And how, by furious south-west maimed, thy mast And yard-arms groan? and how thy keel, embraced By girding ropes, can scarce sustain The force of the imperious main ? Thy sails are not entire: in thy distress No gods are left whom thou may'st still address. Thy boast is of an useless name and race. In painted hulls. Beware lest thou For the wind's sport thyself bestow. This is probably one of the earliest of Horace's compositions. It certainly reads very much like a college exercise. In excuse for making the second syllable of Meriones short, I may perhaps be permitted to plead that Horace himself never scrupled to take similar liberty in case of need. WHEN Helen, his hostess, the treacherous swain In galleys Idaean bore over the main, With quiet unwelcome did Nereus restrain The winds, his dark future to sing. 'With ill omen thou bear'st to thy mansion the dame Whom Greece shall with numberless soldiers reclaim, In league to dissever thy nuptials of shame And Priam's old realm to downfling. Et malus celeri saucius Africo, Antennaeque gemant: ac sine funibus Possint imperiosius Aequor? Non tibi sunt integra lintea; Silvae filia nobilis, Jactes et genus et nomen inutile; Debes ludibrium, cave. Nuper sollicitum quae mihi taedium, Vites aequora Cycladas. XV. PASTOR cum traheret per freta navibus Ingrato celeres obruit otio Ventos, ut caneret fera Nereus fata. Mala ducis avi domum, Quam multo repetet Graecia milite, Et regnum Priami vetus. Ah what sweat shall now come upon horses and men! By protection of Venus emboldened, in vain Thy locks wilt thou comb, and the composite strain From lances and spikes of the Cnossian reed, Ah, dost thou not Nestor, the Pylian old, On thee shall rush Sthenelus, trained Tydides, his father excelling; Whom thou, as a stag from his grazing-ground flies Heu, heu quantus equis, quantus adest viris Currusque et rabiem parat. Non Laërtiaden, exitium tuae Gentis, non Pylium Nestora respicis ? Teucer, te Sthenelus sciens Pugnae. Sive opus est imperitare equis, Quem tu, cervus uti vallis in altera Visum parte lupum graminis immemor, Sublimi fugies mollis anhelitu, Non hoc pollicitus tuae. Iracunda diem proferet Ilio, Matronisque Phrygum classis Achillei. Post certas hiemes uret Achaicus Ignis Iliacas domos. Who were the mother and daughter referred to in this poem many have confidently guessed, but nobody knows. It is generally assumed that one or other had been previously lampooned by Horace, but even this does not seem quite certain. Or lovely mother, daughter lovelier still, Or, if so please, on Adrian billows cast them. Not so Cybele stirs the priestly heart, Nor Corybantes when, together driven, Their cymbals clash,-as stirreth brooding ire, Can daunt with terrors thundered from above. 'Tis said, our raw material to prepare, The rage to us which rabid lions have. 'Twas rage that urged on dire perdition's jaws Why palmiest town Hath perished utterly,-whose walls, o'erthrown, Of life beset-on swift iambic rhyme |