And o'er the waves securely bear

Half of my soul-thy precious care!

Stout oak, I ween, and triple fold
Of brass begirt his bosom bold,
Who, first, his fragile vessel gave
To sail upon the ruthless wave;
Where Africus, in riot-rage,

And stormy Aquilo engage ;
Nor fear'd the mournful Hyades,

Nor angry Notus' boisterous breeze,
Than whom no greater power presides,

To lash or lull the Adrian tides.

What form of death could terrify

The man, who view'd, with tearless eye,
Sea-monsters huge- the tempest's shocks-

Acroceraunia's ill-famed rocks?

The prudent deity in vain

The earth dissevers from the main,

ODE VI.

TO AGRIPPA.

VARIUS thy courage shall recite,
In stanzas of Moonian flight;
How conquer'd foes by sea and land
Fled from Agrippa's warlike band.

But heights like these affright my lyre;
Pelides' bold, unbending ire-

Ulysses' weary route to trace

Through seas-and Pelops' cruel race ;-
Whilst modesty would fain refuse,
And Rome's unwarlike lyric Muse,
Great Cæsar's, and Agrippa's praise
To lessen by unworthy lays.

Who, who shall warlike Mars express,

Enrobed in adamantine dress?

Who Merion dark charioteer

Whom Trojan mud and dust besmear?
Or Diomed, by Minerva's aid,

Equal to heaven's immortals made?

We banquets sing, and virgin-fights

With sharpen'd nails, 'gainst youthful knights;

Our hearts inflam'd, or fancy-free

With all our wonted levity.

ODE VII.

TO MUNATIUS PLANCUS.

SOME Mitylene praise, or Rhodes' renown,
Some Ephesus, or Corinth's isthmus-town ;
Lyæan Thebes, Apollo's Delphian fane,
Or flowery Tempe's sweet Thessalian plain.

Some tune the untiring string, through endless

hours,

To spotless Pallas, and her favourite towers;

Entwining still the olive's graceful bough;

Minerva's chaplet, for her votary's brow!
While many a bard in Juno's praise has told
Of Argos' horses, and Mycena's gold.
For me, nor Lacedæmon's patient toil,

Nor yet Larissa's soft, luxuriant soil,

Equals the Albunean villa's echoing sound,

Bold Anio's rush with Tibur's groves around

And-bath'd by wandering streams—the orchard ground.

As the pure south, when storms tempestuous lower,
Clears the dark sky, nor pours the ceaseless shower;
So, Plancus, wisely cheer thy sadden'd soul,
Life's toils dispelling with the generous bowl;
Whether 'mid camps, where glittering banners play,
Or your own Tibur's shadowy groves you stray.

From sire and Salamis when Teucer fled,
He yet as poets sing-adorn'd his head,
Moisten'd by Bacchus, with the poplar leaf;

Then thus his sorrowing friends address'd in grief; -kinder than a parent-tends,

"Where fortune

There will we go, my comrades and my

friends;

Despair not : Teucer leads, and Teucer's Fates

A foreign shore- the Delphian truth relates-
Shall prove of Salamis the ambiguous sound:
Oh! oft with me in darker misery found,

To-day your sorrows in the goblet steep,

To-morrow's dawn shall hail the boundless deep!"

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