Odes

Horace

Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. Conington, John, translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.

The soldier fears the mask'd retreat

Of Parthia; Parthia dreads the thrall

Of Rome; but Death with noiseless feet

Has stolen and will steal on all.

How near dark Pluto's court I stood,

And Aeacus' judicial throne,

The blest seclusion of the good,

And Sappho, with sweet lyric moan

Bewailing her ungentle sex,

And thee, Alcaeus, louder far

Chanting thy tale of woful wrecks,

Of woful exile, woful war!

In sacred awe the silent dead

Attend on each: but when the song

Of combat tells and tyrants fled,

Keen ears, press'd shoulders, closer throng.

What marvel, when at those sweet airs

The hundred-headed beast spell-bound

Each black ear droops, and Furies' hairs

Uncoil their serpents at the sound?