To Jove the flocks which great kings sway,
To Jove great kings allegiance owe.
Praise him he laid the giants low :
All things that are, his nod obey.

This man may plant in broader lines
His fruit trees: that, the pride of race
Enlists a candidate for place:

In worth, in fame, a third outshines

His mates; or, thronged with clients, claims Precedence. Even-handed Fate

Hath but one law for small and great: That ample urn holds all men's names.

He o'er whose doomed neck hangs the sword Unsheathed, the dainties of the South Shall lack their sweetness in his mouth : No note of bird or harpsichord

Shall bring him Sleep. Yet Sleep is kind, Nor scorns the huts of laboring men; The bank where shadows play, the glen Of Tempe dancing in the wind.

He, who but asks "Enough," defies

Wild waves to rob him of his ease;
He fears no rude shocks, when he sees
Arcturus set or Hædus rise:

When hailstones lash his vines, or fails
His farm its promise, now of rains
And now of stars that parch the plains
Complaining, or unkindly gales.

- In straitened seas the fish are pent;
For dams are sunk into the deep:
Pile upon pile the builders heap,
And he, whom earth could not content,

The Master. Yet shall Fear and Hate

Climb where the Master climbs: nor e'er From the armed trireme parts black Care; He sits behind, the horseman's mate.

And if red marble shall not ease

The heartache; nor the shell that shines Star-bright; nor all Falernum's vines, All scents that charmed Achæmenes:

Why should I rear me halls of rare
Design, on proud shafts mounting high?
Why bid my Sabine vale good-by
For doubled wealth and doubled care?

Valor

to souls too great for death

Heaven opening-treads the untrodden way: And this dull world, this damp cold clay,

On wings of scorn, abandoneth.

Let too the sealed lip honored be.

The babbler, who'd the secrets tell
Of holy Ceres, shall not dwell

Where I dwell; shall not launch with me

A shallop. Heaven full many a time
Hath with the unclean slain the just:
And halting-footed Vengeance must
O'ertake at last the steps of crime.

Book III., ODE 3.

The just man's single-purposed mind.
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will
Which is as rock; not warrior winds

That keep the seas in wild unrest;

Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled : The fragments of a shivered world Would crash round him still self-possest.

Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed,
The fiery bastions of the skies;
Thus Pollux; with them Cæsar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.

Honored for this, by tigers drawn

Rode Bacchus, reining necks before
Untamed; for this War's horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron.

To the pleased gods had Juno said.
In conclave: "Troy is in the dust;
Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange woman prostrated.

"The day Laomedon ignored

His god-pledged word, resigned to me
And Pallas ever pure, was she,

Her people, and their traitor lord.

"Now the Greek woman's guilty guest
Dazzles no more: Priam's perjured sons
Find not against the mighty ones
Of Greece a shield in Hector's breast:

"And, long drawn out by private jars,

The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o'er: And him the Trojan vestal bore (Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,

"To Mars restore I. His be rest

In halls of light: by him be drained The nectar bowl, his place obtained In the calm companies of the blest.

"While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves
A length of ocean, where they will
Rise empires for the exiles still:
While Paris's and Priam's graves

"Are trod by kine, and she-wolves breed
Securely there, unharmed shall stand
Rome's lustrous Capitol, her hand
Curb with proud laws the trampled Mede.

"Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne
Her story; where the central main
Europe and Libya parts in twain,
Where full Nile laves a land of corn:

"The buried secret of the mine,

(Best left there) let her dare to spurn, Nor unto man's base uses turn Profane hands laying on things divine.

"Earth's utmost end, where'er it be,
Let her hosts reach; careering proud
O'er lands where watery rain and cloud,
Or where wild suns hold revelry.

"But, to the warriors of Rome,

Tied by this law, such fates are willed; That they seek never to rebuild, Too fond, too bold, their grandsires' home.

"With darkest omens, deadliest strife,
Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat
Her history; I the victor fleet
Shall lead, Jove's sister and his wife.

"Thrice let Apollo rear the wall

Of brass; and thrice my Greeks shall hew The fabric down: thrice matrons rue In chains their sons', their husbands' fall."

Ill my light lyre such notes beseem.

Stay, Muse; nor, wayward still, rehearse Sayings of Gods in meager verse That may but mar a mighty theme,

Book III., ODE 5.

Jove we call King, whose bolts rive heaven;
Then a god's presence shall be felt

In Cæsar, with whose power the Celt
And Parthian stout in vain have striven.

Could Crassus' men wed alien wives,

And greet, as sons-in-law, the foe?
In the foes' land (oh Romans, oh
Lost honor!) end, in shame, their lives,

'Neath the Mede's sway? They, Marsians and Apulians shields and rank and name Forgot, and that undying flame

And Jove still reign, and Rome still stand?

This thing wise Regulus could presage:

He brooked not base conditions; he
Set not a precedent to be

The ruin of a coming age:

"No," cried he, "let the captives die,

Spare not. I saw Rome's ensigns hung In Punic shrines; with sabers, flung Down by Rome's sons ere blood shed. I

"Saw our free citizens with hands

Fast pinioned; and, through portals now
Flung wide, our soldiers troop to plow,
As once they trooped to waste, the lands.

"Bought by our gold, our men will fight
But keener.' What? To shame would you
Add loss? As wool, its natural hue
Once gone, may not be painted white;

"True Valor, from her seat once thrust,
Is not replaced by meaner wares.
Do stags, delivered from the snares,
Fight? Then shall he fight, who did trust

"His life to foes who spoke a lie :

And his sword shatter Carthage yet,
Around whose arms the cords have met,

A sluggard soul, that feared to die!