to another. I praise her, while she abides by me. If she moves her fleet
wings, I resign what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my virtue,
and court honest poverty without a portion. It is no business of mine,
if the mast groan with the African storms, to have recourse to piteous
prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my Cyprian and Syrian
merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. Then the
gale and the twin Pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff
with two oars, through the tumultuous Aegean Sea."

* * * * *

ODE XXX.

ON HIS OWN WORKS.

I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime
than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower,
the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and
the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. I shall not wholly
die; but a great part of me shall escape Libitina. I shall continualy be
renewed in the praises of posterity, as long as the priest shall ascend
the Capitol with the silent [vestal] virgin. Where the rapid Aufidus
shall murmur, and where Daunus, poorly supplied with water, ruled over a
rustic people, I, exalted from a low degree, shall be acknowledged as
having originally adapted the Aeolic verse to Italian measures.
Melpomene, assume that pride which your merits have acquired, and
willingly crown my hair with the Delphic laurel.

* * * * *

THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.

ODE I.

TO VENUS.

After a long cessation, O Venus, again are you stirring up tumults?
Spare me, I beseech you, I beseech you. I am not the man I was under the
dominion of good-natured Cynara. Forbear, O cruel mother of soft
desires, to bend one bordering upon fifty, now too hardened for soft
commands: go, whither the soothing prayers of youths, invoke you. More
seasonably may you revel in the house of Paulus Maximus, flying thither
with your splendid swans, if you seek to inflame a suitable breast. For
he is both noble and comely, and by no means silent in the cause of
distressed defendants, and a youth of a hundred accomplishments; he
shall bear the ensigns of your warfare far and wide; and whenever, more
prevailing than the ample presents of a rival, he shall laugh [at his
expense], he shall erect thee in marble under a citron dome near the
Alban lake. There you shall smell abundant frankin