cense, and shall be
charmed with the mixed music of the lyre and Berecynthian pipe, not
without the flageolet. There the youths, together with the tender
maidens, twice a day celebrating your divinity, shall, Salian-like, with
white foot thrice shake the ground. As for me, neither woman, nor youth,
nor the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to
bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But why;
ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my
cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an
unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught [in my
arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius; thee I pursue,
O cruel one, through the rolling waters.

* * * * *

ODE II.

TO ANTONIUS IULUS.

Whoever endeavors, O Iulus, to rival Pindar, makes an effort on wings
fastened with wax by art Daedalean, about to communicate his name to the
glassy sea. Like a river pouring down from a mountain, which sudden
rains have increased beyond its accustomed banks, such the deep-mouthed
Pindar rages and rushes on immeasurable, sure to merit Apollo's laurel,
whether he rolls down new-formed phrases through the daring dithyrambic,
and is borne on in numbers exempt from rule: whether he sings the gods,
and kings, the offspring of the gods, by whom the Centaurs perished with
a just destruction, [by whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful
Chimaera; or celebrates those whom the palm, [in the Olympic games] at
Elis, brings home exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents
them with a gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some
youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride--he elevates both his
strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues him
from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O
Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but
I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that laboriously
gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate
verses about the grove and the banks of the watery Tiber. You, a poet of
sublimer style, shall sing of Caesar, whenever, graceful in his
well-earned laurel, he shall drag the fierce Sygambri along the sacred
hill; Caesar, than whom nothing greater or better the fates and
indulgent gods ever bestowed on the earth, nor will bestow, though the
t