To Maecenas. III-29 (From The Odes Of Horace)
By Helen Leah Reed
Mcenas, scion of Tyrrhenian rulers,
A jar, as yet unpierced, of mellow wine
Long waits thee here, with balm for thee made ready
And blooming roses in thy locks to twine.
No more delay, nor always look with favor
The sloping fields of sula upon;
Why gaze so long on ever marshy Tibur
Near by the mount of murderer Telegon?
Give up thy luxury - it palls upon thee -
Thy tower that reaches yonder lofty cloud;
Cease to admire the smoke, the wealth, the uproar,
And all that well hath made our Rome so proud.
Sometimes a change is grateful to the rich man,
A simple meal beneath a humble roof
Has often smoothed from care the furrowed forehead,
Though unadorned that home with purple woof.
Bright Cepheus now his long-hid fire is showing,
Now flames on high the angry lion-star,
Now Procyon rages, and the sun revolving
Brings back the thirsty season from afar.
Seeking a cooling stream, the weary shepherd
His languid flock leads to the shady wood
Where rough Sylvanus reigns, yet by the brookside.
No truant breeze disturbs the solitude.
Ah, who but thee is busy now with statecraft?
Thou plannest for Rome's weal, disquieted,
Lest warring Scythian, Bactrian, or Persian
Should'st plunge the city into awful dread.
A prudent deity in pitchy darkness
The issue of futurity conceals,
And smiles when man beyond the right of mortals,
His fear about the time to come reveals.
Thou should'st concern thee only with the present,
All else progresses as the river flows,
Which gliding at one time in middle channel
Toward the Tuscan Sea unruffled goes;
Or at another time, herds, trees, and houses,
And broken rocks to one destruction drags,
When wild the flood provokes the quiet current
With noise from neighboring woods and distant crags.
Happy he lives, and of himself is master,
That man who can at night with truth declare,
"I have lived to-day, to-morrow let the Father
Make as he will my sky or dark or fair,
"It is not his to render vain and worthless
My happy past - the bliss has dearer grown
That the fleet-footed hour carried with it;
The joys that once have been are still my own.
"Now upon me, again on others smiling,
Fortune rejoices in her savage trade
Of shifting thus at will uncertain honors,
As stubbornly her mocking game is played.
"I praise her when she stays, but if she leave me,
Fluttering her airy wings in hasty flight,
I yield her what she gave, and wrapped in virtue,
In dowerless Poverty find my delight.
"Although the mast may crack beneath the South wind,
I will not rush with many a doleful prayer
To barter thus my vows, lest all my treasure
From Tyre and Cyprus should become a share
"Of what the greedy sea has in possession;
Nay! then, protected in my two-oared boat,
With favoring winds, and with twin Pollux guiding
Safe through the gean tempests I will float."
(This version won, in 1890, the Sargent Prize, offered annually to students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College.)