The Complete Odes and Epodes
Page 15
requires a maturer wine.
Steeped though he is in Socratic
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dialogues, he’s not uncouth, will not neglect you.
It is reported that even Cato’s
old-time morals grew often warm in wine.
You apply a gentle compulsion to wits
that are otherwise dull; you and jesting
Bacchus uncover wise men’s
preoccupations and secret counsels;
you bring back hope to despairing minds;
add spirit and strength to the poor,
who after you tremble neither at the crowns
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of angry kings nor at the soldiery’s weapons.
Bacchus and Venus, if it please
her to come, and the Graces, slow to break
their bond, and burning lamps attend you
till returning Phoebus puts the stars to flight.
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Montium custos
Guardian of hills and groves; Virgin
who, called for three times, attends to young
women in labour and saves them from death;
three-formed Goddess;
yours be the pine that overtops my house:
then as each year passes by may I gladly kill
a young boar practising sidelong thrusts and
offer his blood.
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Caelo supinas
If you lift your upturned palms to the sky
at each new moon, my rustic Phidyle,
and appease the Lares with incense,
fresh fruit and a greedy pig,
then your fecund vines shall not feel
the blighting south wind, nor cornfields
barren mould, nor sweet young stock
hard times in apple-bearing autumn.
For the dedicated victim that grazes now
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on snowy Algidus beneath the ilex and oak
or else grows fat on Alban grass
shall dye from its neck
the hatchets of the priests. But you have
no need for great carnage: you can assuage
your small Gods with rosemary crowns
and delicate myrtle garlands.
If the hands that touch the altar be pure
(though lacking the unction of costly blood),
they can soothe estranged Penates
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with sacred meal and sputtering salt.
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Intactis opulentior
Richer than the intact
Arabian exchequer and the Indies’ store,
you fill our Tuscan land
and the common sea with your building-works:
yet if dire Necessity fix
her adamant nails in your rooftop,
your soul shall not escape
from terror nor your neck from death’s noose.
The Scythian tribes of the plains,
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whose nomad homes are on waggons, and stiff–
necked Getae live better,
for whom unnumbered acres make communal
harvests under Ceres.
Each brave works a year on the land:
his service remitted,
a successor continues by equal rota.
There stepmothers behave
rationally to orphaned daughters,
no women rule by dowry
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and wives do not trust in some sleek adulterer.
The dower of their families is
manliness and chastity which, surely
contracted, avoids other men:
sin is forbidden and its price is death.
Whoever may wish to root out
seditious killings and internecine madness,
if he aspire to be styled
on monuments Father of Cities, oh let him dare
to bridle unbroken licence
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and his fame will shine down through posterity.
Alas, how we hate sound goodness:
yet once it is out of sight, we enviously seek it.
What is the point of complaint
if guilt is not felled by the judge’s sentence?
What help are empty laws
without morals, if no place on earth
(in the burning tropics
or enduring snows of the Arctic marches)
drives out merchants,
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and seasoned sailors can overcome
the stormy seas; if poverty,
deemed a disgrace, commands us to do
and allow what we will,
and abandons arduous Virtue’s path?
Let us bring to the Capitol
(to which applause, approval’s hubbub, calls)
or throw in the nearest sea
if we truly repent of our crimes
our gems and jewels, useless gold,
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the very substance of our gross misfortune.
The roots of unnatural greed
must be excised and excessively tender
minds must be shaped
to austerer studies. No freeborn boy
these days can sit a horse,
and hunting scares him. He is taught instead to play
either with a Greek hoop
or at dice-games banned by feeble laws –
as his father perjures himself
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to defraud his partner and even his guests,
and puts by money
for his worthless heir. His shameful riches
certainly grow – and yet
some little something, some trifle, is always lacking.
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Quo me, Bacche, rapis
Bacchus, where will you carry me
full of you? My spirit renewed, what groves and grottoes
am I driven into? In what ravine
shall I now be heard planning to set among the stars
and in Jove’s council
peerless Caesar’s immortal glory?
I tell of a wonder as yet
untold by other lips. Just as in the mountains
the insomniac Dionysian stands rapt
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at the prospect of Hebrus and snow-gleaming Thrace
and Rhodope trodden
by barbarous feet, just so is it my
pleasure to wonder
at unregarded banks and groves
deserted. O master of the Naiads
and Bacchanalians strong to uproot the princely ash,
I shall utter nothing
insignificant, lowly or not immortal. Sweet the risk,
Lenaean, to follow the God,
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crowning one’s brows with sprouting vine leaves.
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Vixi puellis nuper
In the past I kept myself fit
for girls and campaigned with some glory:
now this wall that guards the left
of sea-born Venus shall bear
my arms and defunctive lyre.
Place here, and here, the burning
torches, the levers and axes
that menaced opposing doors.
O Goddess, who keeps bless’d Cyprus
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and Memphis free from snow, o queen,
with your lifted whip please flick
conceited Chloe just once.
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Impios parrae
May these omens indict the wicked:
a hooting owl, a pregnant bitch, a grey
wolf loping down from Lanuvium,
a whelping vixen.
A snake shall dart across their path
and break their journey by making
the ponies stampede. I am an
augur who favours
the people I care for: for you
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I waken at sunrise the croaking raven
before he returns to the stagnant marsh
to prophesy rain.<
br />
Good luck, my Galatea, may be wherever
you go. Do not forget me. May no wood-
ecker on the left or rambling crow
forbid your going.
But you see the welter in which
Orion, sinking, rages. I know too well
what the black gulf of the Adriatic and
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clear north wind can do.
I would wish on our enemies’ children
and wives the blind thrust of that rising wind,
the roars of the darkling sea, the beaches
vibrating with shock.
So bold Europa entrusted her snowy flanks
to the treacherous bull – and soon turned pale
at the perils of the sea, the deep
alive with monsters.
Lately in the meadows a student of flowers,
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a weaver of garlands due to the Nymphs,
now she saw in the glimmering night nothing
but the stars and waves.
As soon as she landed in Crete, mighty
with its hundred towns, ‘Father!’ she cried,
‘oh name of daughter and duty forsaken!
oh whence and whither
am I come in my frenzy? One death
is too light for a virgin’s shame. Do I lament
a horrid fact, or am I guiltless and does
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some phantom mock me,
that flying vaguely through the ivory gate
brings but a dream? Was it better
to journey amid the long waves, or
to pluck fresh flowers?
If that loathsome bullock were delivered
to my anger, I would try to stab with a sword
and break the horns of the monster
I recently loved.
Shameless, I deserted my household Gods;
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shameless, I keep Orcus waiting. If any God
hear my words, oh let me wander
nude among lions!
Before repulsive wasting can attack
my comely cheeks, before the life-blood
has drained from the tender prey, I will feed my
beauty to tigers!
“Worthless Europa,” I hear my father say,
“why so long about dying? You could hang
yourself on this tree – luckily your sash
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is still at your waist.
Or if the cliffs and deadly sharp rocks
attract you, go ahead, entrust yourself
to the hurrying gale – unless you would rather
be handed over,
a concubine-princess, to card the wool for some
barbarian queen!” ’ Venus stood watching
her plaint with a tricksy smile, and her son,
with his bow unstrung.
When she had gloated enough, ‘Curb
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your tantrums and hot resentment,’ she said,
‘when the detested bull brings you his
horns to be broken.
Know you are wife to invincible Jove.
Stop sobbing, and learn to bear yourself
as befits your destiny: half the world
shall be named for you.’
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Festo quid potius die
What better way to honour
Neptune’s feast-day? Bring out the hidden
Caecuban, Lyde, quick,
let us set a siege against wisdom’s fortress.
You see that noon is past
and yet, as though the fleeting day stood still,
you put off fetching from the pantry
the jar that survives from Bibulus’ year as consul.
Let’s sing by turns: first I
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of Neptune and the Nereids’ sea-green hair:
then take your curving lyre
and respond with Latona; swift Cynthia’s darts;
and as your finale, praise her
who keeps the shining Cyclades, and Cnidos, and visits
Paphos with her harnessed swans:
and Night shall be sung in a congruous hymn.
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Tyrrhena regum progenies
Maecenas, descendant of Etruscan kings, for you
ajar of smooth wine as yet untilted
and roses in bloom and balsam
crushed out for your hair have long stood ready
at my estate. Avoid all hindrance:
do not for ever contemplate
well-watered Tibur, Aefula’s sloping meadows,
the parricide Telegonus’ ridge.
Abandon wearisome plenty, the pile
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that approaches the soaring clouds;
leave wondering at the smoke,
the money, the din of wealthy Rome.
A change is usually pleasant:
a wholesome meal in a poor man’s modest home
with no fine purple fabrics
can smooth the rich man’s troubled brow.
Already Andromeda’s bright father
declares his hidden fire; already Procyon rages,
and the star of Leo raves, as the sun
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brings back the days of drought;
already the shepherd with his listless flock
seeks out the shade, the brook, and shaggy
Silvanus’ thickets; and the silent bank
lacks any wandering breeze.
You worry as to what conditions best befit
the State; concerned for the City, you fear
what the Seres may do next, or Bactra
(once ruled by Cyrus), or the dissident Don.
Wisely the God enwraps in fuliginous night
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the future’s outcome, and laughs
if mortals are anxious beyond
mortality’s bound. Take care to deal equably
with what is present. The rest is borne along
like a river, now gliding peacefully down
within its bed to the Tuscan
sea; now rolling together in one
gouged boulders, uprooted trees, and flocks,
and homes, with echoes resounding back
from the hills and adjacent woods –
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the turbulent flash-flood convulses
quiet streams. A happy life and mastery
over himself shall be his who daily
can say: ‘I have lived: tomorrow the Father
may fill the vault with dark clouds
or brilliant sunlight, but he will not render
the past invalid, will not re-shape
and make undone whatever
the fleeting hour has brought.’