Odes 4.15 (Martin): Phoebus Volentem

To vanquish'd town and battle fray
I wish'd to dedicate my lay,
When Phoebus smote his lyre, and sang,
And in his strain this warning rang,
"Spread not your tiny sails to sweep
The surges of the Tyrrhene deep!"

Thy era, Caesar, which doth bless
Our plains anew with fruitfulness,
Back to our native skies hath borne
Our standards from the temples torn
Of haughty Parthia, and once more.
The hurricane of warfare o'er.
Hath closed Quirinian Janus' fane,
On lawless license cast a rein,
And, purging all the land from crime,
Recall'd the arts of olden time;
Those arts, by which the name and power
Of Italy grew hour by hour,
And Rome's renown and grandeur spread
To sunrise from Sol's western bed.

While Caesar rules, no civil jar,
Nor violence our ease shall mar,
Nor rage, which swords for carnage whets,
And feuds 'twixt hapless towns begets.
The Julian Edicts who shall break?
Not they, who in the Danube slake
Their thirst, nor Serican, nor Gete,
Nor Persian, practised in deceit,
Nor all the ruthless tribes, beside
The Danube's darkly-rolling tide.

And we, on working days and all
Our days of feast and festival,
Shall with our wives and children there,
Approaching first the gods In pray'r,
Whilst jovial Bacchus' gifts we pour,
Sing, as our fathers sang of yore,
To Lybian flutes, which answer round,
Of chiefs for mighty worth renown'd.
Of Troy, Anchises, and the line
Of Venus evermore benign!