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The works of Horace, translated into verse

With a prose interpretation, for the help of students. And occasional notes. By Christopher Smart ... In four volumes

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ODE I. TO MÆCENAS.
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3

ODE I. TO MÆCENAS.

Different men have their several pleasures: Horace affects the name of a poet, especially in the lyric cast.

Mæcenas, of a race renown'd,
Whose royal ancestors were crown'd;
O patron of my wealth and praise,
And pride and pleasure of my days!
Some of a vent'rous cast there are,
That glory in th'Olympic car,
Whose glowing wheels in dust they roll,
Driv'n to an inch upon the goal,
And rise from mortal to divine,
Ennobled by the wreath they twine.
One, if the giddy mob proclaim,
And vying lift to threefold fame;

5

One, if within his barn he stores
The wealth of Lybian threshing-floors,
Will never from his course be press'd,
For all that Attalus possess'd,
To plow, with sailor's anxious pain,
In Cyprian sloop th'Egean main.
The merchant, dreading the south-west,
Whose blasts th'Icarian wave molest,
Praises his villa's rural ease,
Built amongst bowling-greens and trees;
But soon the thoughts of growing poor
Make him his shatter'd barks insure.
There's now and then a social soul
That will not scorn the Massic bowl,
Nor shuns to break in a degree
On the grave day's solidity;
Now underneath the shrubby shade,
Now by the sacred fountain laid.
Many are for the martial strife,
And love the trumpet and the fife,
That mingle in the din of war,
Which all the pious dames abhor:
The sportsman, heedless of his fair,
With patience braves the wintry air,
Whether his blood-hounds, staunch and keen,
The hind have in the covert seen,
Or wild boar of the Marsian breed,
From the round-twisted cords is freed.

7

But as for Horace, I espouse
The glory of the scholar's brows,
The wreath of festive ivy wove,
Which makes one company for Jove.
Me the cool groves by zephyrs fann'd,
Where nymphs and satyrs, hand in hand,
Dance nimbly to the rural song,
Distinguish from the vulgar throng.
If nor Euterpe, heavenly gay,
Forbid her pleasant pipes to play,
Nor Polyhymnia disdain
A lesson in the Lesbian strain,
That, thro' Mæcenas, I may pass
'Mongst writers of the Lyric class,
My muse her laurell'd head shall rear,
And top the zenith of her sphere.
 

To the three greatest honours of Rome; to be either ediles, prætors, or consuls.