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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODES III, 4 by QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS

First Line: COME, MUSIC'S QUEEN, FROM YONDER SPHERE
Last Line: DO THRICE A HUNDRED FETTERS GIRD.
COME, Music's Queen, from yonder sphere:
Bid thy harp speak: sing high and higher --
Or take Apollo's lute and lyre,
And play, and cease not. Did ye hear?

Or is some sweet Delusion mine?
I seem to hear, to stray beside
Groves that are holy; whither glide
Fair brooks, where breezes are benign.

Me, on mount Vultur once -- a lad,
O'ercome with sleepiness and play --
(I had left Apulia miles away,
That nursed me) doves from Fayland clad

With leaflets. Marvelled all whose nest
Is Acherontia's cliff; who fell
The Bantine forest trees, or dwell
On rich Ferentium's lowly breast;

How I could sleep, unharmed by bear
Or dusky serpent. There I lay,
In myrtle hid and holy bay,
A lusty babe, the Great ones' care.

Yours, Sisters, yours, the Sabine hills
I climb: at cool Praeneste yours,
Yours by flat Tibur, or the shores
Of Baiae. I have loved your rills,

Your choirs: for this Philippi's slaughter,
When fled our captains, harmed not me;
I died not 'neath the cursed tree,
Nor sank in Palinurus' water: --

Be with me still: and, fears at rest,
I'll launch on raving Bosphorus, stand
Upon Assyria's sultry sand,
With Britons mate, who slay the guest,

Sit down with Spaniards, wild to sate
Their thirst with horses' blood; or roam
Far o'er the quivered Scythian's home
By Tanais' banks, inviolate.

-- High Caesar ye (his war-worn braves
Safe housed at last in thorp and town)
Asking to lay his labours down,
Make welcome in Pierian caves.

-- Kind ones! Ye give sweet counsel, love
Its givers. @3We@1 know how He slew
The Titans, and their hideous crew,
Hurling his thunder from above,

Who the dull earth, the windy sea,
The cities, and the realms of woe,
And gods above, and men below,
Rules, and none other, righteously.

In truth Jove's terrors had been great;
So bold a front those warriors showed
Those brethren, on his dark abode
Striving to pile all Pelion's weight.

But Mimas and Typhoeus were
As naught, and huge Porphyrion too,
And Rhoecus, and the arm that threw,
Undaunted, tree-trunks through the air;

With ringing shield when Pallas met
Their rush. Hot Vulcan too stood there,
And Juno sage, and he, who ne'er
Eased from the bow his shoulder yet;

Who bathes in pure Castalian dew
His locks; in Lycian bowers adored,
And his own woods, -- Apollo, lord
Of Delos and of Patara too.

-- Brute force its own bulk foils. But force
By reason led, the gods make great
And greater; while the strong they hate,
Whose brain revolves each evil course.

This Gyas, hundred-armed, could tell;
And that Orion, who with wild
Violence assailed the Undefiled,
And by Diana's arrows fell.

-- Earth, grieved, her monster brood entombed:
Mourns them, by Jove's bolts hurled to hell.
Still living fires 'neath AEtna dwell,
Yet AEtna still is unconsumed:

O'er wanton Tityus' heart the bird,
That miscreant's gaoler, still doth hover;
And still Pirithous, lawless lover,
Do thrice a hundred fetters gird.



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