Odes

Horace

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

  • Still sits the bird on Tityos' breast,
  • The warder of Unlawful love;
  • Still suffers lewd Pirithous, prest
  • By massive chains no hand may move.
  • Jove rules in heaven, his thunder shows;
  • Henceforth Augustus earth shall own
  • Her present god, now Briton foes
  • And Persians bow before his throne.
  • Has Crassus' soldier ta'en to wife
  • A base barbarian, and grown grey
  • (Woe, for a nation's tainted life!)
  • Earning his foemen-kinsmen's pay,
  • His king, forsooth, a Mede, his sire
  • A Marsian? can he name forget,
  • Gown, sacred shield, undying fire,
  • And Jove and Rome are standing yet?
  • 'Twas this that Regulus foresaw,
  • What time he spurn'd the foul disgrace
  • Of peace, whose precedent would draw
  • Destruction on an unborn race,