Odes

Horace

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

  • Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
  • No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours,
  • Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
  • When fortune smiles, and when she lowers:
  • To greed and rapine still severe,
  • Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
  • A consul, not of one brief year,
  • But oft as on the judgment-seat
  • You bend the expedient to the right,
  • Turn haughty eyes from bribes away,
  • Or bear your banners through the fight,
  • Scattering the foeman's firm array.
  • The lord of boundless revenues,
  • Salute not him as happy: no,
  • Call him the happy, who can use
  • The bounty that the gods bestow,
  • Can bear the load of poverty,
  • And tremble not at death, but sin:
  • No recreant he when called to die
  • In cause of country or of kin.