Odes

Horace

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

  • Theirs are dowries not of gold,
  • Their parents' worth, their own pure chastity,
  • True to one, to others cold;
  • They dare not sin, or, if they dare, they die.
  • O, whoe'er has heart and head
  • To stay our plague of blood, our civic brawls,
  • Would he that his name be read
  • “Father of Rome” on lofty pedestals,
  • Let him chain this lawless will,
  • And be our children's hero! cursed spite!
  • Living worth we envy still,
  • Then seek it with strain'd eyes, when snatch'd from sight.
  • What can sad laments avail
  • Unless sharp justice kill the taint of sin?
  • What can laws, that needs must fail
  • Shorn of the aid of manners form'd within,
  • If the merchant turns not back
  • From the fierce heats that round the tropic glow,
  • Turns not from the regions black
  • With northern winds, and hard with frozen snow;