Inviting with known sound the milker’s hand; And when from wholesome labour he doth come, With wishes to be there, and wished for home, He meets at door the softest human blisses, His chaste wife’s welcome, and dear children’s kisses. When any rural holydays invite His genius forth to innocent delight, On earth’s fair bed beneath some sacred shade, Amidst his equal friends carelessly laid, He sings thee, Bacchus, patron of the vine, The beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine, Not to the loss of reason or of strength. To active games and manly sport at length Their mirth ascends, and with filled veins they see, Who can the best at better trials be. Such was the life the prudent Sabine chose, From such the old Etrurian virtue rose. Such, Remus and the god his brother led, From such firm footing Rome grew the world’s head. Such was the life that even till now does raise The honour of poor Saturn’s golden days: Before men born of earth and buried there, Let in the sea their mortal fate to share, Before new ways of perishing were sought, Before unskilful death on anvils wrought. Before those beasts which human life sustain, By men, unless to the gods’ use, were slain.

Oh

Horat. Epodon.

Horat

Epodon

Beatus ille qui procul, etc.

Happy time man whom bounteous gods allow With his own hand paternal grounds to plough! Like the first golden mortals, happy he, From business and the cares of money free! No human storms break off at land his sleep, No loud alarms of nature on the deep. From all the cheats of law he lives secure, Nor does th’ affronts of palaces endure. Sometimes the beauteous marriageable vine He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join; Sometimes he lops the barren trees around, And grafts new life into the fruitful wound; Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. He sees his lowing herds walk o’er the plain, Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again. And when the season, rich as well as gay, All her autumnal bounty does display, How is he pleas’d th’ increasing use to see Of his well trusted labours bend the tree; Of which large shares, on the glad sacred days, He gives to friends, and to the gods repays. With how much joy does he, beneath some shade By aged trees, reverend embraces made, His careless head on the fresh green recline, His head uncharged with fear or with design. By him a river constantly complains, The birds above rejoice with various strains, And in the solemn scene their orgies keep Like dreams 

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