f the
lyre.

* * * * *

ODE XXXII.

TO HIS LYRE.

We are called upon. If ever, O lyre, in idle amusement in the shade with
thee, we have played anything that may live for this year and many, come
on, be responsive to a Latin ode, my dear lyre--first tuned by a Lesbian
citizen, who, fierce in war, yet amid arms, or if he had made fast to
the watery shore his tossed vessel, sung Bacchus, and the Muses, and
Venus, and the boy, her ever-close attendant, and Lycus, lovely for his
black eyes and jetty locks. O thou ornament of Apollo, charming shell,
agreeable even at the banquets of supreme Jove! O thou sweet alleviator
of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee!

* * * * *

ODE XXXIII.

TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS.

Grieve not too much, my Albius, thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant
your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man
is more agreeable, than you in her eyes. A love for Cyrus inflames
Lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead: Cyrus follows the rough
Pholoe; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than
Pholoe shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. Such is the will of
Venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes
persons and tempers ill suited to each other. As for myself, the
slave-born Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic Sea that forms
the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time
that a more eligible love courted my embraces.

* * * * *

ODE XXXIV.

AGAINST THE EPICURIANS.

A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the
errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back
again, and to renew the course that I had deserted. For Jupiter, who
usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove
his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which
the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid
seat of detested Taenarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken.
The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest,
and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious
fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head,
and delights in having placed it on another.

* * * * *

ODE