Odes

Horace

Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. Conington, John, translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.

  • Why blush to let our tears unmeasured fall
  • For one so dear? Begin the mournful stave,
  • Melpomene, to whom the sire of all
  • Sweet voice with music gave.
  • And sleeps he then the heavy sleep of death,
  • Quintilius? Piety, twin sister dear
  • Of Justice! naked Truth! unsullied Faith!
  • When will ye find his peer?
  • By many a good man wept, Quintilius dies;
  • By none than you, my Virgil, trulier wept:
  • Devout in vain, you chide the faithless skies,
  • Asking your loan ill-kept.
  • No, though more suasive than the bard of Thrace
  • You swept the lyre that trees were fain to hear,
  • Ne'er should the blood revisit his pale face
  • Whom once with wand severe
  • Mercury has folded with the sons of night,
  • Untaught to prayer Fate's prison to unseal.
  • Ah, heavy grief! but patience makes more light
  • What sorrow may not heal.