Odes

Horace

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

  • If Phrygian marbles soothe not pain,
  • Nor star-bright purple's costliest wear,
  • Nor vines of true Falernian strain,
  • Nor Achaemenian spices rare,
  • Why with rich gate and pillard range
  • Upbuild new mansions, twice as high,
  • Or why my Sabine vale exchange
  • For more laborious luxury?
  • To suffer hardness with good cheer,
  • In sternest school of warfare bred,
  • Our youth should learn; let steed and spear
  • Make him one day the Parthian's dread;
  • Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life.
  • Methinks I see from rampired town
  • Some battling tyrant's matron wife,
  • Some maiden, look in terror down,—
  • “Ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war!
  • O tempt not the infuriate mood
  • Of that fell lion I see! from far
  • He plunges through a tide of blood!“