shall sing both the festal days, and the public
rejoicings on account of the prayed-for return of the brave
Augustus, and the forum free from law-suits. Then (if I can offer
any thing worth hearing) a considerable portion of my voice shall
join [the general acclamation], and I will sing, happy at the
reception of Caesar, "O glorious day, O worthy thou to be
celebrated." And while [the procession] moves along, shouts of
triumph we will repeat, shouts of triumph the whole city [will
raise], and we will offer frankincense to the indulgent gods. Thee
ten bulls and as many heifers shall absolve; me, a tender steerling,
that, having left his dam, thrives in spacious pastures for the
discharge of my vows, resembling [by the horns on] his forehead the
curved light of the moon, when she appears of three days old, in
which part he has a mark of a snowy aspect, being of a dun color
over the rest of his body.
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ODE III.
TO MELPOMENE.
Him, O Melpomene, upon whom at his birth thou hast once looked with
favoring eye, the Isthmian contest shall not render eminent as a
wrestler; the swift horse shall not draw him triumphant in a Grecian
car; nor shall warlike achievement show him in the Capitol, a
general adorned with the Delian laurel, on account of his having
quashed the proud threats of kings: but such waters as flow through
the fertile Tiber, and the dense leaves of the groves, shall make
him distinguished by the Aeolian verse. The sons of Rome, the queen
of cities, deign to rank me among the amiable band of poets; and now
I am less carped at by the tooth of envy. O muse, regulating the
harmony of the gilded shell! O thou, who canst immediately bestow,
if thou please, the notes of the swan upon the mute fish! It is
entirely by thy gift that I am marked out, as the stringer of the
Roman lyre, by the fingers of passengers; that I breathe, and give
pleasure (if I give pleasure), is yours.
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ODE IV
THE PRAISE OF DRUSUS.
Like as the winged minister of thunder (to whom Jupiter, the
sovereign of the gods, has assigned the dominion over the fleeting
birds, having experienced his fidelity in the affair of the
beauteous Ganymede), early youth and hereditary vigor save impelled
from his nest unknowing of toil; and the vernal winds, the showers
being now dispelled, taught him, still timorous, unwonted
enterprises: in a little while a violent impulse dispatched him, as
an enemy against the sheepfolds, now an appetite for food and fight
has impelled him upon the reluctant serpents;—or as a she-goat,
intent on rich pastures, has beheld a young lion but just weaned
from the udder of his tawny dam, ready to be devoured by his
newly-grown tooth: such did the Rhaeti and the Vindelici behold
Drusus carrying on the war under the Alps; whence this people
derived the custom, which has always prevailed among them, of arming
their right hands with the Amazonian ax, I have purposely omitted to
inquire: (neither is it possible to discover everything.) But those
troops, which had been for a long while and extensively victorious,
being subdued by the conduct of a youth, perceived what a
disposition, what a genius rightly educated under an auspicious
roof, what the fatherly affection of Augustus toward the young Neros,
could effect. The brave are generated by the brave and good; there
is in steers, there is in horses, the virtue of their sires; nor do
the courageous eagles procreate the unwarlike dove. But learning
improves the innate force, and good discipline confirms the mind:
whenever morals are deficient, vices disgrace what is naturally
good. What thou owest, O Rome, to the Neros, the river Metaurus is a
witness, and the defeated Asdrubal, and that day illustrious by the
dispelling of darkness from Italy, and which first smiled with
benignant victory; when the terrible African rode through the Latian
cities, like a fire through the pitchy pines, or the east wind
through the Sicilian waves. After this the Roman youth increased
continually in successful exploits, and temples, laid waste by the
impious outrage of the Carthaginians, had the [statues of] their
gods set up again. And at length the perfidious Hannibal said; "We,
like stags, the prey of rapacious wolves, follow of our own accord
those, whom to deceive and escape is a signal triumph. That nation,
which, tossed in the Etrurian waves, bravely transported their gods,
and sons, and aged fathers, from the burned Troy to the Italian
cities, like an oak lopped by sturdy axes in Algidum abounding in
dusky leaves, through losses and through wounds derives strength and
spirit from the very steel. The Hydra did not with more vigor grow
upon Hercules grieving to be overcome, nor did the Colchians, or the
Echionian Thebes, produce a greater prodigy. Should you sink it in
the depth, it will come out more beautiful: should you contend with
it, with great glory will it overthrow the conqueror unhurt before,
and will fight battles to be the talk of wives. No longer can I send
boasting messengers to Carthage: all the hope and success of my name
is fallen, is fallen by the death of Asdrubal. There is nothing, but
what the Claudian hands will perform; which both Jupiter defends
with his propitious divinity, and sagacious precaution conducts
through the sharp trials of war."
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ODE V.
TO AUGUSTUS.
O best guardian of the Roman people, born under propitious gods,
already art thou too long absent; after having promised a mature
arrival to the sacred council of the senators, return. Restore, O
excellent chieftain, the light to thy country; for, like the spring,
wherever thy countenance has shone, the day passes more agreeably
for the people, and the sun has a superior lustre. As a mother, with
vows, omens, and prayers, calls for her son (whom the south wind
with adverse gales detains from his sweet home, staying more than a
year beyond the Carpathian Sea), nor turns aside her looks from the
curved shore; in like manner, inspired with loyal wishes, his
country seeks for Caesar. For, [under your auspices,] the ox in
safety traverses the meadows: Ceres nourishes the ground; and
abundant Prosperity: the sailors skim through the calm ocean: and
Faith is in dread of being censured. The chaste family is polluted
by no adulteries: morality and the law have got the better of that
foul crime; the child-bearing women are commended for an offspring
resembling [the father; and] punishment presses as a companion upon
guilt. Who can fear the Parthian? Who, the frozen Scythian? Who, the
progeny that rough Germany produces, while Caesar is in safety? Who
cares for the war of fierce Spain? Every man puts a period to the
day amid his own hills, and weds the vine to the widowed elm-trees;
hence he returns joyful to his wine, and invites you, as a deity, to
his second course; thee, with many a prayer, thee he pursues with
wine poured out [in libation] from the cups; and joins your divinity
to that of his household gods, in the same manner as Greece was
mindful of Castor and the great Hercules. May you, excellent
chieftain, bestow a lasting festivity upon Italy! This is our
language, when we are sober at the early day; this is our language,
when we have well drunk, at the time the sun is beneath the ocean.
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ODE VI.
HYMN TO APOLLO.
Thou god, whom the offspring of Niobe experienced as avenger of a
presumptuous tongue, and the ravisher Tityus, and also the
Thessalian Achilles, almost the conqueror of lofty Troy, a warrior
superior to all others, but unequal to thee; though, son of the
sea-goddess, Thetis, he shook the Dardanian towers, warring with his
dreadful spear. He, as it were a pine smitten with the burning ax,
or a cypress prostrated by the east wind, fell extended far, and
reclined his neck in the Trojan dust. He would not, by being shut up
in a [wooden] horse, that belied the sacred rights of Minerva, have
surprised the Trojans reveling in an evil hour, and the court of
Priam making merry in the dance; but openly inexorable to his
captives, (oh impious! oh!) would have burned speechless babes with
Grecian fires, even him concealed in his mother's womb: had not the
father of the gods, prevailed upon by thy entreaties and those of
the beauteous Venus, granted to the affairs of Aeneas walls founded
under happier auspices. Thou lyrist Phoebus, tutor of the harmonious
Thalia, who bathest thy locks in the river Xanthus, O delicate
Agyieus, support the dignity of the Latian muse. Phoebus gave me
genius, Phoebus the art of composing verse, and the title of poet.
Ye virgins of the first distinction, and ye youths born of
illustrious parents, ye wards of the Delian goddess, who stops with
her bow the flying lynxes, and the stags, observe the Lesbian
measure, and the motion of my thumb; duly celebrating the son of
Latona, duly [celebrating] the goddess that enlightens the night
with her shining crescent, propitious to the fruits, and expeditious
in rolling on the precipitate months. Shortly a bride you will say:
"I, skilled in the measures of the poet Horace, recited an ode which
was acceptable to the gods, when the secular period brought back the
festal days."
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ODE VII.
TO TORQUATUS.
The snows are fled, the herbage now returns to the fields, and the
leaves to the trees. The earth changes its appearance, and the
decreasing rivers glide along their banks: the elder Grace, together
with the Nymphs, and her two sisters, ventures naked to lead off the
dance. That you are not to expect things permanent, the year, and
the hour that hurries away the agreeable day, admonish us. The colds
are mitigated by the zephyrs: the summer follows close upon the
spring, shortly to die itself, as soon as fruitful autumn shall have
shed its fruits: and anon sluggish winter returns again.
Nevertheless the quick-revolving moons repair their wanings in the
skies; but when we descend [to those regions] where pious Aeneas,
where Tullus and the wealthy Ancus [have gone before us], we become
dust and a mere shade. Who knows whether the gods above will add to
this day's reckoning the space of to-morrow? Every thing, which you
shall indulge to your beloved soul, will escape the greedy hands of
your heir. When once, Torquatus, you shall be dead, and Minos shall
have made his awful decisions concerning you; not your family, not
you eloquence, not your piety shall restore you. For neither can
Diana free the chaste Hippolytus from infernal darkness; nor is
Theseus able to break off the Lethaean fetters from his dear Piri
thous.
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ODE VIII.
TO MARCIUS CENSORINUS.
O Censorinus, liberally would I present my acquaintance with goblets
and beautiful vases of brass; I would present them with tripods, the
rewards of the brave Grecians: nor would you bear off the meanest of
my donations, if I were rich in those pieces of art, which either
Parrhasius or Scopas produced; the latter in statuary, the former in
liquid colors, eminent to portray at one time a man, at another a
god. But I have no store of this sort, nor do your circumstances or
inclination require any such curiosities as these. You delight in
verses: verses I can give, and set a value on the donation. Not
marbles engraved with public inscriptions, by means of which breath
and life returns to illustrious generals after their decease; not
the precipitate flight of Hannibal, and his menaces retorted upon
his own head: not the flames of impious Carthage * * * * more
eminently set forth his praises, who returned, having gained a name
from conquered Africa, than the Calabrlan muses; neither, should
writings be silent, would you have any reward for having done well.
What would the son of Mars and Ilia be, if invidious silence had
stifled the merits of Romulus? The force, and favor, and voice of
powerful poets consecrate Aecus, snatched from the Stygian floods,
to the Fortunate Islands. The muse forbids a praiseworthy man to
die: the muse, confers the happiness of heaven. Thus laborious
Hercules has a place at the longed-for banquets of Jove: [thus] the
sons of Tyndarus, that bright constellation, rescue shattered
vessels from the bosom of the deep: [and thus] Bacchus, his temples
adorned with the verdant vine-branch, brings the prayers of his
votaries to successful issues.
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ODE IX.
TO MARCUS LOLLIUS.
Lest you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which
I, born on the far-resounding Aufidus, utter to be accompanied with
the lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged—If Maeonian Homer possesses
the first rank, the Pindaric and Cean muses, and the menacing
strains of Alcaeus, and the majestic ones of Stesichorus, are by no
means obscure: neither, if Anacreon long ago sportfully sung any
thing, has time destroyed it: even now breathes the love and live
the ardors of the Aeolian maid, committed to her lyre. The
Lacedaemonian Helen is not the only fair, who has been inflamed by
admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and garments
embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and retinue: nor
was Teucer the first that leveled arrows from the Cydonian bow: Troy
was more than once harassed: the great Idomeneus and Sthenelus were
not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by the
muses: the fierce Hector, or the strenuous Deiphobus were not the
first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and
children. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon: but all of them,
unlamented and unknown, are overwhelmed with endless obscurity,
because they were destitute of a sacred bard. Valor, uncelebrated,
differs but little from cowardice when in the grave. I will not
[therefore], O Lollius, pass you over in silence, uncelebrated in my
writings, or suffer envious forgetfulness with impunity to seize so
many toils of thine. You have a mind ever prudent in the conduct of
affairs, and steady alike amid success and trouble: you are an
avenger of avaricious fraud, and proof against money, that attracts
every thing; and a consul not of one year only, but as often as the
good and upright magistrate has preferred the honorable to the
profitable, and has rejected with a disdainful brow the bribes of
wicked men, and triumphant through opposing bands has displayed his
arms. You can not with propriety call him happy, that possesses
much; he more justly claims the title of happy, who understands how
to make a wise use of the gifts of the gods, and how to bear severe
poverty; and dreads a reproachful deed worse than death; such a man
as this is not afraid to perish in the defense of his dear friends,
or of his country.
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ODE X.
TO LIGURINUS.
O cruel still, and potent in the endowments of beauty, when an
unexpected plume shall come upon your vanity, and those locks, which
now wanton on your shoulders, shall fall off, and that color, which
is now preferable to the blossom of the damask rose, changed, O
Ligurinus, shall turn into a wrinkled face; [then] will you say (as
often as you see yourself, [quite] another person in the looking
glass), Alas! why was not my present inclination the same, when I
was young? Or why do not my cheeks return, unimpaired, to these my
present sentiments?
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ODE XI.
TO PHYLLIS.
Phyllis, I have a cask full of Abanian wine, upward of nine years
old; I have parsley in my garden, for the weaving of chaplets, I
have a store of ivy, with which, when you have bound your hair, you
look so gay: the house shines cheerfully With plate: the altar,
bound with chaste vervain, longs to be sprinkled [with the blood] of
a sacrificed lamb: all hands are busy: girls mingled with boys fly
about from place to place: the flames quiver, rolling on their
summit the sooty smoke. But yet, that you may know to what joys you
are invited, the Ides are to be celebrated by you, the day which
divides April, the month of sea-born Venus; [a day,] with reason to
be solemnized by me, and almost more sacred to me than that of my
own birth; since from this day my dear Maecenas reckons his flowing
years. A rich and buxom girl hath possessed herself of Telephus, a
youth above your rank; and she holds him fast by an agreeable
fetter. Consumed Phaeton strikes terror into ambitious hopes, and
the winged Pegasus, not stomaching the earth-born rider Bellerophon,
affords a terrible example, that you ought always to pursue things
that are suitable to you, and that you should avoid a
disproportioned match, by thinking it a crime to entertain a hope
beyond what is allowable. Come then, thou last of my loves (for
hereafter I shall burn for no other woman), learn with me such
measures, as thou mayest recite with thy lovely voice: our gloomy
cares shall be mitigated with an ode.
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ODE XII.
TO VIRGIL.
The Thracian breezes, attendants on the spring, which moderate the
deep, now fill the sails; now neither are the meadows stiff [with
frost], nor roar the rivers swollen with winter's snow. The unhappy
bird, that piteotisly bemoans Itys, and is the eternal disgrace of
the house of Cecrops (because she wickedly revenged the brutal lusts
of kings), now builds her nest. The keepers of the sheep play tunes
upon the pipe amid the tendar herbage, and delight that god, whom
flocks and the shady hills of Arcadia delight. The time of year, O
Virgil, has brought on a drought: but if you desire to quaff wine
from the Calenian press, you, that are a constant companion of young
noblemen, must earn your liquor by [bringing some] spikenard: a
small box of spikenard shall draw out a cask, which now lies in the
Sulpician store-house, bounteous in the indulgence of fresh hopes
and efficacious in washing away the bitterness of cares. To which
joys if you hasten, come instantly with your merchandize: I do not
intend to dip you in my cups scot-free, like a man of wealth, in a
house abounding with plenty. But lay aside delay, and the desire of
gain; and, mindful of the gloomy [funeral] flames, intermix, while
you may, your grave studies with a little light gayety: it is
delightful to give a loose on a proper occasion.
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ODE XIII.
TO LYCE.
The gods have heard my prayers, O Lyce; Lyce, the gods have heard my
prayers, you are become an old woman, and yet you would fain seem a
beauty; and you wanton and drink in an audacious manner; and when
drunk, solicit tardy Cupid, with a quivering voice. He basks in the
charming cheeks of the blooming Chia, who is a proficient on the
lyre. The teasing urchin flies over blasted oaks, and starts back at
the sight of you, because foul teeth, because wrinkles and snowy
hair render you odious. Now neither Coan purples nor sparkling
jewels restore those years, which winged time has inserted in the
public annals. Whither is your beauty gone? Alas! or whither your
bloom? Whither your graceful deportment? What have you [remaining]
of her, of her, who breathed loves, and ravished me from myself?
Happy next to Cynara, and distinguished for an aspect of graceful
ways: but the fates granted a few years only to Cynara, intending to
preserve for a long time Lyce, to rival in years the aged raven:
that the fervid young fellows might see, not without excessive
laughter, that torch, [which once so brightly scorched,] reduced to
ashes.
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ODE XIV.
TO AUGUSTUS.
What zeal of the senators, or what of the Roman people, by decreeing
the most ample honors, can eternize your virtues, O Augustus, by
monumental inscriptions and lasting records? O thou, wherever the
sun illuminates the habitable regions, greatest of princes, whom the
Vindelici, that never experienced the Roman sway, have lately
learned how powerful thou art in war! For Drusus, by means of your
soldiery, has more than once bravely overthrown the Genauni, an
implacable race, and the rapid Brenci, and the citadels situated on
the tremendous Alps. The elder of the Neros soon after fought a
terrible battle, and, under your propitious auspices, smote the
ferocious Rhoeti: how worthy of admiration in the field of battle,
[to see] with what destruction he oppressed the brave, hearts
devoted to voluntary death: just as the south wind harasses the
untameable waves, when the dance of the Pleiades cleaves the clouds;
[so is he] strenuous to annoy the troops of the enemy, and to drive
his eager steed through the midst of flames. Thus the bull-formed
Aufidus, who washes the dominions of the Apulian Daunus, rolls
along, when he rages and meditates an horrible deluge to the
cultivated lands; when Claudius overthrew with impetuous might, the
iron ranks of the barbarians, and by mowing down both front and rear
strewed the ground, victorious without any loss; through you
supplying them with troops, you with councils, and your own guardian
powers. For on that day, when the suppliant Alexandria opened her
ports, and deserted court, fortune, propitious to you in the third
lustrum, has put a happy period to the war, and has ascribed praise
and wished-for honor to the victories already obtained. O thou dread
guardian of Italy and imperial Rome, thee the Spaniard, till now
unconquered, and the Mede, and the Indian, thee the vagrant Scythian
admires; thee both the Nile, who conceals his fountain heads, and
the Danube; thee the rapid Tigris; thee the monster-bearing ocean,
that roars against the remote Britons; thee the region of Gaul
fearless of death, and that of hardy Iberia obeys; thee the
Sicambrians, who delight in slaughter, laying aside their arms,
revere.
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ODE XV.
TO AUGUSTUS, ON THE RESTORATION OF PEACE.
Phoebus chid me, when I was meditating to sing of battles And
conquered cities on the lyre: that I might not set my little sails
along the Tyrrhenian Sea. Your age, O Caesar, has both restored
plenteous crops to the fields, and has brought back to our Jupiter
the standards torn from the proud pillars of the Parthians; and has
shut up [the temple] of Janus [founded by] Romulus, now free from
war; and has imposed a due discipline upon headstrong
licentiousness, and has extirpated crimes, and recalled the ancient
arts; by which the Latin name and strength of Italy have increased,
and the fame and majesty of the empire is extended from the sun's
western bed to the east. While Caesar is guardian of affairs,
neither civil rage nor violence shall disturb tranquillity; nor
hatred which forges swords, and sets at variance unhappy states. Not
those, who drink of the deep Danube, shall now break the Julian
edicts: not the Getae, not the Seres, nor the perfidious Persians,
nor those born upon the river Tanais. And let us, both on common and
festal days, amid the gifts of joyous Bacchus, together with our
wives and families, having first duly invoked the gods, celebrate,
after the manner of our ancestors, with songs accompanied with
Lydian pipes, our late valiant commanders: and Troy, and Anchises,
and the offspring of benign Venus.
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