The Works of Horace Part 10

I lately lived a proper person for girls, and campaigned it not without honor; but now this wall, which guards the left side of [the statue] of sea-born Venus, shall have my arms and my lyre discharged from warfare.

Here, here, deposit the shining flambeaux, and the wrenching irons, and the bows, that threatened the resisting doors. O thou G.o.ddess, who possessest the blissful Cyprus, and Memphis free from Sithonian snow, O queen, give the haughty Chloe one cut with your high-raised lash.

ODE XXVII.

TO GALATEA, UPON HER GOING TO SEA.

Let the omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant b.i.t.c.h, or a tawny wolf running down from the Lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the horses. What shall I, a provident augur, fear? I will invoke from the east, with my prayers, the raven forboding by his croaking, before the bird which presages impending showers, revisits the stagnant pools.

Mayest thou be happy, O Galatea, wheresoever thou choosest to reside, and live mindful of me and neither the unlucky pye nor the vagrant crow forbids your going on. But you see, with what an uproar the p.r.o.ne Orion hastens on: I know what the dark bay of the Adriatic is, and in what manner Iapyx, [seemingly] serene, is guilty. Let the wives and children of our enemies feel the blind tumults of the rising south, and the roaring of the blackened sea, and the sh.o.r.es trembling with its lash.

Thus too Europa trusted her fair side to the deceitful bull, and bold as she was, turned pale at the sea abounding with monsters, and the cheat now become manifest. She, who lately in the meadows was busied about flowers, and a composer of the chaplet meet for nymphs, saw nothing in the dusky night put stars and water. Who as soon as she arrived at Crete, powerful with its hundred cities, cried out, overcome with rage, "O father, name abandoned by thy daughter! O my duty! Whence, whither am I come? One death is too little for virgins' crime. Am I awake, while I deplore my base offense; or does some vain phantom, which, escaping from the ivory gate, brings on a dream, impose upon me, still free from guilt. Was it better to travel over the tedious waves, or to gather the fresh flowers? If any one now would deliver up to me in my anger this infamous bull, I would do my utmost to tear him to pieces with steel, and break off the horns of the monster, lately so much beloved.

Abandoned I have left my father's house, abandoned I procrastinate my doom. O if any of the G.o.ds hear this, I wish I may wander naked among lions: before foul decay seizes my comely cheeks, and moisture leaves this tender prey, I desire, in all my beauty, to be the food of tigers."

"Base Europa," thy absent father urges, "why do you hesitate to die? you may strangle your neck suspended from this ash, with your girdle that has commodiously attended you. Or if a precipice, and the rocks that are edged with death, please you, come on, commit yourself to the rapid storm; unless you, that are of blood-royal, had rather card your mistress's wool, and be given up as a concubine to some barbarian dame."

As she complained, the treacherously-smiling Venus, and her son, with his bow relaxed, drew near. Presently, when she had sufficiently rallied her, "Refrain (she cried) from your rage and pa.s.sionate chidings, since this detested bull shall surrender his horns to be torn in pieces by you. Are you ignorant, that you are the wife of the invincible Jove?

Cease your sobbing; learn duly to support your distinguished good fortune. A division of the world shall bear your name."

ODE XXVIII.

TO LYDE.

What can I do better on the festal day of Neptune? Quickly produce, Lyde, the h.o.a.rded Caecuban, and make an attack upon wisdom, ever on her guard. You perceive the noontide is on its decline; and yet, as if the fleeting day stood still, you delay to bring out of the store-house the loitering cask, [that bears its date] from the consul Bibulus. We will sing by turns, Neptune, and the green locks of the Nereids; you, shall chant, on your wreathed lyre, Latona and the darts of the nimble Cynthia; at the conclusion of your song, she also [shall be celebrated], who with her yoked swans visits Gnidos, and the shining Cyclades, and Paphos: the night also shall be celebrated in a suitable lay.

ODE XXIX.

TO MAECENAS.

O Maecenas, thou progeny of Tuscan kings, there has been a long while for you in my house some mellow wine in an unbroached hogshead, with rose-flowers and expressed essence for your hair. Disengage yourself from anything that may r.e.t.a.r.d you, nor contemplate the ever marshy Tibur, and the sloping fields of Aesula, and the hills of Telegonus the parricide. Leave abundance, which is the source of daintiness, and yon pile of buildings approaching near the lofty clouds: cease to admire the smoke, and opulence, and noise of flourishing Rome. A change is frequently agreeable to the rich, and a cleanly meal in the little cottage of the poor has smoothed an anxious brow without carpets or purple. Now the bright father of Andromeda displays his hidden fire; now Procyon rages, and the constellation of the ravening Lion, as the sun brings round the thirsty season. Now the weary shepherd with his languid flock seeks the shade, and the river, and the thickets of rough Sylva.n.u.s; and the silent bank is free from the wandering winds. You regard what const.i.tution may suit the state, and are in an anxious dread for Rome, what preparations the Seres and the Bactrians subject to Cyrus, and the factious Tanais are making. A wise deity shrouds in obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that which is present. What remains goes on in the manner of the river, at one time calmly gliding in the middle of its channel to the Tuscan Sea, at another, rolling along corroded stones, and stumps of trees, forced away, and cattle, and houses, not without the noise of mountains and neighboring woods, when the merciless deluge enrages the peaceful waters. That man is master of himself and shall live happy, who has it in his power to say, "I have lived to-day: to-morrow let the Sire invest the heaven, either with a black cloud, or with clear sunshine; nevertheless, he shall not render ineffectual what is past, nor undo or annihilate what the fleeting hour has once carried off. Fortune, happy in the execution of her cruel office, and persisting to play her insolent game, changes uncertain honors, indulgent now to me, by and by to another. I praise her, while she abides by me. If she moves her fleet wings, I resign what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my virtue, and court honest poverty without a portion. It is no business of mine, if the mast groan with the African storms, to have recourse to piteous prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my Cyprian and Syrian merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. Then the gale and the twin Pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff with two oars, through the tumultuous Aegean Sea."

ODE x.x.x.

ON HIS OWN WORKS.

I have completed a monument more lasting than bra.s.s, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. I shall not wholly die; but a great part of me shall escape Libitina. I shall continualy be renewed in the praises of posterity, as long as the priest shall ascend the Capitol with the silent [vestal] virgin. Where the rapid Aufidus shall murmur, and where Daunus, poorly supplied with water, ruled over a rustic people, I, exalted from a low degree, shall be acknowledged as having originally adapted the Aeolic verse to Italian measures.

Melpomene, a.s.sume that pride which your merits have acquired, and willingly crown my hair with the Delphic laurel.

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 n.o.ble 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.

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 gla.s.sy 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 G.o.ds, and kings, the offspring of the G.o.ds, 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed [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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds. Thee ten bulls and as many heifers shall absolve; me, a tender steerling, that, having left his dam, thrives in s.p.a.cious 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.

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 sh.e.l.l! 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 pa.s.sengers; that I breathe, and give pleasure (if I give pleasure), is yours.

ODE IV

THE PRAISE OF DRUSUS.