Essayed with wings to man not given:
By toil Herculean, Acheron was riven.

For mortals nothing is too high:
At heaven itself aims our insanity.

Our sinfulness will not permit
That Jove his wrathful levin intermit.

Written in early Spring.

AT Spring and Zephyr's glad return, keen winter melts

away;

On sledges, barks are launched, that dry upon the

shingle lay;

And neither does the flock its stall, nor ploughman
love the fire,

Nor longer does the hoary rime the whitened fields attire:
But Cytherean Venus now leads forth her choral band,
And (the moon hanging o'er them) Nymphs and
Graces, hand in hand,

In comely union, strike the earth, with alternating feet,
While the Cyclopes' smithy huge burns with Vuleanian heat
Meet is it now that glistening brow should be with
myrtle bound

Or with the flower by vernal power raised from the
loosened ground.

does sweltering Vulcan

Pennis non homini datis.

Perrupit Acheronta Herculeus labor.
Nil mortalibus ardui est.

Caelum ipsum petimus stultitia: neque
Per nostrum patimur scelus
Iracunda Jovem ponere fulmina.

IV. AD SESTIUM.

SOLVITUR acris hiems grata vice veris et Favonî:

Trahuntque siccas machinae carinas:

Ac neque jam stabulis gaudet pecus, aut arator igni;

Nec prata canis albicant pruinis.

Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus, imminente Luna,

Junctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes

Alterno terram quatiunt pede; dum graves Cyclopum

Volcanus ardens urit officinas.

Nunc decet aut viridi nitidum caput impedire myrto,

Aut flore, terrae quem ferunt solutae.

To Faunus, now, to sacrifice, is meet in shady grove
Whether an ewe lamb he demand, or ram kid more

approve.

With foot impartial, pallid Death, knocks at the pauper's cot

And monarch's tower;

permits thee not,

the sum,

so brief, of life

O favoured Sestius, to begin a far extending hope.
The storied Manes are at hand, and night's funereal cope,
And Pluto's narrow domicile, where, after entering,
No more shall it be thine to throw the dice for festal king,
Or gaze on tender Lycidas, whom, now, all youths admire,
And for whom maidens, too, ere long, shall warm with
kindling fire.

'We have no clue to the origin of this poem, which expresses a lover's
jealousy under pretence of his being glad of escape from the toils
of an inconstant mistress. That Pyrrha was a freedwoman of
exquisite beauty but loose character, and one of Horace's early
loves, is all imagination.' (Macleane.) I do not of course offer ‘at
thy neat toilet' as a literal translation of 'simplex munditiis,' but the
spirit, if not the words, of the original is, I think, better rendered so
than it would be by 'in simple neatness.' I have not been able to
devise any version of line 9 which would satisfactorily reproduce
'aurea.' The best I can think of is 'Who deems thee gold, now
fondling thee' or 'Who deems thee golden, fondling thee.'

PYRRHA, what slender youth, bedewed
With liquid fragrance, t'ward thee presses,
In pleasant grot, with roses strewed?
For whom, at thy neat toilet wooed,
Dost thou bind up thy golden tresses?

Nunc et in umbrosis Fauno decet immolare lucis,

Seu poscat agnam, sive malit haedum.

Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,

Regumque turres. O beate Sesti,

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque Manes,

Et domus exilis Plutonia: quo simul meâris,

Nec regna vini sortiere talis,

Nec tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet juventus Nunc omnis et mox virgines tepebunt.

V. AD PYRRHAM.

QUIS multa gracilis te puer in rosa
Perfusus liquidis urget odoribus

Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?

Cui flavam religas comam,

Simplex munditiis? Heu, quoties fidem

Alas! how oftentimes will he,

Who, full of trust, now fondles thee,
And, dreaming not of treacherous wind,
Pictures thee ever fair and kind,—
How often will he mourn at last
Thine and the gods' inconstancy!
How, unaccustomed, stare aghast
Upon a dark, storm-roughened sea!
Woe will abide

With them on whom thou shin'st untried!
But that to ocean's sovereign

I have hung up my dripping dress,
My tablet in his holy fane,

My votive tablet witnesses.

Horace may here be supposed to have been asked to write an ode on
the exploits of Agrippa, and to have gracefully declined on the
ground that such a subject required rather an epic for its adequate
treatment, and would therefore better suit the genius of Varius.

THY gallantry and victories shall Varius rehearse,
Winged minstrel, rivalling the flights of old Maeonian.

verse,

With whatsoe'er thy fiery troops have, under thy com-
mand,

On ship-board or on horse-back performed by sea or land.
But I, Agrippa, I to speak of such achievements shun.
Not mine to sing the baleful wrath of Peleus' stubborn son,
Nor of the wanderings of astute Ulysses o'er the sea,
Nor of the sanguinary house of the Pelopidae.

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