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In spite of all the scholiasts have written there is no clue whatever to the occasion of this Ode.' It is doubtful whether the first word should be Poscimur' or Poscimus.' If the first, it may mean that he had been requested to write on some subject of the day, though nobody knows what; but it may also mean that he felt the poetic afflatus upon him, and was bound accordingly.

I AM required. If with thee idling ever

In the cool shade, aught have I uttered, destined
This year and more to live-a Latin carol

Sing now, my rebeck.

Thou who first tuned wert by a Lesbic townsman, Who, in arms fierce, still in the midst of conflict, Or after making fast his storm-tost galley

To the dank seabeach,

Would of wine sing, music, and lovely Venus,
And of the boy ever on her attendant,
Lycus too sing, graceful with jetty ringlets
And with jet eyeballs.

Shell, who art welcomed at high Jove's carousals, Pride of bright Phoebus, and my labour's dulcet Solace, propitiously assist whene'er I

Duly invoke thee.

XXXII. AD TESTUDINEM.

POSCIMUR. Si quid vacui sub umbra Lusimus tecum, quod et hunc in annum Vivat et plures, age, dic Latinum, Barbite, carmen.

Lesbio primum modulate civi,
Qui ferox bello, tamen inter arma,
Sive jactatam religarat udo

Litore navim,

Liberum et Musas, Veneremque et illi
Semper haerentem puerum canebat,
Et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque
Crine decorum.

O decus Phoebi, et dapibus supremi
Grata testudo Jovis, O laborum
Dulce lenimen, mihi cumque salve

Rite vocanti.

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Horace was much attached to his brother poet Tibullus, who was indeed a favourite with his contemporaries generally. That he wrote elegies, was not rarely crossed in love, and that he was on some occasion in a desponding humour, are facts sufficient to form a probable foundation for this good-humoured little poem.'

CEASE, Albius, cease this too lengthened repining
For pitiless Glycera's falsehood, this whining
In pitiful dirge, of a youngster outshining
Her ancienter swain, in her sight.

Lycoris, renowned for low forehead, is burning
With passion for Cyrus, while Cyrus is yearning
For Pholoë coy; but she-goats will be turning,
With Puglian wolves to unite,

Ere Pholoë sin with adulterer base.

Such is Venus's will, who no better sport has
Than with savage glee bidding 'neath brazen yoke pass
Forms and minds with each other at war.

Me, to whom her affections a worthier gave,

Did Myrtale's ravishing fetters enslave,

A freedwoman, rougher than Adrian wave
Incurving Calabria's shore.

XXXIII. AD ALBIUM TIBULLUM.

ALBI, ne doleas plus nimio, memor
Immitis Glycerae, neu miserabiles
Decantes e'egos, cur tibi junior
Laesa praeniteat fide.

Insignem tenui fronte Lycorida
Cyri torret amor, Cyrus in asperam
Declinat Pholoën: sed prius Apulis
Jungentur capreae lupis,

Quam turpi Pholoë peccet adultero.
Sic visum Veneri, cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga aënea
Saevo mittere cum joco.

Ipsum me, melior cum peteret Venus,
Grata detinuit compede Myrtale
Libertina, fretis acrior Hadriae

Curvantis Calabros sinus.

A SPARING and infrequent worshipper
While, steeped in an insane philosophy,
I went astray-now back again am I
Compelled to set my sail, and to recur
To my old courses: for the Sire of Heaven,
Who the cloud-masses with his fiery sheen
Cleaves mostly, has athwart the clear serene
His thundering steeds and flying chariot driven,
Whereat the stolid earth and truant streams,
Dark dens of odious Taenarus and Styx,
And Atlantean limitary peaks,

Shuddered. That deity can all extremes
Of high and low reverse: the mean uprear
And the proud humble. With shrill dissonance,
Rude fortune snatches off the plume from hence
And joys in having placed it otherwhere.

Augustus was meditating one expedition against the Britons and another against the East, and Horace here commends him to the care of Fortune the preserver.

GODDESS, who reign'st o'er pleasant Antium,
Potent to raise the mortal body from

Abjectest state, or triumphs proud
To cover with funereal shroud!

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