Odes 2.14 (Martin): Eheu, Fugaces

Ah, Posthumus, the years, the fleeting years
Still onwards, onwards glide;
Nor mortal virtue may
Time's wrinkling fingers stay,
Nor Age's sure advance, nor Death's all-conquering stride.

Hope not by daily hecatombs of bulls
From Pluto to redeem
Thy life, who holds thrice vast
Geryon fetter'd fast,
And Tityus, by the waves of yonder rueful stream.

Sad stream, we all are doom'd one day to cross,
Ay, all that live by bread,
Whate'er our lot may be.
Great lords of high degree,
Alike with peasant churls, who scantily are fed.

In vain shall we war's bloody conflict shun,
And the hoarse scudding gale
Of Adriatic seas,
Or fly the southern breeze,
That through the Autumn hours wafts pestilence and bale.

For all must view Cocytus' pitchy tide
Meandering slow, and see
The accursed Danaids moil,
And that dread stone recoil,
Sad Sisyphus is doom'd to upheave eternally.

Land, home, and winsome wife must all be left;
And cypresses abhorr'd,
Alone of all the trees
That now your fancy please.
Shall shade the dust of him, who was their sometime lord.

Then, too, your long imprison'd Caecuban
A worthier heir shall drain,
And with a lordlier wine,
Than at the feasts divine
Of pontiffs flows, your floor in wassailry shall stain.