ODES.

BOOK I.

O DE S.

BOOK I.

ODE I.

TO MECENAS.

Thou, whose birth illustrious springs
From fair Etruria's ancient kings,
Mæcenas, to whose guardian name
I owe my fortune and my fame;
There are, who round the Olympic goal
Delight the kindling wheel to roll,
And boldly snatch the illustrious prize
Which lifts earth's masters to the skies.
This man, to honors rais'd supreme,
By Rome's inconstant, loud acclaim;
Another, if from Lybia's plain

He stores his private barn with grain ;
A third, who with unceasing toil
Ploughs cheerful his paternal soil;
While in their several wishes blest,
Not all the wealth by kings possest,
Shall tempt, with fearful souls, to brave
The terrors of the foamy wave.

When loud the winds and waters wage Wild war with elemental rage,

The merchant praises the retreat,
The quiet of his rural seat;
Yet, want untutor'd to sustain,
Soon rigs his shatter'd bark again.

No mean delights possess his soul,

With good old wine who crowns his bowl;
Whose early revels are begun,

Ere half the course of day be run,

Now, by some sacred fountain laid,
Now, stretch'd beneath some bowering shade.
Others in tented fields rejoice,

The trumpet-sound, the clarion-voice:
With joy the sounds of war they hear,
Of war, which tender mothers fear.

The sportsman, chill'd by midnight Jove,
Forgets his tender, wedded love,
Whether his faithful hounds pursue,
And hold the bounding hind in view;
Whether the boar, fierce-foaming, foils
The chase, and breaks the spreading toils.
An ivy-wreath, fair learning's prize,
Raises Mæcenas to the skies,
Be mine, amid the breezy grove,
In sacred solitude to rove;

To see the nymphs and satyrs bound,
Light-dancing, thro' the mazy round,
While all the tuneful Sisters join
Their various harmony divine.
But if

you rank me with the choir,
Who tun'd with art the Grecian lyre,
Swift to the noblest heights of fame,
Shall rise thy Poet's deathless name.

ODE II.

TO AUGUSTUS.

ENOUGH of snow, and hail, th' immortal Sire

Hath pour'd tempestuous; whilst his thunders
dire,

With red right arm at his own temples hurl'd,
With fear and horror shook the guilty world,
Lest Pyrrha's age return, with plaintive cries
Who saw the deep with new-born wonders rise;
When to the mountain-summit Proteus drove
His sea-born herd, and where the woodland dove
Late perch'd, his wonted seat, the scaly brood
Entangled hung upon the topmost wood,
And every timorous native of the plain
High-floating swam amid the boundless main.
We saw, push'd backward to his native source,
The yellow Tiber roll his rapid course,
With impious ruin threat'ning Vesta's fane,
And the great monuments of Numa's reign;
With grief and rage while Ilia's bosom glows,
Boastful, for her revenge, his waters rose,
But now, th' uxorious river glides away,
So Jove commands, smooth-winding to the sea:
And yet, less numerous by their parents' crimes,
Our sons shall hear, shall hear to latest times,
Of Roman arms with civil gore embru'd,
Which better had the Persian foe subdu'd.