The cruel mother of the Cupids, and the son of the Theban Gemele, and lascivious ease, command me to give back my mind to its deserted loves.  The splendor of Glycera, shining brighter than the Parian marble, inflames me:  her agreeable petulance, and her countenance, too unsteady to be beheld, inflame me.  Venus, rushing on me with her whole force, has quitted Cyprus; and suffers me not to sing of the Scythians, and the Parthian, furious when his horse is turned for flight, or any subject which is not to the present purpose.  Here, slaves, place me a live turf; here, place me vervains and frankincense, with a flagon of two-year-old wine.  She will approach more propitious, after a victim has been sacrificed.

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ODE XX.

To Maecenas.

My dear knight Maecenas, you shall drink [at my house] ignoble Sabine wine in sober cups, which I myself sealed up in the Grecian cask, stored at the time, when so loud an applause was given to you in the amphitheatre, that the banks of your ancestral river, together with the cheerful echo of the Vatican mountain, returned your praises.  You [when you are at home] will drink the Caecuban, and the grape which is squeezed in the Calenian press; but neither the Falernian vines, nor the Formian hills, season my cups.

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ODE XXI.

On Diana and Apollo.

Ye tender virgins, sing Diana; ye boys, sing Apollo with his unshorn hair, and Latona passionately beloved by the supreme Jupiter.  Ye (virgins), praise her that rejoices in the rivers, and the thick groves, which project either from the cold Algidus, or the gloomy woods of Erymanthus, or the green Cragus.  Ye boys, extol with equal praises Apollo’s Delos, and his shoulder adorned with a quiver, and with his brother Mercury’s lyre.  He, moved by your intercession, shall drive away calamitous war, and miserable famine, and the plague from the Roman people and their sovereign Caesar, to the Persians and the Britons.

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ODE XXII.

To Aristius Fuscus.

The man of upright life and pure from wickedness, O Fuscus, has no need of the Moorish javelins, or bow, or quiver loaded with poisoned darts.  Whether he is about to make his journey through the sultry Syrtes, or the inhospitable Caucasus, or those places which Hydaspes, celebrated in story, washes.  For lately, as I was singing my Lalage, and wandered beyond my usual bounds, devoid of care, a wolf in the Sabine wood fled from me, though I was unarmed:  such a monster as neither the warlike Apulia nourishes in its extensive woods, nor the land of Juba, the dry-nurse of lions, produces.  Place me in those barren plains, where no tree is refreshed by the genial air; at that part of the world, which clouds and an inclement atmosphere infest.  Place me under the chariot of the too neighboring sun, in a land deprived of habitations; [there] will I love my sweetly-smiling, sweetly-speaking Lalage.