Page:The works of Horace - Christopher Smart.djvu/128

 ODE XIII.

gods have heard my prayers, O Lyce; Lyce, the gods have heard my prayers, you are become an old woman, and yet you would fain seem a beauty; and you wanton and drink in an audacious manner; and when drunk, solicit tardy Cupid, with a quivering voice. He basks in the charming cheeks of the blooming Chia, who is a proficient on the lyre. The teasing urchin flies over blasted oaks, and starts back at the sight of you, because foul teeth, because wrinkles and snowy hair render you odious. Now neither Coan purples nor sparkling jewels restore those years, which winged time has inserted in the public annals. Whither is your beauty gone? Alas! or whither your bloom? Whither your graceful deportment? What have you [remaining] of her, of her, who breathed loves, and ravished me from myself? Happy next to Cynara, and distinguished for an aspect of graceful ways: but the fates granted a few years only to Cynara, intending to preserve for a long time Lyce, to rival in years the aged raven: that the fervid young fellows might see, not without excessive laughter, that torch, [which once so brightly scorched,] reduced to ashes.

ODE XIV.

zeal of the senators, or what of the Roman people, by decreeing the most ample honors, can eternize your virtues, O Augustus, by monumental inscriptions and lasting records? O thou, wherever the sun illuminates the habitable regions, greatest of princes, whom the Vindelici, that never experienced the Roman sway, have lately learned how powerful thou art in war! For Drusus, by means of your soldiery, has more than once bravely overthrown the Genauni, an implacable race, and the rapid Brenci, and the citadels