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The Works of Horace In English Verse

By several hands. Collected and Published By Mr. Duncombe. With Notes Historical and Critical
  

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ODE IX. To Valgius.

On the Death of his Son.

1

The Clouds not always pour forth Rain;
Nor always Storms deface the Plain,
And heave the Billows of the Caspian Flood;
Nor is the cold Armenian Coast
Bound up each Month by lazy Frost,
Nor Tempests always rock th'Apulian Wood.

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2

But, Valgius, You your worthy Son,
Your blooming Mystes, still bemoan;
And ever fix'd your tender Grief remains:
When Hesper decks the purpling Skies,
And when before the Sun he flies,
You sooth your Woe with melancholy Strains.

3

Sage Nestor, for his Length of Years
Renown'd, not thus, with fruitless Tears,
Bedew'd his lov'd Antilochus's Urn;
Nor did his Parents, and the Train
Of Phrygian Sisters so complain,
And Troïlus with ceaseless Sorrow mourn.

4

Tune then no more the plaintive String,
But Cæsar's Conquests let us sing:
Euphrates, rolling with a narrower Stream;
The Tigris, to our Empire join'd,
And the Gelonian Horse, confin'd
To Bounds prescrib'd, be now the glorious Theme!