SORACTE. OD. i. 9. ONE dazzling mass of solid snow Soracte stands; the bent woods fret Beneath their load; and, sharpest-set With frost, the streams have ceased to flow. Pile on great faggots and break up The ice let influence more benign : Enter with four-years-treasured wine, Fetched in the ponderous Sabine cup: Leave to the Gods all else. When they Have once bid rest the winds that war Over the passionate seas, no more Grey ash and cypress rock and sway. Ask not what future suns shall bring: Count to-day gain, whate'er it chance To be: nor, young man, scorn the dance, Nor deem sweet Love an idle thing, Ere Time thy April youth hath changed Attract thee now, and whispered talk Hear now the pretty laugh that tells In what dim corner lurks thy love; And snatch a bracelet or a glove From wrist or hand that scarce rebels M TO LEUCONÖE. OD. i. 11. EEK not, for thou shalt not find it, what my SEEK end, what thine shall be; Ask not of Chaldæa's science what God wills, Leuconöe: Better far, what comes, to bear it. Haply many a wintry blast Waits thee still; and this, it may be, Jove ordains to be thy last, Which flings now the flagging sea-wave on the obstinate sandstone-reef. Be thou wise fill up the wine-cup; shortening, since the time is brief, Hopes that reach into the future. While I speak, hath stol'n away Jealous Time. Mistrust To-morrow, catch the blossom of To-day. JUNO'S SPEECH. OD. iii. 3. THE just man's single-purposed mind Not furious mobs that prompt to ill May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will Which is as rock; not warrior winds That keep the seas in wild unrest; Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled: The fragments of a shivered world Would crash round him still self-possest. Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed, The fiery bastions of the skies; Thus Pollux; with them Cæsar lies Beside his nectar, radiant-browed. Honoured for this, rewarded, tigers drawn Rode Bacchus, reining necks before Untamed; for this War's horses bore Quirinus up from Acheron. To the pleas'd gods had Juno said, In conclave: "Troy is in the dust; Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust, And that strange woman prostrated. "The day Laomedon ignored His god-pledged word, resigned to me And Pallas ever pure, was she, Her people, and their traitor lord. "No more the Greek girl's guilty guest Sits splendour-girt: Priam's perjured sons Find not against the mighty ones Of Greece a shield in Hector's breast: |