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ODE XVIII.

Against avarice and luxury.

Nor ivory, nor a fretted ceiling adorned with gold, glitters in my house:  no Hymettian beams rest upon pillars cut out of the extreme parts of Africa; nor, a pretended heir, have I possessed myself of the palace of Attalus, nor do ladies, my dependants, spin Laconian purple for my use.  But integrity, and a liberal vein of genius, are mine:  and the man of fortune makes his court to me, who am but poor.  I importune the gods no further, nor do I require of my friend in power any larger enjoyments, sufficiently happy with my Sabine farm alone.  Day is driven on by day, and the new moons hasten to their wane.  You put out marble to be hewn, though with one foot in the grave; and, unmindful of a sepulcher, are building houses; and are busy to extend the shore of the sea, that beats with violence at Baiae, not rich enough with the shore of the mainland.  Why is it, that through avarice you even pluck up the landmarks of your neighbor’s ground, and trespass beyond the bounds of your clients; and wife and husband are turned out, bearing in their bosom their household gods and their destitute children?  Nevertheless, no court more certainly awaits its wealthy lord, than the destined limit of rapacious Pluto.  Why do you go on?  The impartial earth is opened equally to the poor and to the sons of kings; nor has the life-guard ferryman of hell, bribed with gold, re-conducted the artful Prometheus.  He confines proud Tantalus; and the race of Tantalus, he condescends, whether invoked or not, to relieve the poor freed from their labors.

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ODE XIX.

On Bacchus.

A dithyrambic, or drinking song.

I saw Bacchus (believe it, posterity) dictating strains among the remote rocks, and the nymphs learning them, and the ears of the goat-footed satyrs all attentive.  Evoe! my mind trembles with recent dread, and my soul, replete with Bacchus, has a tumultuous joy, Evoe! spare me, Bacchus; spare me, thou who art formidable for thy dreadful thyrsus.  It is granted me to sing the wanton Bacchanalian priestess, and the fountain of wine, and rivulets flowing with milk, and to tell again of the honeys distilling from the hollow trunks.  It is granted me likewise to celebrate the honor added to the constellations by your happy spouse, and the palace of Pentheus demolished with no light ruin, and the perdition of Thracian.  Lycurgus.  You command the rivers, you the barbarian sea.  You, moist with wine, on lonely mountain-tops bind the hair of your Thracian priestesses with a knot of vipers without hurt.  You, when the impious band of giants scaled the realms of father Jupiter through the sky, repelled Rhoetus, with the paws and horrible jaw of the lion-shape [you had assumed].  Thou, reported to be better fitted for dances, and jokes and play, you were accounted insufficient for fight; yet it then appeared, you, the same deity, was the mediator of peace and war.  Upon you, ornamented with your golden horn, Orberus innocently gazed, gently wagging his tail; and with his triple tongue licked your feet and legs, as you returned.