1The broils that from Metellus date,
2 The secret springs, the dark intrigues,
3 The freaks of Fortune, and the great
4 Confederate in disastrous leagues,
5 And arms with uncleansed slaughter red,
6 A work of danger and distrust,
7 You treat, as one on fire should tread
8 Scarce hid by treacherous ashen crust.
9 Let Tragedy's stern muse be mute
10 Awhile; and when your ordered page
11 Has told Rome's tale, that buskined foot
12 Again shall mount the Attic stage,
13 Pollio, the pale defendant's shield,
14 In deep debate the senate's stay,
15 The hero of Dalmatic field
16 By Triumph crowned with deathless bay.
17 Even now with trumpet's threatening blare
18 You thrill our ears; the clarion brays;
19 The lightnings of the armour scare
20 The steed, and daunt the rider's gaze.
21 I think I hear of leaders proud
22 With no uncomely dust distained,
23 And all the world by conquest bowed,
24 And only Cato's soul unchained.
25 Yes, Juno and the powers on high
26 That left their Afric to its doom,
27 Have led the victors' progeny
28 As victims to Jugurtha's tomb.
29 What field, by Latian blood-drops fed,
30 Proclaims not the unnatural deeds
31 It buries, and the earthquake dread
32 Whose distant thunder shook the Medes?
33 What gulf, what river has not seen
34 Those sights of sorrow? indeed, what sea
35 Has Daunian carnage yet left green?
36 What coast from Roman blood is free?
37 But pause, gay Muse, nor leave your play
38 Another Cean dirge to sing;
39 With me to Venus' bower away,
40 And there attune a lighter string.
2The silver, Sallust, shows not fair
2 While buried in the greedy mine:
3 You love it not till moderate wear
4 Have given it shine.
5 Honour to Proculeius! he
6 To brothers played a father's part;
7 Fame shall embalm through years to be
8 That noble heart.
9 Who curbs a greedy soul may boast
10 More power than if his broad-based throne
11 Bridged Libya's sea, and either coast
12 Were all his own.
13 Indulgence bids the dropsy grow;
14 Who gladly would quench the palate's flame
15 Must rescue from the watery foe
16 The pale weak frame.
17 Phraates, throned where Cyrus sate,
18 May count for blest with vulgar herds,
19 But not with Virtue; soon or late
20 From lying words
21 She weans men's lips; for him she keeps
22 The crown, the purple, and the bays,
23 Who dares to look on treasure-heaps
24 With unblenched gaze.
3An equal mind, when storms overcloud,
2 Maintain, nor beneath a brighter sky
3 Let pleasure make your heart too proud,
4 O Dellius, Dellius! sure te die,
5 Whether in gloom you spend each year,
6 Or through long holydays at ease
7 In grassy nook your spirit cheer
8 With old Falernian vintages,
9 Where poplar pale, and pine-tree high
10 Their hospitable shadows spread
11 Entwined, and panting waters try
12 To hurry down their zigzag bed.
13 Bring wine and scents, and roses' bloom,
14 Too brief, alas! to that sweet place;
15 While life, and fortune, and the loom
16 Of the Three Sisters yield you grace.
17 Soon must you leave the woods you buy,
18 Your villa, washed by Tiber's flow,
19 Leave,—and your treasures, heaped so high,
20 Your reckless heir will level low.
21 Whether from Argos' founder born
22 In wealth you lived beneath the sun,
23 Or nursed in beggary and scorn,
24 You fall to Death, who pities none.
25 One way all travel; the dark urn
26 Shakes each man's lot, that soon or late
27 Will force him, hopeless of return,
28 On board the exile-ship of Fate.
4Why, Xanthias, blush to own you love
2 Your slave? Briseis, long ago,
3 A captive, could Achilles move
4 With breast of snow.
5 Tecmessa's charms enslaved her lord,
6 Stout Ajax, heir of Telamon;
7 Atrides, in his pride, adored
8 The maid he won,
9 When Troy to Thessaly gave way,
10 And Hector's all too quick decease
11 Made Pergamus an easier prey
12 To wearied Greece.
13 What if, as auburn Phyllis' mate,
14 You graft yourself on regal stem?
15 Oh yes! be sure her sires were great;
16 She weeps for them.
17 Believe me, from no rascal scum
18 Your charmer sprang; so true a flame,
19 Such hate of greed, could never come
20 From vulgar dame.
21 With honest fervour I commend
22 Those lips, those eyes; you need not fear
23 A rival, hurrying on to end
24 His fortieth year.
5Not yet is she fit to be broken to the yoke; not yet is she equal to the duties of a partner, nor can she support the weight of the bull impetuously rushing to enjoyment. Your heifer’s sole inclination is about verdant fields, one while in running streams soothing the grievous heat; at another, highly delighted to frisk with the steerlings in the moist willow ground. Suppress your appetite for the immature grape; shortly variegated autumn will tinge for you the livid clusters with a purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and doubtful face would wonderfully impose even on sagacious strangers.
6Septimius, who with me would brave
2 Far Gades, and Cantabrian land
3 Untamed by Rome, and Moorish wave
4 That whirls the sand;
5 Fair Tibur, town of Argive kings,
6 There would I end my days serene,
7 At rest from seas and travellings,
8 And service seen.
9 Should angry Fate those wishes foil,
10 Then let me seek Galesus, sweet
11 To skin-clad sheep, and that rich soil,
12 The Spartan's seat.
13 O, what can match the green recess,
14 Whose honey not to Hybla yields,
15 Whose olives vie with those that bless
16 Venafrum's fields?
17 Long springs, mild winters glad that spot
18 By Jove's good grace, and Aulon, dear
19 To fruitful Bacchus, envies not
20 Falernian cheer.
21 That spot, those happy heights desire
22 Our sojourn; there, when life shall end,
23 Your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre,
24 Your bard and friend.
7O, often with me in troublous time
2 Involved, when Brutus warred in Greece,
3 Who gives you back to your own clime
4 And your own gods, a man of peace,
5 Pompey, the earliest friend I knew,
6 With whom I often cut short the hours
7 With wine, my hair bright bathed in dew
8 Of Syrian oils, and wreathed with flowers?
9 With you I shared Philippi's rout,
10 Unseemly parted from my shield,
11 When Valour fell, and warriors stout
12 Were tumbled on the inglorious field:
13 But I was saved by Mercury,
14 Wrapped in thick mist, yet trembling sore,
15 While you to that tempestuous sea
16 Were swept by battle's tide once more.
17 Come, pay to Jove the feast you owe;
18 Lay down those limbs, with warfare spent,
19 Beneath my laurel; nor be slow
20 To drain my cask; for you it was meant.
21 Lethe's true draught is Massic wine;
22 Fill high the goblet; pour out free
23 Rich streams of unguent. Who will twine
24 The hasty wreath from myrtle-tree
25 Or parsley? Whom will Venus seat
26 Chairman of cups? Are Bacchants sane?
27 Then I'll be sober. O, it is sweet
28 To fool, when friends come home again!
8Had chastisement for perjured truth,
2 Barine, marked you with a curse—
3 Did one wry nail, or one black tooth,
4 But make you worse—
5 I'd trust you; but, when plighted lies
6 Have pledged you deepest, lovelier far
7 You sparkle forth, of all young eyes
8 The ruling star.
9 It is gain to mock your mother's bones,
10 And night's still signs, and all the sky,
11 And gods, that on their glorious thrones
12 Chill Death defy.
13 Yes, Venus smiles; the pure nymphs smile,
14 And Cupid, tyrant-lord of hearts,
15 Sharpening on bloody stone the while
16 His fiery darts.
17 New captives fill the nets you weave;
18 New slaves are bred; and those before,
19 Though often they threaten, never leave
20 Your godless door.
21 The mother dreads you for her son,
22 The thrifty sire, the new-wed bride,
23 Lest, lured by you, her precious one
24 Should leave her side.
9The rain, it rains not every day
2 On the soaked meads; the Caspian main
3 Not always feels the unequal sway
4 Of storms, nor on Armenia's plain,
5 Dear Valgius, lies the cold dull snow
6 Through all the year; nor northwinds keen
7 Upon Garganian oakwoods blow,
8 And strip the ashes of their green.
9 You still with tearful tones pursue
10 Your lost, lost Mystes; Hesper sees
11 Your passion when he brings the dew,
12 And when before the sun he flees.
13 Yet not for loved Antilochus
14 Grey Nestor wasted all his years
15 In grief; nor over young Troilus
16 His parents' and his sisters' tears
17 For ever flowed. At length have done
18 With these soft sorrows; rather tell
19 Of Caesar's trophies newly won,
20 And hoar Niphates' icy fell,
21 And Medus' flood, amid conquered tribes
22 Rolling a less presumptuous tide,
23 And Scythians taught, as Rome prescribes,
24 Henceforth over narrower steppes to ride.
10Licinius, trust a seaman's lore:
2 Steer not too boldly to the deep,
3 Nor, fearing storms, by treacherous shore
4 Too closely creep.
5 Who makes the golden mean his guide,
6 Shuns miser's cabin, foul and dark,
7 Shuns gilded roofs, where pomp and pride
8 Are envy's mark.
9 With fiercer blasts the pine's dim height
10 Is rocked; proud towers with heavier fall
11 Crash to the ground; and thunders smite
12 The mountains tall.
13 In sadness hope, in gladness fear
14 Against coming change will fortify
15 Your breast. The storms that Jupiter
16 Sweeps over the sky
17 He chases. Why should rain today
18 Bring rain tomorrow? Python's foe
19 Is pleased sometimes his lyre to play,
20 Nor bends his bow.
21 Be brave in trouble; meet distress
22 With dauntless front; but when the gale
23 Too prosperous blows, be wise no less,
24 And shorten sail.
11O ask not what those sons of war,
2 Cantabrian, Scythian, each intend,
3 Disjoined from us by Hadria's bar,
4 Nor puzzle, Quintius, how to spend
5 A life so simple. Youth removes,
6 And Beauty too; and hoar Decay
7 Drives out the wanton tribe of Loves
8 And Sleep, that came or night or day.
9 The sweet spring-flowers not always keep
10 Their bloom, nor moonlight shines the same
11 Each evening. Why with thoughts too deep
12 Overtask a mind of mortal frame?
13 Why not, just thrown at careless ease
14 Beneath plane or pine, our locks of grey
15 Perfumed with Syrian essences
16 And wreathed with roses, while we may,
17 Lie drinking? Bacchus puts to shame
18 The cares that waste us. Where's the slave
19 To quench the fierce Falernian's flame
20 With water from the passing wave?
21 Who'll coax coy Lyde from her home?
22 Go, bid her take her ivory lyre,
23 The runaway, and haste to come,
24 Her wild hair bound with Spartan tire.
12The weary war where fierce Numantia bled,
2 Fell Hannibal, the swoln Sicilian main
3 Purpled with Punic blood—not mine to wed
4 These to the lyre's soft strain,
5 Nor cruel Lapithae, nor, mad with wine,
6 Centaurs, nor, by Herculean arm overcome,
7 The earth-born youth, whose terrors dimmed the shine
8 Of the resplendent dome
9 Of ancient Saturn. You, Maecenas, best
10 In pictured prose of Caesar's warrior feats
11 Will tell, and captive kings with haughty crest
12 Led through the Roman streets.
13 On me the Muse has laid her charge to tell
14 Of your Licymnia's voice, the lustrous hue
15 Of her bright eye, her heart that beats so well
16 To mutual passion true:
17 How nothing she does but lends her added grace,
18 Whether she dance, or join in bantering play,
19 Or with soft arms the maiden choir embrace
20 On great Diana's day.
21 Say, would you change for all the wealth possest
22 By rich Achaemenes or Phrygia's heir,
23 Or the full stores of Araby the blest,
24 One lock of her dear hair,
25 While to your burning lips she bends her neck,
26 Or with kind cruelty denies the due
27 She means you not to beg for, but to take,
28 Or snatches it from you?
13Black day he chose for planting thee,
2 Accurst he reared you from the ground,
3 The bane of children yet to be,
4 The scandal of the village round.
5 His father's throat the monster pressed
6 Beside, and on his hearthstone spilt,
7 I think, the blood of midnight guest;
8 Black Colchian drugs, whatever of guilt
9 Is hatched on earth, he dealt in all—
10 Who planted in my rural stead
11 You, fatal wood, you, sure to fall
12 Upon your blameless master's head.
13 The dangers of the hour! no thought
14 We give them; Punic seaman's fear
15 Is all of Bosporus, nor aught
16 Reeks he of pitfalls otherwhere;
17 The soldier fears the masked retreat
18 Of Parthia; Parthia dreads the thrall
19 Of Rome; but Death with noiseless feet
20 Has stolen and will steal on all.
21 How near dark Pluto's court I stood,
22 And Aeacus' judicial throne,
23 The blest seclusion of the good,
24 And Sappho, with sweet lyric moan
25 Bewailing her ungentle sex,
26 And you, Alcaeus, louder far
27 Chanting your tale of woful wrecks,
28 Of woful exile, woful war!
29 In sacred awe the silent dead
30 Attend on each: but when the song
31 Of combat tells and tyrants fled,
32 Keen ears, pressed shoulders, closer throng.
33 What marvel, when at those sweet airs
34 The hundred-headed beast spell-bound
35 Each black ear droops, and Furies' hairs
36 Uncoil their serpents at the sound?
37 Prometheus too and Pelops' sire
38 In listening lose the sense of woe;
39 Orion hearkens to the lyre,
40 And lets the lynx and lion go.
14Ah, Postumus! they fleet away,
2 Our years, nor piety one hour
3 Can win from wrinkles and decay,
4 And Death's indomitable power;
5 Not though three hundred bullocks flame
6 Each year, to soothe the tearless king
7 Who holds huge Geryon's triple frame
8 And Tityos in his watery ring,
9 That circling flood, which all must stem,
10 Who eat the fruits that Nature yields,
11 Wearers of haughtiest diadem,
12 Or humblest tillers of the fields.
13 In vain we shun war's contact red
14 Or storm-tost spray of Hadrian main:
15 In vain, the season through, we dread
16 For our frail lives Scirocco's bane.
17 Cocytus' black and stagnant ooze
18 Must welcome you, and Danaus' seed
19 Ill-famed, and ancient Sisyphus
20 To never-ending toil decreed.
21 Your land, your house, your lovely bride
22 Must lose you; of your cherished trees
23 None to its fleeting master's side
24 Will cling, but those sad cypresses.
25 Your heir, a larger soul, will drain
26 The hundred-padlocked Caecuban,
27 And richer spilth the pavement stain
28 Than ever at pontiff's supper ran.
15Few roods of ground the piles we raise
2 Will leave to plough; ponds wider spread
3 Than Lucrine lake will meet the gaze
4 On every side; the plane unwed
5 Will top the elm; the violet-bed,
6 The myrtle, each delicious sweet,
7 On olive-grounds their scent will shed,
8 Where once were fruit-trees yielding meat;
9 Thick bays will screen the midday range
10 Of fiercest suns. Not such the rule
11 Of Romulus, and Cato sage,
12 And all the bearded, good old school.
13 Each Roman's wealth was little worth,
14 His country's much; no colonnade
15 For private pleasance wooed the North
16 With cool “prolixity of shade.”
17 None might the casual sod disdain
18 To roof his home; a town alone,
19 At public charge, a sacred fane
20 Were honoured with the pomp of stone.
16For ease, in wide Aegean caught,
2 The sailor prays, when clouds are hiding
3 The moon, nor shines of starlight aught
4 For seaman's guiding:
5 For ease the Mede, with quiver gay:
6 For ease rude Thrace, in battle cruel:
7 Can purple buy it, Grosphus? Nay,
8 Nor gold, nor jewel.
9 No pomp, no lictor clears the way
10 Amid rabble-routs of troublous feelings,
11 Nor quells the cares that sport and play
12 Round gilded ceilings.
13 More happy he whose modest board
14 His father's well-worn silver brightens;
15 No fear, nor lust for sordid hoard,
16 His light sleep frightens.
17 Why bend our bows of little span?
18 Why change our homes for regions under
19 Another sun? What exiled man
20 From self can sunder?
21 Care climbs the bark, and trims the sail,
22 Curst fiend! nor troops of horse can escape her,
23 More swift than stag, more swift than gale
24 That drives the vapour.
25 Blest in the present, look not forth
26 On ills beyond, but soothe each bitter
27 With slow, calm smile. No suns on earth
28 Unclouded glitter.
29 Achilles' light was quenched at noon;
30 A long decay Tithonus minished;
31 My hours, it may be, yet will run
32 When yours are flnished.
33 For you Sicilian heifers low,
34 Bleat countless flocks; for you are neighing
35 Proud coursers; Afric purples glow
36 For your arraying
37 With double dyes; a small domain,
38 The soul that breathed in Grecian harping,
39 My portion these; and high disdain
40 Of ribald carping.
17Why rend my heart with that sad sigh?
2 It cannot please the gods or me
3 That you, Maecenas, first should die,
4 My pillar of prosperity.
5 Ah! should I lose one half my soul
6 Untimely, can the other stay
7 Behind it? Life that is not whole,
8 Is that as sweet? The self-same day
9 Shall crush us two; no idle oath
10 Has Horace sworn; whenever you go,
11 We both will travel, travel both
12 The last dark journey down below.
13 No, not Chimaera's fiery breath,
14 Nor Gyas, could he rise again,
15 Shall part us; Justice, strong as death,
16 So wills it; so the Fates ordain.
17 Whether it was Libra saw me born
18 Or angry Scorpio, lord malign
19 Of natal hour, or Capricorn,
20 The tyrant of the western brine,
21 Our planets sure with concord strange
22 Are blended. You by Jove's blest power
23 Were snatched from out the baleful range
24 Of Saturn, and the evil hour
25 Was stayed, when rapturous benches full
26 Three times the auspicious thunder pealed;
27 Me the curst trunk, that struck my skull,
28 Had slain; but Faunus, strong to shield
29 The friends of Mercury, checked the blow
30 In mid descent. Be sure to pay
31 The victims and the fane you owe;
32 Your bard a humbler lamb will slay.
18Carven ivory have I none
2 No golden cornice in my dwelling shines;
3 Pillars choice of Libyan stone
4 Upbear no architrave from Attic mines;
5 It was not mine to enter in
6 To Attalus' broad realms, an unknown heir,
7 Nor for me fair clients spin
8 Laconian purples for their patron's wear.
9 Truth is mine, and Genius mine;
10 The rich man comes, and knocks at my low door:
11 Favoured thus, I never repine,
12 Nor weary out indulgent Heaven for more:
13 In my Sabine homestead blest,
14 Why should I further tax a generous friend?
15 Suns are hurrying suns a-west,
16 And newborn moons make speed to meet their end.
17 You have hands to square and hew
18 Vast marble-blocks, hard on your day of doom,
19 Ever building mansions new,
20 Nor thinking of the mansion of the tomb.
21 Now you press on ocean's bound,
22 Where waves on Baiae beat, as earth were scant;
23 Now absorb your neighbour's ground,
24 And tear his landmarks up, your own to plant.
25 Hedges set round clients' farms
26 Your avarice tramples; see, the outcasts fly,
27 Wife and husband, in their arms
28 Their fathers' gods, their squalid family.
29 Yet no hall that wealth ever planned
30 Waits you more surely than the wider room
31 Traced by Death's yet greedier hand.
32 Why strain so far? you cannot leap the tomb.
33 Earth removes the impartial sod
34 Alike for beggar and for monarch's child:
35 Nor the slave of Hell's dark god
36 Conveyed Prometheus back, with bribe beguiled.
37 Pelops he and Pelops' sire
38 Holds, spite of pride, in close captivity;
39 Beggars, who of labour tire,
40 Called or uncalled, he hears and sets them free.
19Bacchus I saw in mountain glades
2 Retired (believe it, after years!)
3 Teaching his strains to Dryad maids,
4 While goat-hoofed satyrs pricked their ears.
5 Evoe! my eyes with terror glare;
6 My heart is revelling with the god;
7 It is madness! Evoe! spare, O spare,
8 Dread wielder of the ivied rod!
9 Yes, I may sing the Thyiad crew,
10 The stream of wine, the sparkling rills
11 That run with milk, and honey-dew
12 That from the hollow trunk distils;
13 And I may sing your consort's crown,
14 New set in heaven, and Pentheus' hall
15 With ruthless ruin thundering down,
16 And proud Lycurgus' funeral.
17 You turn the rivers, you the sea;
18 You, on far summits, moist with wine,
19 Your Bacchants' tresses harmlessly
20 Do knot with living serpent-twine.
21 You, when the giants, threatening wrack,
22 Were clambering up Jove's citadel,
23 Did hurl overweening Rhoetus back,
24 In tooth and claw a lion fell.
25 Who knew your feats in dance and play
26 Deemed you belike for war's rough game
27 Unmeet: but peace and battle-fray
28 Found you, their centre, still the same.
29 Grim Cerberus wagged his tail to see
30 Your golden horn, nor dreamed of wrong.
31 But gently fawning, followed thee,
32 And licked your feet with triple tongue.
20No vulgar wing, nor weakly plied,
2 Shall bear me through the liquid sky;
3 A two-formed bard, no more to bide
4 Within the range of envy's eye
5 Amid haunts of men. I, all ungraced
6 By gentle blood, I, whom you call
7 Your friend, Maecenas, shall not taste
8 Of death, nor chafe in Lethe's thrall.
9 Even now a rougher skin expands
10 Along my legs: above I change
11 To a white bird; and over my hands
12 And shoulders grows a plumage strange:
13 Fleeter than Icarus, see me float
14 Over Bosporus, singing as I go,
15 And over Gaetulian sands remote,
16 And Hyperborean fields of snow;
17 By Dacian horde, that masks its fear
18 Of Marsic steel, shall I be known,
19 And furthest Scythian: Spain shall hear
20 My warbling, and the banks of Rhone.
21 No dirges for my fancied death;
22 No weak lament, no mournful stave;
23 All clamorous grief were waste of breath,
24 And vain the tribute of a grave.