Odes

Horace

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

  • True Virtue never knows defeat:
  • Her robes she keeps unsullied still,
  • Nor takes, nor quits, her curule seat
  • To please a people's veering will.
  • True Virtue opens heaven to worth:
  • She makes the way she does not find:
  • The vulgar crowd, the humid earth,
  • Her soaring pinion leaves behind.
  • Seal'd lips have blessings sure to come:
  • Who drags Eleusis' rite today,
  • That man shall never share my home,
  • Or join my voyage: roofs give way
  • And boats are wreck'd: true men and thieves
  • Neglected Justice oft confounds:
  • Though Vengeance halt, she seldom leaves
  • The wretch whose flying steps she hounds.
  • The man of firm and righteous will,
  • No rabble, clamorous for the wrong,
  • No tyrant's brow, whose frown may kill,
  • Can shake the strength that makes him strong: