ODE IX.
TO THALIARCHUS.
You see how Soracte[1] stands white with deep snow, nor can the laboring woods any longer support the weight, and the rivers stagnate with the sharpness of the frost. Dissolve the cold, liberally piling up billets on the hearth; and bring out, O Thaliarchus, the more generous wine, four years old, from the Sabine jar. Leave the rest to the gods, who having once laid the winds warring with the fervid ocean, neither the cypresses nor the aged ashes are moved. Avoid inquiring what may happen to-morrow; and whatever day fortune shall bestow on you, score it up[2] for gain; nor disdain, being a young fellow, pleasant loves, nor dances, as long as ill-natured hoariness keeps off from your blooming age. Now let both the Campus Martius and the public walks, and soft whispers[3] at the approach of evening be repeated at the appointed hour: now, too, the delightful laugh, the betrayer of the lurking damsel from some secret corner, and the token ravished from her arms or fingers, pretendingly tenacious of it.
ODE X.
TO MERCURY.
Mercury, eloquent grandson of Atlas,[4] thou who artful
- ↑ Soracte, a hill in Italy, in the country of the Sabines, consecrated to Apollo; which now is called St. Sylvester's Mount, because a pope of that name hid himself in a cave there, when Maxentius raised a sore persecution against the Christians. Watson.
- ↑ Appone. Ponere and apponere were terms used in arithmetic by the Romans. Dac.
- ↑ Susurri. This word is formed by the figure onomatopœia, from an imitation of the sound in whispering, as in Greek, ψιθυρίζειν, in Italian, bisbiglio, and in French, chucheter. Dac.
- ↑ Atlas, king of Mauritania, and brother to Prometheus; he was turned by Perseus into a mountain, whose top was so high, that it reached heaven, and is said to bear heaven up. Watson.
