ODE IX. TO VALGIUS.
That he would at length desist from bewailing the death of Mystes.
Not show'rs from darkness without end
Upon the shaggy fields descend,
Nor ruffling whirlwinds o'er the Caspian reign
For ever; nor prolong'd month after month remain,
Friend Valgius, on Armenia's heights
Of ice and snow, perpetual freights;
Nor to the North do the plantations groan
Of Garganus, nor ash trees their lost leaves bemoan.
But you, in one continual dirge,
Th'untimely death of Mystes urge,
Nor with the fondness of your grief have done,
When Vesper comes, or flies the bright-careering sun.
Yet
he, who for three ages join'd,
Liv'd an example of mankind,
Did not, for all the remnant of his years,
Antilochus, so loved, lament with ceaseless tears.
No,—nor did Priam and his wife
For Troilus, who lost his life
In ruddy youth, with endless grief deplore,
And ev'n his tender sisters in a while forbore.
Cease from the softness of your grief,
And let us rather sing our chief,
The great Augustus has new trophies won,
And bade the stiff Niphates with submission run.
Euphrates too must roll his tide
In billows more remote from pride,
And those Gelonians, added to our reign,
Must in the bounds prescrib'd their cavalry restrain.
