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ODE XX.

To Maecenas.

I, a two-formed poet, will be conveyed through the liquid air with no vulgar or humble wing; nor will I loiter upon earth any longer; and superior to envy, I will quit cities.  Not I, even I, the blood of low parents, my dear Maecenas, shall die; nor shall I be restrained by the Stygian wave.  At this instant a rough skin settles upon my ankles, and all upwards I am transformed into a white bird, and the downy plumage arises over my fingers and shoulders.  Now, a melodious bird, more expeditious than the Daepalean Icarus, I will visit the shores of the murmuring Bosphorus, and the Gzetulean Syrtes, and the Hyperborean plains.  Me the Colchian and the Dacian, who hides his fear of the Marsian cohort, land the remotest Gelonians, shall know:  me the learned Spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the Rhone.  Let there be no dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous honors of a sepulcher.

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THE THIRD BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.

ODE I.

On Contentment.

I abominate the uninitiated vulgar, and keep them at a distance.  Preserve a religious silence:  I, the priest of the Muses, sing to virgins and boys verses not heard before.  The dominion of dread sovereigns is over their own subjects; that of Jupiter, glorious for his conquest over the giants, who shakes all nature with his nod, is over sovereigns themselves.  It happens that one man, arranges trees, in regular rows, to a greater extent than another; this man comes down into the Campus [Martius] as a candidate of a better family; another vies with him for morals and a better reputation; a third has a superior number of dependants; but Fate, by the impartial law of nature, is allotted both to the conspicuous and the obscure; the capacious urn keeps every name in motion.  Sicilian dainties will not force a delicious relish to that man, over whose impious neck the naked sword hangs:  the songs of birds and the lyre will not restore his sleep.  Sleep disdains not the humble cottages and shady bank of peasants; he disdains not Tempe, fanned by zephyrs.  Him, who desires but a competency, neither the tempestuous sea renders anxious, nor the malign violence of Arcturus setting, or of the rising Kid; not his vineyards beaten down with hail, and a deceitful farm; his plantations at one season blaming the rains, at another, the influence of the constellations parching the grounds, at another, the severe winters.  The fishes perceive the seas contracted, by the vast foundations that have been laid in the deep:  hither numerous undertakers with their men, and lords, disdainful of the land, send down mortar:  but anxiety and the threats