Odes 4.5 (Gladstone): Divis Orte Bonis

Best seed of gods, best keeper of the race
Of Romulus, thou art too long from home.
Thy word, giv'n in the Senate's holy place,
Redeem that word, and come.

Restore, good Prince, thy country's light of day,
For when thy visage dawns, like spring benign,
The hours more smoothly win their gracious way,
The suns more kindly shine.

When Notus blows, and envious blasts detain,
All round the circle of the rolling year,
Beyond the breadth of the Carpathian main,
Some youth, whose home is dear;

To omens, prayers, and vows, his mother turns
And bends her aching vision o'er the main,
With loyal longings so his country yearns
To see her prince again.

For Ceres now, and Fortune, nurse the seed;
Suspicion's breath from firm-set Honour flees;
The safe ox traverses a tranquil mead,
The sailors, tranquil seas.

The unpolluted home is free from lust;
Right laws, right habits, these have conquered crime;
The children's likeness stamps the father's trust;
Quick justice strikes in time.

Who cares how Parthian, or cold Scythian, thrives,
With what wild issue teem the German woods;
Who o'er the war, if only Caesar lives,
Of fierce Iberia broods?

Each, passing his own day at his own doors,
Trains vines athwart his trees: the joyous cup
Then handles as he wills, and thee adores
As god, in winding up.

As Hercules in Greece, or Castor, may,
So thou hast our libations and our prayers;
Before our Lares we, our debt to pay,
Thy godhead blend with theirs.

'Good prince, prolong our halcyon holiday:'
So we when sober, so when mellow crave,
Sober at sundawn, mellow when his ray
Has sunk beneath the wave.