Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

ODE X.

TO LYCE.

This humorous ode belongs to a kind of serenade common enough with the Greeks, and is probably imitated from a Greek original. There is no reason for supposing the Lyce whose cruelty is here complained of, to be identical with the Lyce who is lampooned in Book IV. Ode xiii.

Didst thou drink at the uttermost waters of Don,
To some savage barbarian, O Lyce, the spouse,

Still, thy heart with compassion might think of me stretched
Where the north winds are quartered outside of thy door.

Hark! the hinge of thy gate; hark! the plants in thy hall,'
With what dissonant howl they re-echo the blasts,
And with what icy clearness the frost-air above

Renders crisper the snows that are heapen below!

Lay the haughtiness hateful to Venus aside,

Lest the wheel should run back and the rope should be snapped,2

Thy gay parent Tyrrhenian ne'er meant to produce
A Penelope cruel to suitors in thee.

Ah! although thou art proof against presents and prayers,
And the pale-blue complexion of lovers disdained;
Nor ev'n bowed to revenge on the spouse led astray
By a roving Pierian3 less chaste than a Muse;

1 'Nemus Inter pulchra satum tecta.' Small trees were sometimes planted round the impluvium of a Roman house. This is the interpretation adopted by Orelli. Ritter contends that the line refers to one of the two sacred groves situated between the two heights of the Capitoline.

CARM. X.

Extremum Tanain si biberes, Lyce,
Sævo nupta viro, me tamen asperas
Porrectum ante fores objicere incolis
Plorares Aquilonibus.

Audis quo strepit janua, quo nemus
Inter pulchra satum tecta1 remugiat
Ventis, et positas ut glaciet nives
Puro numine Juppiter?

Ingratam Veneri pone superbiam,
Ne currente retro funis eat rota.2
Non te Penelopen difficilem procis
Tyrrhenus genuit parens.

O quamvis neque te munera, nec preces,
Nec tinctus viola pallor amantium,

Nec vir Pieria pellice saucius
Curvat, supplicibus tuis

2 Ne currente retro funis eat rota.' This line has been tortured to many interpretations. Lest the wheel turn back and the rope with it,' is Orelli's, accepted by Macleane, who observes, the metaphor in that case is taken from a rope wound round a cylinder, which, being allowed to run back, the rope runs down, and the weight or thing attached goes with it. The rope may break and the wheel run back,' is the construction Macleane gives in his argument to the ode.

''Pieria pellice,' Macedonian lady of pleasure.-Orelli, Ritter. There is some humour as well as wit in coupling pellice' with an epithet so suggestive of an opposite idea.

Yet, while granting thy heart is not softer than oak,
And as mild as the snakes in the land of the Moor,
Spare the life of a suppliant! I am of flesh,

And can bear not for ever this porch and that sleet.'

[ocr errors]

Aquæ Cælestis patiens.' The expression can scarcely apply to rain, since the night has been described as one of wind and frost :'Glaciet nives

Puro numine Juppiter;'

[ocr errors]

'puro' being, as Macleane observes, an epithet well suited to a clear, frosty night.' The wind would keep off the snow, but there might be gusty showers of sleety hail. Horace, however, no doubt, uses the expression in a general sense, such as the 'floods of heaven,' whether they be snow, rain, or sleet.

Parcas, nec rigida mollior æsculo
Nec Mauris animum mitior anguibus.
Non hoc semper erit liminis aut aquæ
Cælestis patiens1 latus.

ODE XI.

TO THE LYRE.

'The common inscription, "Ad Mercurium" (To Mercury), adopted by Bentley and others, is plainly wrong, and calculated to mislead. The inscription should be 'Ad testudinem'

Mercury (for, tutored in thy lore, Amphion
Charmed into motion rocks by his sweet singing),
And thou, my lyre, with sevenfold chord resounding
Measures not skill-less,

Albeit once, unmusical, unheeded,'

Now welcome both in banquet-halls and temples,
Teach me some strain resistlessly beguiling

Lyde to listen.

Wild as the filly in its third year, frisking

Through the wide meadows, the least touch dismays her;
Never yet won, she views as saucy freedom
Even the wooing.

But thou hast power to lead away the tigers,
And in their train the forests; stay swift rivers;
Cerberus himself, dread jailer of dark thresholds,
Soothed into meekness,

Yielded to thy bland voice his hundred strongholds
Of fury-heads, each garrisoned with serpents,
And hushed the triple tongue in jaws whose breath-reek
Tainted the hell-gloom;

Nec loquax,' i.e., 'canora,'-DILLENBURGER, ORELLI. Horace, though a born poet, if ever there was one-and telling us that even as an infant, when the doves covered him with bay and myrtle, he was marked out for the service of the Muses-does not disdain, here and else

« PredošláPokračovať »