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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,

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