The necks of untamed bulls to yoke.

Gifts smeared with this she took to cloak
Her vengeance upon Jason's bride,

Ere on winged serpent thence she hied.
So heavily sidereal haze

Never on parched Apulia weighs.

More furiously his consort's vest

Burned not on stout Alcides' breast.

If ever you are droll enough

Maecenas, to desire such stuff,

Well, then I pray, the girl you love

Back, with her hand, your lips may shove,
And to the couch's edge remove.

This, like the ninth Ode of the first Book, is a convivial song written in winter.

A FEARFUL storm contracts the sky, and showers of rain and snow

Bring down aerial Jupiter: now ocean, forests now, Roar with the Thracian north wind: let us, my comrades, seize

The weather's opportunity, and, while still firm our knees, And it becomes us, let old age smoothen his wrinkled brow.

Wine pressed when my Torquatus held the consulship do thou

Produce leave talking of aught else: perchance the deity Will with good turn resettle things. 'Tis pleasant now to be

Hoc delibutis ulta donis pellicem,

Serpente fugit alite.

Nec tantus unquam siderum insedit vapor

Siticulosae Apuliae:

Nec munus humeris efficacis Herculis

Inarsit aestuosius.

At, si quid unquam tale concupiveris,

Jocose Maecenas, precor

Manum puella savio opponat tuo,

Extrema et in sponda cubet.

XIII.

HORRIDA tempestas caelum contraxit, et imbres

Nivesque deducunt Jovem; nunc mare, nunc siluae Threïcio Aquilone sonant: rapiamus, amici, Occasionem de die, dumque virent genua,

Et decet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus.

Tu vina Torquato move consule pressa meo. Cetera mitte loqui: deus haec fortasse benigna

Reducet in sedem vice. Nunc et Achaemenio

Sprinkled with Achaemenian nard, and with Cyllenian lyre Our bosoms to alleviate of their forebodings dire. Twas thus that to his stalwart ward the noble Centaur sung: 'Unconquered mortal, boy who hast from goddess Thetis sprung,

The country of Assaracus awaits thee, which divides Little Scamander's cooling stream, through which swift Simois glides;

Whence thy return the Parcae have severed with stable thread,

Whence homeward ne'er again shall thee thine azure mother lead.

Wherefore do thou with wine and song and pleasant converse there

Drive away every ill that springs from ugly spleenish care.'

This is supposed to have been written B.C. 40, the year after the battle of Philippi, and at the beginning of the Perusian war, when the affairs of both Italy and Horace were in a deplorable condition; he having lost his patrimony, and not having yet been introduced to Maecenas. He was then only twenty-four, and, as Lord Lytton says, this Epode has the character of youth both in its defects and its beauties.'

Now yet another age is worn by civil wars away,
And Rome herself with her own strength to ruin rushes on;
Whom neither the Etruscan bands of threatening Porsena,
Nor were the bordering Marsians e'er able to hurl down,

Perfundi nardo juvat, et fide Cyllenea

Levare diris pectora sollicitudinibus : Nobilis ut grandi cecinit Centaurus alumno:

'Invicte, mortalis dea nate puer Thetide,

Te manet Assaraci tellus, quam frigida parvi Findunt Scamandri flumina lubricus et Simoï's; Unde tibi reditum certo subtemine Parcae

Rupere; nec mater domum caerula te revehet.

Illic omne malum vino cantuque levato,

Deformis aegrimoniae dulcibus alloquiis.'

XVI. AD POPULUM ROMANUM.

ALTERA jam teritur bellis civilibus aetas,
Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit:

Quam neque finitimi valuerunt perdere Marsi,
Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenae manus,

Nor Capua's rival gallantry, nor daring Spartacus,
Nor treacherous Allobroges, caballing, aye, anew:
Whom, too, could never Annibal, to parents odious,
Nor blue-eyed youth of valorous Germania subdue.
'Tis we who shall destroy her, we, doomed sacrilegious

race.

Yea! yet again her soil shall be by wild beasts occupied ; Barbarian victor shall, alas! the city's ashes pace,

A horseman with his clattering hoofs smiting her, and aside

Scattering insultingly the bones-ah, horrible to see!-
Of her Quirinus, until then sheltered from wind and sun.
Perchance, the best of you may ask, or ye all generally,
What to avoid such fatal ills were fitting to be done.
Better resolve were none than this: As the Phocean state,
Having accursed all such as might return there evermore,
Fled, and their fields and hearths and homes and temples
desolate

Left to be re-inhabited by ravening wolf and boar,

So where our feet may bear us, there to go wherever may Through billows south wind call us on or south-west pitiless.

Consent ye? or some better plan hath any? Why delay From taking ship while now we may with favouring auspices?

But first let us, by oath, thus vow, that to come here again Be sinful, until rocks shall float raised from the lowest deep: Yet that we homeward set our sails without repugnance

when

Po shall his laving waters lift o'er the Matinian steep,