Odes 4.6 (Gladstone): Dive, Quem Proles

Apollo! thee gross Tityus knew,
Thee the lost race of Niobe,
Of lying boast for chastener true;
Achilles too had taste of thee,

O'er every foe victorious proved
Save only thee; divine his race;
Troy tottered, and his lance, but moved,
Shook Dardan towers to their base.

Yet, like some pine the axe has bit,
Or cypress bent to eastern blast,
In dust of Troy, by Phoebus smit,
His headlong frame the hero cast.

He did not sculk, that horse within,
That lied profanely, to beguile
Those revels, and the people's din
That neared its death, and danced the while.

In naked sternness he, ah! shame,
Seized infants innocent and dumb,
Gave Trojan babes to Danaan flame,
Aye, babes within the mother's womb.

'Twas but thy voice, with Venus loved,
Which gained from Jove the firm behest:
Aeneas should, when safe removed,
Build walls with happier omens blessed.

With thee the Argian song was born,
Thy locks the Xanthian stream bedews;
Descend, Agyieus! never shorn,
Be champion of the Daunian Muse.

To thee I owe the art of song,
The minstrel soul, the poet name.
O youths, and maidens, that prolong
The echo of your fathers' fame;

Wards of Diana, skilled to draw
The bow, o'er lynx and stag supreme,
Hold fast my Lesbian measure's law,
My Lesbian time for Daunian theme.

Then sing aloud Latona's son,
And sing the Moon with waxing horn,
That speeds the circling months, begun
And ended, and that swells the corn.

Each bride shall say ( I sang that song
What time the Jubilee returned,
Dear to the gods, and not in vain
From Poet Horace aptly learned.'