No More Learning

See her whose darling child a long year past
Has dwelt beyond the wild Carpathian foam;
That long year o'er, the envious southern blast
Still bars him from his home:
Weeping and praying to the shore she clings,
Nor ever thence her straining eyesight turns:
So, smit by loyal passion's restless stings,
Rome for her Caesar yearns.
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.
A household power, adored with prayers and wine,
Thou reign'st auspicious o'er his hour of ease:
Thus grateful Greece her Castor made divine,
And her great Hercules.
Ah! be it thine long holydays to give
To thy Hesperia! thus, dear chief, we pray
At sober sunrise; thus at mellow eve,
When ocean hides the day.



VI.

DIVE, QUEM PROLES.


Thou who didst make thy vengeful might
To Niobe and Tityos known,
And Peleus' son, when Troy's tall height
Was nigh his own,
Victorious else, for thee no peer,
Though, strong in his sea-parent's power,
He shook with that tremendous spear
The Dardan tower.
He, like a pine by axes sped,
Or cypress sway'd by angry gust,
Fell ruining, and laid his head
In Trojan dust.
Not his to lie in covert pent
Of the false steed, and sudden fall
On Priam's ill-starr'd merriment
In bower and hall:
His ruthless arm in broad bare day
The infant from the breast had torn,
Nay, given to flame, ah, well a way!
The babe unborn:
But, won by Venus' voice and thine,
Relenting Jove Aeneas will'd
With other omens more benign
New walls to build.
Sweet tuner of the Grecian lyre,
Whose locks are laved in Xanthus' dews,
Blooming Agyieus! help, inspire
My Daunian Muse!
'Tis Phoebus, Phoebus gifts my tongue
With minstrel art and minstrel fires:
Come, noble youths and maidens sprung
From noble sires,
Blest in your Dian's guardian smile,
Whose shafts the flying silvans stay,
Come, foot the Lesbian measure, while
The lyre I play:
Sing of Latona's glorious boy,
Sing of night's queen with crescent horn,
Who wings the fleeting months with joy,
And swells the corn.
And happy brides shall say, "'Twas mine,
When years the cyclic season brought,
To chant the festal hymn divine
By HORACE taught. "




VII.

DIFFUGERE NIVES.


The snow is fled: the trees their leaves put on,
The fields their green:
Earth owns the change, and rivers lessening run.
Their banks between.
Naked the Nymphs and Graces in the meads
The dance essay:
"No 'scaping death" proclaims the year, that speeds
This sweet spring day.
Frosts yield to zephyrs; Summer drives out Spring,
To vanish, when
Rich Autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,--
Winter again!
Yet the swift moons repair Heaven's detriment:
We, soon as thrust
Where good Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,
What are we? dust.
Can Hope assure you one more day to live
From powers above?
You rescue from your heir whate'er you give
The self you love.
When life is o'er, and Minos has rehearsed
The grand last doom,
Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst
Torquatus' tomb.
Not Dian's self can chaste Hippolytus
To life recall,
Nor Theseus free his loved Pirithous
From Lethe's thrall.