EPODE I. TO MÆCENAS. F thou in thy Liburnians go Amid the bulwarked galleys of the foe, All Cæsar's dangers as thine own to share, Whilst thou art here, but sad with thee away? Seek ease, not sweet, unless 'tis shared by thee? Thy toils, as men of gallant heart should bear? Scale by thy side, or Caucasus the bleak; Into the farthest ocean of the West. And shouldst thou ask, how I could aid The bird more dreads by snakes to be bereft, Although she could not thus their doom arrest. I'll share in this or any fresh campaign! Not, trust me, that more oxen may, Yoked in my ploughshares, turn the yielding clay, Nor that, to 'scape midsummer's heat, My herds may to Leucanian pastures sweet Of Tusculum, by Circe's walls, A gorgeous villa's far-seen marble halls! Wealth, either, like old Chremes in the play, EPODE II. ALPHIUS. HAPPY the man, in busy schemes unskilled, Who, living simply, like our sires of old, Tills the few acres which his father tilled, * "Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, "Happy the man, and to the gods akin, -FRACASTORIUS. Whom dazzling glory with its treacherous glare, But who, in settled low humility, Lets all his days glide noiselessly away, And moves, with soul serene, amid the nooks And silent byways of a blameless life." |