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ODE XXXIII.

To Albius tibullus.

Grieve not too much, my Albius, thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man is more agreeable, than you in her eyes.  A love for Cyrus inflames Lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead:  Cyrus follows the rough Pholoe; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than Pholoe shall commit a crime with a base adulterer.  Such is the will of Venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes persons and tempers ill suited to each other.  As for myself, the slave-born Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic Sea that forms the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time that a more eligible love courted my embraces.

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ODE XXXIV.

Against the EPICURIANS.

A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back again, and to renew the course that I had deserted.  For Jupiter, who usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid seat of detested Taenarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken.  The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest, and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head, and delights in having placed it on another.

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ODE XXXV.

To fortune.

O Goddess, who presidest over beautiful Antium; thou, that art ready to exalt mortal man from the most abject state, or to convert superb triumphs into funerals!  Thee the poor countryman solicits with his anxious vows; whosoever plows the Carpathian Sea with the Bithynian vessel, importunes thee as mistress of the ocean.  Thee the rough Dacian, thee the wandering Scythians, and cities, and nations, and warlike Latium also, and the mothers of barbarian kings, and tyrants clad in purple, fear.  Spurn not with destructive foot that column which now stands firm, nor let popular tummult rouse those, who now rest quiet, to arms—­to arms—­and break the empire.  Necessity, thy minister, alway marches before thee, holding in her brazen hand huge spikes and wedges, nor is the unyielding clamp absent, nor the melted lead.  Thee Hope reverences, and rare Fidelity robed in a white garment; nor does she refuse to bear thee company, howsoever in wrath thou change thy robe, and abandon