ODE XIII.
TO A TREE.
O tree, he planted thee on an unlucky day whoever did it first, and with an impious hand raised thee for the destruction of posterity, and the scandal of the village. I could believe that he had broken his own father's neck, and stained his most secret apartments with the midnight blood of his guest. He was wont to handle Colchian poisons, and whatever wickedness is anywhere conceived, who planted in my field thee, a sorry log; thee, ready to fall on the head of thy inoffensive master. What we ought to be aware of, no man is sufficiently cautious at all hours. The Carthaginian sailor thoroughly dreads the Bosphorus; nor, beyond that, does he fear a hidden fate from any other quarter. The soldier dreads the arrows and the fleet retreat of the Parthian; the Parthian, chains and an Italian prison; but the unexpected assault of death has carried off, and will carry off, the world in general. How near was I seeing the dominions of black Proserpine, and Aeacus sitting in judgment; the separate abodes also of the pious, and Sappho complaining in her Aeohan lyre of her own country damsels; and thee, O Alcaeus, sounding in fuller strains on thy golden harp the distresses of exile, and the distresses of war. The ghosts admire them both, while they utter strains worthy of a sacred silence; but the crowded multitude, pressing with their shoulders, imbibes, with a more greedy ear, battles and banished tyrants. What wonder? Since the many headed monster, astonished at those lays, hangs down his sable ears; and the snakes, entwined in the hair of the furies, are soothed. Moreover, Prometheus and the sire of Pelops are deluded into an insensibility of their torments, by the melodious sound: nor is Orion any longer solicitous to harass the lions, or the fearful lynxes.
ODE XIV.
TO POSTUMUS.
Alas! my Postumus, my Postumus, the fleeting years gilde on; nor will piety cause any delay to wrinkles, and advancing old age, and insuperable death. You could not, if you were to sacrifice every passing day three hundred bulls, render propitious pitiless Pluto, who confines the thrice-monstrous Geryon and Tityus with the dismal Stygian stream, namely, that stream which is to be passed over by all who are fed by the bounty of the earth, whether we be kings or poor ninds. In vain shall we be free from sanguinary Mars, and the broken billows of the hoarse Adriatic; in vain shall we be apprehensive for ourselves of the noxious South, in the time of autumn. The black Cocytus wandering with languid current, and the infamous race of Danaus, and Sisyphus, the son of the Aeolus, doomed to eternal toil, must be visited; your land and house and pleasing wife must be left, nor shall any of those trees, which you are nursing, follow you, their master for a brief space, except the hated cypresses; a worthier heir shall consume your Caecuban wines now guarded with a hundred keys, and shall wet the pavement with the haughty wine, more exquisite than what graces pontifical entertainment.
ODE XV.