Odes

Horace

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

  • Now you press on ocean's bound,
  • Where waves on Baiae beat, as earth were scant;
  • Now absorb your neighbour's ground,
  • And tear his landmarks up, your own to plant.
  • Hedges set round clients' farms
  • Your avarice tramples; see, the outcasts fly,
  • Wife and husband, in their arms
  • Their fathers' gods, their squalid family.
  • Yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'd
  • Waits you more surely than the wider room
  • Traced by Death's yet greedier hand.
  • Why strain so far? you cannot leap the tomb.
  • Earth removes the impartial sod
  • Alike for beggar and for monarch's child:
  • Nor the slave of Hell's dark god
  • Convey'd Prometheus back, with bribe beguiled.
  • Pelops he and Pelops' sire
  • Holds, spite of pride, in close captivity;
  • Beggars, who of labour tire,
  • Call'd or uncall'd, he hears and sets them free.