ODE XIII.

TO THE TREE BY WHOSE FALL HIS LIFE WAS ENDANGERED.

WHATE'ER his station in the land,
In evil hour he planted thee,
And with a sacrilegious hand

He nursed, and trained thee up to be
The bane of his succeeding race,
And of our hamlet the disgrace.

He strangled, ay, and with a zest,
His very father, and at dead
Of night stole in upon his guest,
And stabb'd him sleeping in his bed;
Brew'd Colchian poisons in his time,
And practised every sort of crime.

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,
Who ne'er designed thee any harm,
Here on my own, my favourite farm.

No mortal due provision makes
'Gainst ills which any hour may fall;
The Carthaginian sailor quakes
To think of a Levantine squall,
But feels no terror for the fate,
That elsewhere may his bark await.

Our soldiers dread the arrows sped
By Parthians shooting as they flee;
And in their turn the Parthians dread
The chains and keeps of Italy;
But death will tear, as now it tears,
Whole nations down at unawares.

How nearly in her realms of gloom
I dusky Proserpine had seen,
Seen Eacus dispensing doom,
And the Elysian fields serene,
Heard Sappho to her lute complain
Of unrequited passion's pain;

Heard thee, too, O Alcæus, tell,

Striking the while thy golden lyre,
With fuller note and statelier swell,
The sorrows and disasters dire
Of warfare and the ocean deep,
And those that far in exile weep.

While shades round either singer throng,
And the deserved tribute pay
Of sacred silence to their song,

Yet chiefly crowd to hear the lay
Of battles old to story known,
And haughty tyrants overthrown.

What wonder they, their ears to feast,

Should thickly throng, when by these lays
Entranced, the hundred-headed beast
Drops his black ears in sweet amaze,
And even the snakes are charmed, as they
Among the Furies' tresses play.

Nay even Prometheus, and the sire
Of Pelops, cheated of their pains,
Forget awhile their doom of ire

In listening to the wondrous strains;
Nor doth Orion longer care
To hunt the lynx or lion there.

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,
Ay, all that live by bread,

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
Meandering slow, and see

The accursed Danaids moil,
And that dread stone recoil,

Sad Sisyphus is doom'd to upheave eternally.

Land, home, and winsome wife must all be left;
And cypresses abhorr'd,

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,
Will from the farmer's ploughshare take,
Soon ponds be seen on every hand
More spacious than the Lucrine lake.

Soon the unwedded plane displace
The vine-wreathed elm; and violet bed
And myrtle bush, and all the race

Of scented shrubs their fragrance shed,

Where fertile olive thickets made
Their owner rich in days of old;
And laurels with thick-woven shade
At bay the scorching sunbeams hold.

It was not so when Romulus

Our greatness fostered in its prime,
Nor did our great forefathers thus,
In unshorn Cato's simple time.

Man's private fortunes then were low,
The public income great; in these
Good times no long drawn portico
Caught for its lord the northern breeze.