Chapter XXXI: Book II: , Ode III

Firm be thy soul!--serene in power,
When adverse fortune clouds the sky;
Undazzled by the triumph’s hour,
Since, Delius, thou must die--

Alike, if still to grief resign’d,
Or if, through festal days, ’tis thine
To quaff, in grassy haunts reclined,
The old Falernian wine--

Haunts where the silvery poplar-boughs
Love with the pine’s to blend on high,
And some clear fountain brightly flows
In graceful windings by.

There be the rose with beauty fraught,
So soon to fade, so brilliant now;
There be the wine, the odours brought,
While time and fate allow!

For thou, resigning to thine heir
Thy halls, thy bowers, thy treasured store,
Must leave that home, those woodlands fair,
On yellow Tiber’s shore.

What then avails it, if thou trace
From Inachus thy glorious line?
Or, sprung from some ignoble race,
If not a roof be thine?

Since the dread lot for all must leap
Forth from the dark revolving urn,
And we must tempt the gloomy deep,
Whence exiles ne’er return.

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA.

BOOK III., ODE XIII.

Oh! worthy fragrant gifts of flowers and wine,
Bandusian fount, than crystal far more bright!
To-morrow shall a sportive kid be thine,
Whose forehead swells with horns of infant might:
Ev’n now of love and war he dreams in vain,
Doom’d with his blood thy gelid wave to stain.

Let the red dog-star burn!--his scorching beam
Fierce in resplendence shall molest not thee!
Still shelter’d from his rays, thy banks, fair stream!
To the wild flock around thee wandering free,
And the tired oxen from the furrow’d field,
The genial freshness of their breath shall yield.

And thou, bright fount! ennobled and renown’d
Shalt by thy poet’s votive song be made;
Thou and the oak with deathless verdure crown’d,
Whose boughs, a pendant canopy, o’ershade
Those hollow rocks, whence, murmuring many a tale,
Thy chiming waters pour upon the vale.

TO FAUNUS.