Odes

Horace

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

  • No guilty lusts the shrine of home defile:
  • Cleansed is the hand without, the heart within:
  • The father's features in his children smile
  • Swift vengeance follows sin.
  • Who fears the Parthian or the Scythian horde,
  • Or the rank growth that German forests yield,
  • While Caesar lives? who trembles at the sword
  • The fierce Iberians wield?
  • In his own hills each labours down the day,
  • Teaching the vine to clasp the widow'd tree:
  • Then to his cups again, where, feasting gay,
  • He hails his god in thee.
  • A household power, adored with prayers and wine,
  • Thou reign'st auspicious o'er his hour of ease:
  • Thus grateful Greece her Castor made divine,
  • And her great Hercules.
  • Ah! be it thine long holydays to give
  • To thy Hesperia! thus, dear chief, we pray
  • At sober sunrise; thus at mellow eve,
  • When ocean hides the day.