SOURCE: Lee, M. Owen. “Words.” In Word, Sound, and Image in the Odes of Horace, pp. 7-28. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969.

In the following essay, Lee examines Horace's use and arrangement of words, including the use of the transferred epithet, hendiadys, word association, and oxymoron.

“Beauty of form has made him immortal, and fully half that beauty lies in the order of his words.”

—Gilbert Murray

Poems Are Made from words. But not quite as walls are made from bricks. Bricks are durable and insensitive. They are, moreover, made for building. But words—some simply do not look right on the printed page; others are not suited to the metrical scheme; others are too lofty or too lowly for the poet's purpose:

audebit, quaecumque parum splendoris habebunt et sine pondere erunt et honore indigna ferentur, verba movere loco, quamvis invita recedant

(Epistles 2.2.111-13).

(The poet) will...