SOURCE: “The Horatian Ode” in Horace & His Lyric Poetry, The University Press, 1951, pp. 123-49.

In the following excerpt, Wilkinson analyzes the technical aspects of many of Horace's lyrics, outlining their chief characteristics and construction.

Perhaps it will be best to clear the way for the study of what Horatian lyric is by recollecting what it is not. In the first place, it is rarely ‘lyrical’, being the product of meditation rather than immediate emotion. There are, of course, exceptions, in tone if not in inspiration—I, 19 (Mater saeua Cupidinum), I, 26 (Musis amicus) and IV, 3 (Quem tu, Melpomene), for instance—but they are not many.¹ Though Horace himself constantly speaks of his lyre and the Latin word ‘ode’ had not then been invented, the longer pieces are nearer in feeling to what we call ‘odes’ (our associations with the word being no doubt coloured by his work) than to...