Odes

Horace

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

And fierce Alcaeus holds his own

With Pindar and Simonides.

The songs of Teos are not mute,

And Sappho's love is breathing still:

She told her secret to the lute,

And yet its chords with passion thrill.

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,