Book 4 — V.

DIVIS ORTE BONIS.

Best guardian of Rome's people, dearest boon Of a kind Heaven, thou lingerest all too long: Thou bad'st thy senate look to meet thee soon: Do not thy promise wrong. Restore, dear chief, the light thou tak'st away: Ah! when, like spring, that gracious mien of thine Dawns on thy Rome, more gently glides the day, And suns serener shine. See her whose darling child a long year past Has dwelt beyond the wild Carpathian foam; That long year o'er, the envious southern blast Still bars him from his home: Weeping and praying to the shore she clings, Nor ever thence her straining eyesight turns: So, smit by loyal passion's restless stings, Rome for her Caesar yearns. In safety range the cattle o'er the mead: Sweet Peace, soft Plenty, swell the golden grain: O'er unvex'd seas the sailors blithely speed: Fair Honour shrinks from stain: No guilty lusts the shrine of home defile: Cleansed is the hand without, the heart within: The father's features in his children smile: Swift vengeance follows sin. Who fears the Parthian or the Scythian horde, Or the rank growth that German forests yield, While Caesar lives? who trembles at the sword The fierce Iberians wield? In his own hills each labours down the day, Teaching the vine to clasp the widow'd tree: Then to his cups again, where, feasting gay, He hails his god in thee. A household power, adored with prayers and wine, Thou reign'st auspicious o'er his hour of ease: Thus grateful Greece her Castor made divine, And her great Hercules. Ah! be it thine long holydays to give To thy Hesperia! thus, dear chief, we pray At sober sunrise; thus at mellow eve, When ocean hides the day.

VI.

DIVE, QUEM PROLES.

Thou who didst make thy vengeful might To Niobe and Tityos known, And Peleus' son, when Troy's tall height Was nigh his own, Victorious else, for thee no peer, Though, strong in his sea-parent's power, He shook with that tremendous spear The Dardan tower. He, like a pine by axes sped, Or cypress sway'd by angry gust, Fell ruining, and laid his head In Trojan dust. Not his to lie in covert pent Of the false steed, and sudden fall On Priam's ill-starr'd merriment In bower and hall: His ruthless arm in broad bare day The infant from the breast had torn, Nay, given to flame, ah, well a way! The babe unborn: But, won by Venus' voice and thine, Relenting Jove Aeneas will'd With other omens more benign New walls to build. Sweet tuner of the Grecian lyre, Whose locks are laved in Xanthus' dews, Blooming Agyieus! help, inspire My Daunian Muse! 'Tis Phoebus, Phoebus gifts my tongue With minstrel art and minstrel fires: Come, noble youths and maidens sprung From noble sires, Blest in your Dian's guardian smile, Whose shafts the flying silvans stay, Come, foot the Lesbian measure, while The lyre I play: Sing of Latona's glorious boy, Sing of night's queen with crescent horn, Who wings the fleeting months with joy, And swells the corn. And happy brides shall say, "'Twas mine, When years the cyclic season brought, To chant the festal hymn divine By HORACE taught."