Odes

Horace

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

  • Like poison loathes the oil,
  • His arms no longer black and blue with honourable toil,
  • He who erewhile was known
  • For quoit or javelin oft and oft beyond the limit thrown?
  • Why skulks he, as they say
  • Did Thetis' son before the dawn of Ilion's fatal day,
  • For fear the manly dress
  • Should fling him into danger's arms, amid the
  • Lycian press?
  • See, how it stands, one pile of snow,
  • Soracte! 'neath the pressure yield
  • Its groaning woods; the torrents' flow
  • With clear sharp ice is all congeal'd.
  • Heap high the logs, and melt the cold,
  • Good Thaliarch; draw the wine we ask,
  • That mellower vintage, four-year-old,
  • From out the cellar'd Sabine cask.
  • The future trust with Jove; when he
  • Has still'd the warring tempests' roar
  • On the vex'd deep, the cypress-tree