1Yet again you wake the flame
2 That long had slumbered! Spare me, Venus, spare!
3 Trust me, I am not the same
4 As in the reign of Cinara, kind and fair.
5 Cease your softening spells to prove
6 On this old heart, by fifty years made hard,
7 Cruel Mother of sweet Love!
8 Haste, where gay youth solicits your regard.
9 With your purple cygnets fly
10 To Paullus' door, a seasonable guest;
11 There within hold revelry,
12 There light your flame in that congenial breast.
13 He, with birth and beauty graced,
14 The trembling client's champion, never tongue-tied,
15 Master of each manly taste,
16 Shall bear your conquering banners far and wide.
17 Let him smile in triumph gay,
18 True heart, victorious over lavish hand,
19 By the Alban lake that day
20 Beneath citron roof all marble shall you stand:
21 Incense there and fragrant spice
22 With odorous fumes your nostrils shall salute;
23 Blended notes your ear entice,
24 The lyre, the pipe, the Berecyntine flute:
25 Graceful youths and maidens bright
26 Shall twice a day your tuneful praise resound,
27 While their feet, so fair and white,
28 In Salian measure three times beat the ground.
29 I can relish love no more,
30 Nor flattering hopes that tell me hearts are true,
31 Nor the revel's loud uproar,
32 Nor fresh-wreathed flowerets, bathed in vernal dew.
33 Ah! but why, my Ligurine,
34 Steal trickling tear-drops down my wasted cheek?
35 Why halts this tongue of mine,
36 So eloquent once, so faltering now and weak?
37 Now I hold you in my chain,
38 And clasp you close, all in a nightly dream;
39 Now, still dreaming, over the plain
40 I chase you; now, ah cruel! down the stream.
2Who gladly at Pindar's flight would aim,
2 On waxen wings, Iulus, he
3 Soars heavenward, doomed to give his name
4 To some new sea.
5 Pindar, like torrent from the steep
6 Which, swollen with rain, its banks overflows,
7 With mouth unfathomably deep,
8 Foams, thunders, glows,
9 All worthy of Apollo's bay,
10 Whether in dithyrambic roll
11 Pouring new words he burst away
12 Beyond control,
13 Or gods and god-born heroes tell,
14 Whose arm with righteous death could tame
15 Grim Centaurs, tame Chimaeras fell,
16 Out-breathing flame,
17 Or bid the boxer or the steed
18 In deathless pride of victory live,
19 And dower them with a nobler meed
20 Than sculptors give,
21 Or mourn the bridegroom early torn
22 From his young bride, and set on high
23 Strength, courage, virtue's golden morn,
24 Too good to die.
25 Antonius! yes, the winds blow free,
26 When Dirce's swan ascends the skies,
27 To waft him. I, like Matine bee,
28 In act and guise,
29 That culls its sweets through toilsome hours,
30 Am roaming Tibur's banks along,
31 And fashioning with puny powers
32 A laboured song.
33 Your Muse shall sing in loftier strain
34 How Caesar climbs the sacred height,
35 The fierce Sygambrians in his train,
36 With laurel dight,
37 Than whom the Fates never gave mankind
38 A richer treasure or more dear,
39 Nor shall, though earth again should find
40 The golden year.
41 Your Muse shall tell of public sports,
42 And holyday, and votive feast,
43 For Caesar's sake, and brawling courts
44 Where strife has ceased.
45 Then, if my voice can anything avail,
46 Grateful for him our prayers have won,
47 My song shall echo, “Hail, all hail,
48 Auspicious Sun!”
49 There as you move, “Ho! Triumph, ho!
50 Great Triumph!” once and yet again
51 All Rome shall cry, and spices strow
52 Before your train.
53 Ten bulls, ten cattle, your debt discharge:
54 A calf new-weaned from parent cow,
55 Battening on pastures rich and large,
56 Shall quit my vow.
57 Like moon just dawning on the night
58 The crescent honours of his head;
59 One dapple spot of snowy white,
60 The rest all red.
3He whom you, Melpomene,
2 Have welcomed with your smile, in life arriving,
3 Never by boxer's skill shall be
4 Renowned abroad, for Isthmian mastery striving;
5 Him shall never fiery steed
6 Draw in Achaean car a conqueror seated;
7 Him shall never martial deed
8 Show, crowned with bay, after proud kings defeated,
9 Climbing Capitolian steep:
10 But the cool streams that make green Tibur flourish,
11 And the tangled forest deep,
12 On soft Aeolian airs his fame shall nourish.
13 Rome, of cities first and best,
14 Deigns by her sons' according voice to hail me
15 Fellow-bard of poets blest,
16 And faint and fainter envy's growls assail me.
17 Goddess, whose Pierian art
18 The lyre's sweet sounds can modulate and measure,
19 Who to dumb fish can impart
20 The music of the swan, if such your pleasure:
21 O, it is all of your dear grace
22 That every finger points me out in going
23 Lyrist of the Roman race;
24 Breath, power to charm, if mine, are your bestowing!
4Even as the lightning's minister,
2 Whom Jove over all the feathered breed
3 Made sovereign, having proved him sure
4 Formerly on auburn Ganymede;
5 Stirred by warm youth and inborn power,
6 He quits the nest with timorous wing,
7 For winter's storms have ceased to lower,
8 And zephyrs of returuing spring
9 Tempt him to launch on unknown skies
10 Next on the fold he stoops downright;
11 Last on resisting serpents flies,
12 Thirsty for foray and for flight:
13 As tender kidling on the grass
14 Espies, uplooking from her food,
15 A lion's whelp, and knows, alas!
16 Those new-set teeth shall drink her blood:
17 So looked the Raetian mountaineers
18 On Drusus:—from which in every field
19 They learned through immemorial years
20 The Amazonian axe to wield,
21 I ask not now: not all of truth
22 We seekers find: enough to know
23 The wisdom of the princely youth
24 Has taught our once victorious foe
25 What prowess dwells in boyish hearts
26 Reared in the shrine of a pure home,
27 What strength Augustus' love imparts
28 To Nero's seed, the hope of Rome.
29 Good sons and brave good sires approve:
30 Strong bullocks, fiery colts, attest
31 Their fathers' worth, nor weakling dove
32 Is hatched in savage eagle's nest.
33 But care draws forth the power within,
34 And cultured minds are strong for good:
35 Let manners fail, the plague of sin
36 Taints even the course of gentle blood.
37 How great your debt to Nero's race,
38 O Rome, let red Metaurus say,
39 Slain Hasdrubal, and victory's grace
40 First granted on that glorious day
41 Which chased the clouds, and showed the sun,
42 When Hannibal over Italy
43 Ran, as swift flames over pine-woods run,
44 Or Eurus over Sicilia's sea.
45 Henceforth, by fortune aiding toil,
46 Rome's prowess grew: her fanes, laid waste
47 By Punic sacrilege and spoil,
48 Saw at length their gods replaced.
49 Then the false Libyan owned his doom:—
50 “Weak deer, the wolves' predestined prey,
51 Blindly we rush on foes, from whom
52 It were triumph won to steal away.
53 That race which, strong from Ilion's fires,
54 Its gods, on Tuscan waters tost,
55 Its sons, its venerable sires,
56 Bore to Ausonia's citied coast;
57 That race, like oak by axes shorn
58 On Algidus with dark leaves rife,
59 Laughs carnage, havoc, all to scorn,
60 And draws new spirit from the knife.
61 Not the lopped Hydra tasked so sore
62 Alcides, chafing at the foil:
63 No pest so fell was born of yore
64 From Colchian or from Theban soil.
65 Plunged in the deep, it mounts to sight
66 More splendid: grappled, it will quell
67 Unbroken powers, and fight a fight
68 Whose story widowed wives shall tell.
69 No heralds shall my deeds proclaim
70 To Carthage now: lost, lost is all:
71 A nation's hope, a nation's name,
72 They died with dying Hasdrubal.”
73 What will not Claudian hands achieve?
74 Jove's favour is their guiding star,
75 And watchful potencies unweave
76 For them the tangled paths of war.
5Best guardian of Rome's people, dearest boon
2 Of a kind Heaven, you linger all too long:
3 You told your senate to look to meet you soon:
4 Do not your promise wrong.
5 Restore, dear chief, the light you take away:
6 Ah! when, like spring, that gracious mien of thine
7 Dawns on your Rome, more gently glides the day,
8 And suns serener shine.
9 See her whose darling child a long year past
10 Has dwelt beyond the wild Carpathian foam;
11 That long year over, the envious southern blast
12 Still bars him from his home:
13 Weeping and praying to the shore she clings,
14 Nor ever from there her straining eyesight turns:
15 So, smit by loyal passion's restless stings,
16 Rome for her Caesar yearns.
17 In safety range the cattle over the mead:
18 Sweet Peace, soft Plenty, swell the golden grain:
19 Over unvexed seas the sailors blithely speed:
20 Fair Honour shrinks from stain:
21 No guilty lusts the shrine of home defile:
22 Cleansed is the hand without, the heart within:
23 The father's features in his children smile
24 Swift vengeance follows sin.
25 Who fears the Parthian or the Scythian horde,
26 Or the rank growth that German forests yield,
27 While Caesar lives? who trembles at the sword
28 The fierce Iberians wield?
29 In his own hills each labours down the day,
30 Teaching the vine to clasp the widowed tree:
31 Then to his cups again, where, feasting gay,
32 He hails his god in thee.
33 A household power, adored with prayers and wine,
34 You reign auspicious over his hour of ease:
35 Thus grateful Greece her Castor made divine,
36 And her great Hercules.
37 Ah! be it yours long holydays to give
38 To your Hesperia! thus, dear chief, we pray
39 At sober sunrise; thus at mellow eve,
40 When ocean hides the day.
6You who did make your vengeful might
2 To Niobe and Tityos known,
3 And Peleus' son, when Troy's tall height
4 Was near his own,
5 Victorious else, for you no peer,
6 Though, strong in his sea-parent's power,
7 He shook with that tremendous spear
8 The Dardan tower.
9 He, like a pine by axes sped,
10 Or cypress swayed by angry gust,
11 Fell ruining, and laid his head
12 In Trojan dust.
13 Not his to lie in covert pent
14 Of the false steed, and sudden fall
15 On Priam's ill-starred merriment
16 In bower and hail:
17 His ruthless arm in broad bare day
18 The infant from the breast had torn,
19 No, given to flame, ah, well a way!
20 The babe unborn:
21 But, won by Venus' voice and thine,
22 Relenting Jove Aeneas willed
23 With other omens more benign
24 New walls to build.
25 Sweet tuner of the Grecian lyre,
26 Whose locks are laved in Xanthus' dews,
27 Blooming Agyieus! help, inspire
28 My Daunian Muse!
29 It is Phoebus, Phoebus gifts my tongue
30 With minstrel art and minstrel fires:
31 Come, noble youths and maidens sprung
32 From noble sires,
33 Blest in your Dian's guardian smile,
34 Whose shafts the flying silvans stay,
35 Come, foot the Lesbian measure, while
36 The lyre I play:
37 Sing of Latona's glorious boy,
38 Sing of night's queen with crescent horn,
39 Who wings the fleeting months with joy,
40 And swells the corn.
41 And happy brides shall say, “It was mine,
42 When years the cyclic season brought,
43 To chant the festal hymn divine
44 By Horace taught.”
7The snow is fled: the trees their leaves put on,
2 The fields their green:
3 Earth owns the change, and rivers lessening run
4 Their banks between.
5 Naked the Nymphs and Graces in the meads
6 The dance essay:
7 “No 'scaping death” proclaims the year, that speeds
8 This sweet spring day.
9 Frosts yield to zephyrs; Summer drives out Spring,
10 To vanish, when
11 Rich Autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,—
12 Winter again!
13 Yet the swift moons repair Heaven's detriment:
14 We, soon as thrust
15 Where good Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,
16 What are we? dust.
17 Can Hope assure you one more day to live
18 From powers above?
19 You rescue from your heir whatever you give
20 The self you love.
21 When life is over, and Minos has rehearsed
22 The grand last doom,
23 Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst
24 Torquatus' tomb.
25 Not Dian's self can chaste Hippolytus
26 To life recall,
27 Nor Theseus free his loved Pirithous
28 From Lethe's thrall.
8Ah Censorinus! to my comrades true
2 Rich cups, rare bronzes, gladly would I send:
3 Choice tripods from Olympia on each friend
4 Would I confer, choicer on none than you,
5 Had but my fate such gems of art bestowed
6 As cunning Scopas or Parrhasius wrought,
7 This with the brush, that with the chisel taught
8 To image now a mortal, now a god.
9 But these are not my riches: your desire
10 Such luxury craves not, and your means disdain:
11 A poet's strain you love; a poet's strain
12 Accept, and learn the value of the lyre.
13 Not public gravings on a marble base,
14 From which comes a second life to men of might
15 Even in the tomb: not Hannibal's swift flight,
16 Nor those fierce threats flung back into his face,
17 Not impious Carthage in its last red blaze,
18 In clearer light sets forth his spotless fame,
19 Who from crushed Afric took away—a name,
20 Than rude Calabria's tributary lays.
21 Let silence hide the good your hand has wrought,
22 Farewell, reward! Had blank oblivion's power
23 Dimmed the bright deeds of Romulus, at this hour,
24 Despite his sire and mother, he were nought.
25 Thus Aeacus has 'scaped the Stygian wave,
26 By grace of poets and their silver tongue,
27 Henceforth to live the happy isles among.
28 No, trust the Muse: she opes the good man's grave,
29 And lifts him to the gods. So Hercules,
30 His labours over, sits at the board of Jove:
31 So Tyndareus' offspring shine as stars above,
32 Saving lorn vessels from the yawning seas:
33 So Bacchus, with the vine-wreath round his hair,
34 Gives prosperous issue to his votary's prayer.
9Think not those strains can ever expire,
2 Which, cradled amid the echoing roar
3 Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre
4 I sing with arts unknown before.
5 Though Homer fill the foremost throne,
6 Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,
7 And fierce Alcaeus holds his own
8 With Pindar and Simonides.
9 The songs of Teos are not mute,
10 And Sappho's love is breathing still:
11 She told her secret to the lute,
12 And yet its chords with passion thrill.
13 Not Sparta's queen alone was fired
14 By broidered robe and braided tress,
15 And all the splendours that attired
16 Her lover's guilty loveliness:
17 Not only Teucer to the field
18 His arrows brought, nor Ilion
19 Beneath a single conqueror reeled:
20 Not Crete's majestic lord alone,
21 Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown:
22 Not Hector first for child and wife,
23 Or brave Deiphobus, laid down
24 The burden of a manly life.
25 Before Atrides men were brave:
26 But ah! oblivion, dark and long,
27 Has locked them in a tearless grave,
28 For lack of consecrating song.
29 Between worth and baseness, lapped in death,
30 What difference? You shall never be dumb,
31 While strains of mine have voice and breath:
32 The dull neglect of days to come
33 Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
34 No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours,
35 Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
36 When fortune smiles, and when she lowers:
37 To greed and rapine still severe,
38 Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
39 A consul, not of one brief year,
40 But often as on the judgment-seat
41 You bend the expedient to the right,
42 Turn haughty eyes from bribes away,
43 Or bear your banners through the fight,
44 Scattering the foeman's firm array.
45 The lord of boundless revenues,
46 Salute not him as happy: no,
47 Call him the happy, who can use
48 The bounty that the gods bestow,
49 Can bear the load of poverty,
50 And tremble not at death, but sin:
51 No recreant he when called to die
52 In cause of country or of kin.
10O 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?
11Here is a cask of Alban, more
2 Than nine years old: here grows for you
3 Green parsley, Phyllis, and good store
4 Of ivy too
5 (Wreathed ivy suits your hair, you know):
6 The plate shines bright: the altar, strewed
7 With vervain, hungers for the flow
8 Of lambkin's blood.
9 There's stir among the serving folk;
10 They bustle, bustle, boy and girl;
11 The flickering flames send up the smoke
12 In many a curl.
13 But why, you ask, this special cheer?
14 We celebrate the feast of Ides,
15 Which April's month, to Venus dear,
16 In two divides.
17 O, it is a day for reverence,
18 Even my own birthday scarce so dear,
19 For my Maecenas counts from thence
20 Each added year.
21 It is Telephus that youed bewitch:
22 But he is of a high degree;
23 Bound to a lady fair and rich,
24 He is not free.
25 O think of Phaethon half burned,
26 And moderate your passion's greed:
27 Think how Bellerophon was spurned
28 By his winged steed.
29 So learn to look for partners meet,
30 Shun lofty things, nor raise your aims
31 Above your fortune. Come then, sweet,
32 My last of flames
33 (For never shall another fair
34 Enslave me), learn a tune, to sing
35 With that dear voice: to music care
36 Shall yield its sting.
12The gales of Thrace, that hush the unquiet sea,
2 Spring's comrades, on the bellying canvas blow:
3 Clogged earth and brawling streams alike are free
4 From winter's weight of snow.
5 Wailing her Itys in that sad, sad strain,
6 Builds the poor bird, reproach to after time
7 Of Cecrops' house, for bloody vengeance ta'en
8 On foul barbaric crime.
9 The keepers of fat lambkins chant their loves
10 To silvan reeds, all in the grassy lea,
11 And pleasure Him who tends the flocks and groves
12 Of dark-leaved Arcady.
13 It is a thirsty season, Virgil mine:
14 But would you taste the grape's Calenian juice,
15 Client of noble youths, to earn your wine
16 Some nard you must produce.
17 A tiny box of nard shall bring to light
18 The cask that in Sulpician cellar lies:
19 O, it can give new hopes, so fresh and bright,
20 And gladden gloomy eyes.
21 You take the bait? then come without delay
22 And bring your ware: be sure, it is not my plan
23 To let you drain my liquor and not pay,
24 As might some wealthy man.
25 Come, quit those covetous thoughts, those knitted brows,
26 Think on the last black embers, while you may,
27 And be for once unwise. When time allows,
28 It is sweet the fool to play.
13The gods have heard, the gods have heard my prayer;
2 Yes, Lyce! you are growing old, and still
3 You struggle to look fair;
4 You drink, and dance, and trill
5 Your songs to youthful Love, in accents weak
6 With wine, and age, and passion. Youthful Love!
7 He dwells in Chia's cheek,
8 And hears her harp-strings move.
9 Rude boy, he flies like lightning over the heath
10 Past withered trees like you; you're wrinkled now;
11 The white has left your teeth
12 And settled on your brow.
13 Your Coan silks, your jewels bright as stars,
14 Ah no! they bring not back the days of old,
15 In public calendars
16 By flying Time enrolled.
17 Where now that beauty? where those movements? where
18 That colour? what of her, of her is left,
19 Who, breathing Love's own air,
20 Me of myself bereft,
21 Who reigned in Cinara's stead, a fair, fair face,
22 Queen of sweet arts? but Fate to Cinara gave
23 A life of little space;
24 And now she cheats the grave
25 Of Lyce, spared to raven's length of days,
26 That youth may see, with laughter and disgust,
27 A fire-brand, once ablaze,
28 Now smouldering in grey dust.
14What honours can a grateful Rome,
2 A grateful senate, Caesar, give
3 To make your worth through days to come
4 Emblazoned on our records live,
5 Mightiest of chieftains whomsoever
6 The sun beholds from heaven on high?
7 They know you now, your strength in war,
8 Those unsubdued Vindelici.
9 Yours was the sword that Drusus drew,
10 When on the Breunian hordes he fell,
11 And stormed the fierce Genaunian crew
12 Even in their Alpine citadel,
13 And paid them back their debt twice told
14 It was then the elder Nero came
15 To conflict, and in ruin rolled
16 Stout Raetian kernes of giant frame.
17 O, it was a gallant sight to see
18 The shocks that beat upon the brave
19 Who chose to perish and be free!
20 As south winds scourge the rebel wave
21 When through rent clouds the Pleiads weep,
22 So keen his force to smite, and smite
23 The foe, or make his charger leap
24 Through the red furnace of the fight.
25 Thus Daunia's ancient river fares,
26 Proud Aufidus, with bull-like horn,
27 When swoln with choler he prepares
28 A deluge for the fields of corn.
29 So Claudius charged and overthrew
30 The grim barbarian's mail-clad host,
31 The foremost and the hindmost slew,
32 And conquered all, and nothing lost.
33 The force, the forethought, were your own,
34 Your own the gods. The selfsame day
35 When, port and palace open thrown,
36 Low at your footstool Egypt lay,
37 That selfsame day, three lustres gone,
38 Another victory to your hand
39 Was given; another field was won
40 By grace of Caesar's high command.
41 You Spanish tribes, unused to yield,
42 Mede, Indian, Scyth that knows no home,
43 Acknowledge, sword at once and shield
44 Of Italy and queenly Rome.
45 Ister to you, and Tanais fleet,
46 And Nile that will not tell his birth,
47 To you the monstrous seas that beat
48 On Britain's coast, the end of earth,
49 To you the proud Iberians bow,
50 And Gauls, that scorn from death to flee;
51 The fierce Sygambrian bends his brow,
52 And drops his arms to worship thee.
15Of battles fought I gladly had told,
2 And conquered towns, when Phoebus smote
3 His harp-string: “Sooth, it were over-bold.
4 To tempt wide seas in that frail boat.”
5 Your age, great Caesar, has restored
6 To squalid fields the plenteous grain,
7 Given back to Rome's almighty Lord
8 Our standards, torn from Parthian fane,
9 Has closed Quirinian Janus' gate,
10 Wild passion's erring walk controlled,
11 Healed the foul plague-spot of the state,
12 And brought again the life of old,
13 Life, by whose healthful power increased
14 The glorious name of Latium spread
15 To where the sun illumes the east
16 From where he seeks his western bed.
17 While Caesar rules, no civil strife
18 Shall break our rest, nor violence rude,
19 Nor rage, that whets the slaughtering knife
20 And plunges wretched towns in feud.
21 The sons of Danube shall not scorn
22 The Julian edicts; no, nor they
23 By Tanais' distant river horn,
24 Nor Persia, Scythia, or Cathay.
25 And we on feast and working-tide,
26 While Bacchus' bounties freely flow,
27 Our wives and children at our side,
28 First paying Heaven the prayers we owe,
29 Shall sing of chiefs whose deeds are done,
30 As did our sires, to flute or shell,
31 And Troy, Anchises, and the son
32 Of Venus on our tongues shall dwell.