st married are in distress, lest your beauty
should slacken [the affections of] their husbands.

* * * * *

ODE IX.

TO TITUS VALGIUS.

Showers do not perpetually pour down upon the rough fields, nor do
varying hurricanes forever harass the Caspian Sea; nor, my friend
Valgius, does the motionless ice remain fixed throughout all the months,
in the regions of Armenia; nor do the Garganian oaks [always] labor
under the northerly winds, nor are the ash-trees widowed of their
leaves. But thou art continually pursuing Mystes, who is taken from
thee, with mournful measures: nor do the effects of thy love for him
cease at the rising of Vesper, or when he flies the rapid approach of
the sun. But the aged man who lived three generations, did not lament
the amiable Antilochus all the years of his life: nor did his parents or
his Trojan sisters perpetually bewail the blooming Troilus. At length
then desist from thy tender complaints; and rather let us sing the fresh
trophies of Augustus Caesar, and the Frozen Niphates, and the river
Medus, added to the vanquished nations, rolls more humble tides, and the
Gelonians riding within a prescribed boundary in a narrow tract of land.

* * * * *

ODE X.

TO LICINIUS MURENA.

O Licinius, you will lead a more correct course of life, by neither
always pursuing the main ocean, nor, while you cautiously are in dread
of storms, by pressing too much upon the hazardous shore. Whosoever
loves the golden mean, is secure from the sordidness of an antiquated
cell, and is too prudent to have a palace that might expose him to
envy, if the lofty pine is more frequently agitated with winds, and high
towers fall down with a heavier ruin, and lightnings strike the summits
of the mountains. A well-provided breast hopes in adversity, and fears
in prosperity. 'Tis the same Jupiter, that brings the hideous winters
back, and that takes them away. If it is ill with us now, it will not be
so hereafter. Apollo sometimes rouses the silent lyric muse, neither
does he always bend his bow. In narrow circumstances appear in high
spirits, and undaunted. In the same manner you will prudently contract
your sails, which are apt to be too much swollen in a prosperous gale.

* * * * *

ODE XI.

TO QUINTIUS HIRPINUS.

O Quintius Hirpinus, forbear to be inquisitive what the Cantabrian, and
the Scythian,