Odes

Horace

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

You ponder on imperial schemes,

And o'er the city's danger brood:

Bactrian and Serian haunt your dreams,

And Tanais, toss'd by inward feud.

The issue of the time to be

Heaven wisely hides in blackest night,

And laughs, should man's anxiety

Transgress the bounds of man's short sight.

Control the present: all beside

Flows like a river seaward borne,

Now rolling on its placid tide,

Now whirling massy trunks uptorn,

And waveworn crags, and farms, and stock,

In chaos blent, while hill and wood

Reverberate to the enormous shock,

When savage rains the tranquil flood

Have stirr'd to madness. Happy he,

Self-centred, who each night can say,

“My life is lived: the morn may see

A clouded or a sunny day: