imes should return to their primitive gold. You shall sing both the
festal days, and the public rejoicings on account of the prayed-for
return of the brave Augustus, and the forum free from law-suits. Then
(if I can offer any thing worth hearing) a considerable portion of my
voice shall join [the general acclamation], and I will sing, happy at
the reception of Caesar, "O glorious day, O worthy thou to be
celebrated." And while [the procession] moves along, shouts of triumph
we will repeat, shouts of triumph the whole city [will raise], and we
will offer frankincense to the indulgent gods. Thee ten bulls and as
many heifers shall absolve; me, a tender steerling, that, having left
his dam, thrives in spacious pastures for the discharge of my vows,
resembling [by the horns on] his forehead the curved light of the moon,
when she appears of three days old, in which part he has a mark of a
snowy aspect, being of a dun color over the rest of his body.

* * * * *

ODE III.

TO MELPOMENE.

Him, O Melpomene, upon whom at his birth thou hast once looked with
favoring eye, the Isthmian contest shall not render eminent as a
wrestler; the swift horse shall not draw him triumphant in a Grecian
car; nor shall warlike achievement show him in the Capitol, a general
adorned with the Delian laurel, on account of his having quashed the
proud threats of kings: but such waters as flow through the fertile
Tiber, and the dense leaves of the groves, shall make him distinguished
by the Aeolian verse. The sons of Rome, the queen of cities, deign to
rank me among the amiable band of poets; and now I am less carped at by
the tooth of envy. O muse, regulating the harmony of the gilded shell! O
thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the
swan upon the mute fish! It is entirely by thy gift that I am marked
out, as the stringer of the Roman lyre, by the fingers of passengers;
that I breathe, and give pleasure (if I give pleasure), is yours.

* * * * *

ODE IV

THE PRAISE OF DRUSUS.

Like as the winged minister of thunder (to whom Jupiter, the sovereign
of the gods, has assigned the dominion over the fleeting birds, having
experienced his fidelity in the affair of the beauteous Ganymede), early
youth and hereditary vigor save impelled from his nest unknowing of
toil; and the vernal winds, the showers being now dispelled, taught him,
still timorous