Odes

Horace

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

  • In safety range the cattle o'er the mead:
  • Sweet Peace, soft Plenty, swell the golden grain:
  • O'er unvex'd seas the sailors blithely speed:
  • Fair Honour shrinks from stain:
  • No guilty lusts the shrine of home defile:
  • Cleansed is the hand without, the heart within:
  • The father's features in his children smile
  • Swift vengeance follows sin.
  • Who fears the Parthian or the Scythian horde,
  • Or the rank growth that German forests yield,
  • While Caesar lives? who trembles at the sword
  • The fierce Iberians wield?
  • In his own hills each labours down the day,
  • Teaching the vine to clasp the widow'd tree:
  • Then to his cups again, where, feasting gay,
  • He hails his god in thee.