A guilty age polluted first

Our beds, hearths, families: from that source Derived, the foul stream, gathering force, O'er the broad land, a torrent, burst.

Pleased, now, the maiden learns to move
To soft Greek airs: already knows—
Fresh from the nursery-how to pose
Her graceful limbs; and dreams of love:

Next, while her lord drinks deep, invites
Her gallants in: nor singles one,

Into whose guilty arms to run,
Stealthy and swift, when dim the lights:

No! in her lord's sight up springs she:

Alike at some small tradesman's beck, As his who walks a Spanish deck And barters wealth for infamy.

-Were those lads of such parents bred

Who dyed the seas with Punic blood?
Pyrrhus, Antiochus withstood,

And Hannibal, the nation's dread?

Rude soldiers' sons, a rugged kind,

They brake the soil with Sabine spade:
Or shouldered stakes their axe had made

To a right rigorous mother's mind,

What time the shadows of the rocks

Change, as the sun's departing car Sends on the hours that sweetest are, And men unyoke the wearied ox.

Time mars not-what? A spoiler he.

Our sires were not so brave a breed As their sires: we, a worse, succeed; To raise up sons more base than we.

ODE 13.

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA.

BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!

Thine is the flower-crown'd bowl, for thee shall die, When dawns yon sun, the kid;

Whose horns, half-seen, half-hid,

Challenge to dalliance or to strife-in vain!

Soon must the firstling of the wild herd be slain, And those cold springs of thine

With blood incarnadine.

Fierce glows the Dogstar, but his fiery beam

Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream

To labour-wearied ox,

Or wanderer from the flocks:

And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain: My harp shall tell how from yon cavernous mountain, Where the brown oak grows tallest,

All babblingly thou fallest.

ODE 18.

TO A FAUN.

WOOER of young Nymphs who fly thee,
Lightly o'er my sunlit lawn,

Trip, and go, nor injured by thee
Be my weanling herds, O Faun :

If the kid his doomed head bows, and
Brims with wine the loving cup,

When the year is full; and thousand
Scents from altars hoar go up.

Each flock in the rich grass gambols When the month comes which is thine;

And the happy village rambles

Fieldward with the idle kine:

Lambs play on, the wolf their neighbour: Wild woods deck thee with their spoil;

And with glee the sons of labour

Stamp upon their foe the soil.

BOOK IV.

ODE 13.

TO LYCE.

LYCE, the gods have listened to my prayer:
The gods have listened, Lyce. Thou art grey,
And still would'st thou seem fair;

Still unshamed drink, and play,

And, wine-flushed, woo slow-answering Love with

weak

Shrill pipings. With young Chia He doth dwell, Queen of the harp; her cheek

Is his sweet citadel:-
•

He marked the withered oak, and on he flew

Intolerant; shrank from Lyce grim and wrinkled, Whose teeth are ghastly-blue,

Whose temples snow-besprinkled :