ODE XIII. TO THE TREE BY WHOSE FALL HIS LIFE WAS ENDANGERED. WHATE'ER his station in the land, He nursed, and trained thee up to be He strangled, ay, and with a zest, All this he must have done I'm sure, or could -the wretch, that stuck thee down, Thou miserable stump of wood, To topple on thy master's crown, No mortal due provision makes Our soldiers dread the arrows sped How nearly in her realms of gloom Heard thee, too, O Alcæus, tell, Striking the while thy golden lyre, While shades round either singer throng, Yet chiefly crowd to hear the lay What wonder they, their ears to feast, Should thickly throng, when by these lays Nay even Prometheus, and the sire In listening to the wondrous strains; ODE XIV. TO POSTHUMUS. Ан, Posthumus, the years, the fleeting years Still onwards, onwards glide; Nor mortal virtue may Time's wrinkling fingers stay, Nor Age's sure advance, nor Death's all-conquering stride. Hope not by daily hecatombs of bulls From Pluto to redeem Thy life, who holds thrice vast Geryon fetter'd fast, And Tityus, by the waves of yonder rueful stream. Sad stream, we all are doom'd one day to cross, Whate'er our lot may be, Great lords of high degree, Alike with peasant churls, who scantily are fed. In vain shall we war's bloody conflict shun, And the hoarse scudding gale Of Adriatic seas, Or fly the southern breeze, That through the Autumn hours wafts pestilence and bale. For all must view Cocytus' pitchy tide The accursed Danaids moil, Sad Sisyphus is doom'd to upheave eternally. Land, home, and winsome wife must all be left; Alone of all the trees That now your fancy please, Shall shade the dust of him, who was their sometime lord. Then, too, your long imprison'd Caecuban A worthier heir shall drain, And with a lordlier wine, Than at the feasts divine Of pontiffs flows, your floor in wassailry shall stain. ODE XV. ON THE PREVAILING LUXURY. SOON regal piles each rood of land, Soon the unwedded plane displace Of scented shrubs their fragrance shed, Where fertile olive thickets made It was not so when Romulus Our greatness fostered in its prime, Man's private fortunes then were low, |