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The evening breeze, may it be granted me,
In that fair city by the distant sea!...
The Eighth Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace.
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To C. Martius Censorinus.
“Donarem pateras grataque commodus...”
FREELY to my companions would I give
Beautiful bronzes, Censorinus, bowls
And tripods, once a guerdon to the souls
Of hardy Greeks; nor should’st thou bear away
The meanest of my gifts, could I but live
Possessed of arts like those Parrhasius plied,
Or Skopas, now depicting human clay
And now a god, in liquid colors one
In solid stone the other. But denied
To me are equal powers; need hast thou none
In mind or state for treasures like to these.
Thou dost delight in songs, and such are mine
To give, and fix a value to each song.
Not marbles carved with public elegies,
Whence to illustrious leaders still belong
In dreamless death their praises half divine,
Not the precipitate flights of Hannibal
Nor those retorted threats that wrought him shame,
Not impious Carthage and her flaming fall
More highly show, than the Calabrian Muse,