Let not, O Xanthias Phoceus, your passion for your maid put you out of countenance; before your time, the slave Briseis moved the haughty Achilles by her snowy complexion.  The beauty of the captive Tecmessa smote her master, the Telamonian Ajax; Agamemnon, in the midst of victory, burned for a ravished virgin:  when the barbarian troops fell by the hands of their Thessalian conqueror, and Hector, vanquished, left Troy more easily to be destroyed by the Grecians.  You do not know that perchance the beautiful Phyllis has parents of condition happy enough to do honor to you their son-in-law.  Certainly she must be of royal race, and laments the unpropitiousness of her family gods.  Be confident, that your beloved is not of the worthless crowd; nor that one so true, so unmercenary, could possibly be born of a mother to be ashamed of.  I can commend arms, and face, and well-made legs, quite chastely:  avoid being jealous of one, whose age is hastening onward to bring its eighth mastrum to a close.

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ODE V.

Not yet is she fit to be broken to the yoke; not yet is she equal to the duties of a partner, nor can she support the weight of the bull impetuously rushing to enjoyment.  Your heifer’s sole inclination is about verdant fields, one while in running streams soothing the grievous heat; at another, highly delighted to frisk with the steerlings in the moist willow ground.  Suppress your appetite for the immature grape; shortly variegated autumn will tinge for thee the lirid clusters with a purple hue.  Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and doubtful countenance would wonderfully impose even on sagacious strangers.

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ODE VI.

To Septimus.

Septimus, who art ready to go with me, even to Gades, and to the Cantabrian, still untaught to bear our yoke, and the inhospitable Syrtes, where the Mauritanian wave perpetually boils.  O may Tibur, founded by a Grecian colony, be the habitation of my old age!  There let there be an end to my fatigues by sea, and land, and war; whence if the cruel fates debar me, I will seek the river of Galesus, delightful for sheep covered with skins, and the countries reigned over by Lacedaemonian Phalantus.  That corner of the world smiles in my eye beyond all others; where the honey yields not to the Hymettian, and the olive rivals the verdant Venafrian:  where the temperature of the air produces a long spring and mild winters, and Aulon friendly to the fruitful vine, envies not the Falernian grapes.  That place, and those blest heights, solicit you and me; there you shall bedew the glowing ashes of your poet friend with a tear due [to his memory].