Aurave distinctos educit verna colores[68].
In this Ode he expresses not merely, as in the Acme and Septimius, his sympathy with the joy of the hour. He recognises in marriage a greater good than in the love for a mistress. He associates it with thoughts of the power and security of the household, of the pure happiness of parental love, of the continuance of a time-honoured name, and of the birth of new defenders of the State.
The charm of the poem does not arise from its tone of feeling and its clear ringing melody alone. The bright spirit of the day awakens the inward eye which creates pictures and images of beauty in harmony with itself. The poet sees Hymenaeus coming from the distant rocks of Helicon, robed in saffron, and wreathed with fragrant amaracus, in radiant power and glory, chanting the song with his ringing voice, beating the ground with his foot, shaking the pine-torch in his hand. As the doors of the house are opened, and the bride is expected by the singers outside, by one vivid flash of imagination he reveals all their eager excitement—
Viden ut faces
Splendidas quatiunt comas?
The two pictures, further on in the poem, of a peaceful old age prolonged to the utmost limit of human life—
Usque dum tremulum movens
Cana tempus anilitas
Omnia omnibus annuit,—
and of infancy, awakening into consciousness and affection,—