Odes

Horace

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

  • No vulgar wing, nor weakly plied,
  • Shall bear me through the liquid sky;
  • A two-form'd bard, no more to bide
  • Within the range of envy's eye
  • 'Mid haunts of men. I, all ungraced
  • By gentle blood, I, whom you call
  • Your friend, Maecenas, shall not taste
  • Of death, nor chafe in Lethe's thrall.
  • E'en now a rougher skin expands
  • Along my legs: above I change
  • To a white bird; and o'er my hands
  • And shoulders grows a plumage strange:
  • Fleeter than Icarus, see me float
  • O'er Bosporus, singing as I go,
  • And o'er Gaetulian sands remote,
  • And Hyperborean fields of snow;
  • By Dacian horde, that masks its fear
  • Of Marsic steel, shall I be known,
  • And furthest Scythian: Spain shall hear
  • My warbling, and the banks of Rhone.