Odes

Horace

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

Not Sparta's queen alone was fired

By broider'd robe and braided tress,

And all the splendours that attired

Her lover's guilty loveliness:

Not only Teucer to the field

His arrows brought, nor Ilion

Beneath a single conqueror reel'd:

Not Crete's majestic lord alone,

Or Sthenelus, earn'd the Muses' crown:

Not Hector first for child and wife,

Or brave Deiphobus, laid down

The burden of a manly life.

Before Atrides men were brave:

But ah! oblivion, dark and long,

Has lock'd them in a tearless grave,

For lack of consecrating song.

'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,

What difference? You shall ne'er be dumb,

While strains of mine have voice and breath:

The dull neglect of days to come