FIRST P YTHIAN Ode .
O lyre of gold!
Which Phaebus and that sister choir,
With crisped locks of darkest violet hue
Their seemly heritage forever hold:
The cadenced step hangs listening on thy chime;
Spontaneous joys ensue;
The vocal troop obey thy signal notes;
While sudden from the shrilling wire
To lead the solemn dance thy murmur floats
In its preluding flight of sound:
And in thy stream of music drowned
The forked lightning in Heaven's azure clime
Quenches its ever flowing fire.
The monarch eagle then hangs down
On either side his flagging wing,
And on Jove's sceptre rocks with slumbering head:
Hovering vapours darkling spread
O'er his archt beak and veil his filmy eye:
Thou pour'st a sweet mist from thy string;
And, as thy music's thrilling arrows fly,
He feels soft sleep effuse
From every pore its balmy-stealing dews,
And heaves his ruffled plumes in slumber's ecstasy.
Stern Mars hath dropt his sharpt and barbed spear,
And starts and smiles to hear
Thy warbled chant, while joy flows in upon his mind:
Thy music's weapons pierce, disarm
The demons of celestial kind,
By Apollo's music-charm,
And accent of the zoned, full-bosomed maids
That haunt Pieria's shades.
But they, whom Jove abhors, with shuddering ear
The voices of the Muses hear;
Whether they range the earth or tossing sea:
Such is that hundred-headed giant, he
Of blessed gods an enemy,
Typhon, who lies in chasm of Tartarus drear:
To whom Sicilia's legend-fabled cave
His nourisht being gave:
Now on his shaggy breast
Sicilia's isle and Cuma's sea-girt shore
Are ponderously prest;
And that round pillar of the sky
With congelation hoar,
Ætna, crushes him from high;
While the year rolls slow,
Nurse of keen-encrusted snow.
From forth whose secret caves
Fountains pure of liquid flame
With rush and roaring came;
And rivers rollings steep in fiery waves
In a stream of whitening smoke
On glowing ether broke:
And in the dark and dead of night
With pitchy-gathering cloud and glare of light
The volleying fire was heard to sweep
Masses of shivered rock with crashing sound.
Dasht midst the sullen ocean's waters deep.
There that Vulcanian dragon casts
His fiery whirlpool blasts;
Blazing in horrid light
On the sacred ken of mortal sight;
Far-bursting, marvellous to hear,
On the passing traveller's ear.
A miracle of sight and sound
To him, that muses, how fast-bound
That giant wallows on his flinty bed;
Under Ætna's beetling head
With blackening foliage crowned,
And deep beneath the mountain's roots profound;
While as his limbs at their huge length are spread
His back is scarred with many a rocky wound.
Oh, grant me, Jove! with strains like these
Thy gracious ear to please;
This forehead of green earth, this mount in air
Swelling, sublime, thine eye o'ersees;
The founder of illustrious fame
Bade the neighbouring city bear
The mountain's kindred name;
Its honours to the gazing crowd
Did the herald's voice proclaim
In him who, graced with conquest proud,
In chariots winning fresh renown
Wears now the Pythian crown.
The ocean-faring men,
When first they spread the sail,
Hope the favouring wind may blow;
Conceiving auspice then
That the same happy gale
Shall speed their voyage back athwart the main,
Safe-passing to and fro:
So my prophetic strain
From these auspicious deeds,
Augurs Ætna's future fame
In crowds and conquering steeds,
And harpt in banquets a melodious name,
Delian and Pataraean king!
Phaebus! that lovest Castalia's fount,
Flowing round Parnassus mount,
Hear what now I sing:
Lay it within thy soul to distant time;
And let Sicilia's clime,
As now, with men heroic spring.
For from the gods descend
All high designs that here on earth
Point the virtues to their end:
The wise of thought, the strong of hand,
The eloquent of tongue,
Not from ourselves are sprung,
But from a secret and divine command
Are ushered into birth.
Now while the hope within me stirs, to praise
That man of victory,
While in my poising grasp I raise
The brass-tipt javelin high:
Let it not wide-starting stray;
But speeding on its way
Far overleap each rival's cast:
Time! let the future as the past,
Felicity bestow,
And bid the source of bounty flow
And sickness in oblivion lay.
Jove! grant that such renown
Be theirs, the people and the kings,
Dwelling by clear Amena's springs:
The laws and liberties, whose fame has hung
On every human tongue,
These let them judge themselves and know them for their own.
Guide to virtue! trained by thee
Let this thy son his people turn again
To concord's peaceful ways;
Bound, till his silver-haired decline of days
In mutual order's chain:
Father! I pray thee give the nod of Fate;
Let the Phaenician rest at peace
Within his turret; let the Tuscan shout
Of yelling battle cease;
Who saw at Cuma late
Their navy's wreck and rout.
That leader of the Syracusan host
With galleys swiftly rushing them pursued;
And they his onset rued:
When on the Cuman coast
He dasht their youth in gulfy waves below,
And rescued Greece from heavy servitude.
My strain might grasp the Salaminian day
When Athens frayed the Persian foe;
And glory should her act repay:
Let Sparta tell
How at Cithaeron's foot the Medians fell,
And cast their crooked bows away;
But first my harp should sound the lay
On the banks of Himera's stream,
Whose waters limpid flow;
Dinomenes' brave sons absorb my theme,
Whose valour quelled the Punic foe.
The seasonable speech
Grasping in narrow space the sum of things,
Draws less the biting obloquy
Of man's invidious tongue;
But swoln satiety
Fastidious loathing brings
The hearer's thoughts quick soar beyond its reach;
And fame sheds secret gall
In citizens with envy stung
At envy's noble deeds;
Yet better envy, than the tear let fall
By pity, o'er the ills corruption breeds;
Then pass not virtue by!
In steady justice bold
The nation's rudder hold;
Governed and guided still!
And shape thy tongue and will
On the forge of verity.
The lightest word that falls from thee, O King!
Becomes a mighty and momentous thing;
O'er many placed as arbiter on high,
Many thy goings watchful see;
Thy ways on every side
A host of witnesses descry.
Then let thy liberal temper be thy guide;
If ever to thine ear
Fame's softest whisper yet was dear,
Stint not thy bounty's flowing tide;
Stand at the helm of state; full to the gale
Spread thy wind-gathering sail.
Friend! let not plausive avarice spread
Its lures, to tempt thee from the path of fame:
For know the glory of a name
Follows the mighty dead.
Praise lights the beaten road
Which the departed trod,
And gilds the speaker's tongue, the poet's lays;
Not Craesus' virtue mild decays;
But hateful fame shall ever cling
To Phaleris, him merciless of mind,
Who in the brazen bull's rebellowing void
Burned with the flame his kind;
Never for him the social roof shall ring
With sound of harps in descant sweet;
Ne'er has his name employed
The tongue of boys, that prattling tales repeat;
The virtuous deed
Is honour's highest meed;
That deed's recorded fame
Next touches with delight the human ear;
The man that thus shall act and hear
May the crown of glory claim.
O lyre of gold!
Which Phaebus and that sister choir,
With crisped locks of darkest violet hue
Their seemly heritage forever hold:
The cadenced step hangs listening on thy chime;
Spontaneous joys ensue;
The vocal troop obey thy signal notes;
While sudden from the shrilling wire
To lead the solemn dance thy murmur floats
In its preluding flight of sound:
And in thy stream of music drowned
The forked lightning in Heaven's azure clime
Quenches its ever flowing fire.
The monarch eagle then hangs down
On either side his flagging wing,
And on Jove's sceptre rocks with slumbering head:
Hovering vapours darkling spread
O'er his archt beak and veil his filmy eye:
Thou pour'st a sweet mist from thy string;
And, as thy music's thrilling arrows fly,
He feels soft sleep effuse
From every pore its balmy-stealing dews,
And heaves his ruffled plumes in slumber's ecstasy.
Stern Mars hath dropt his sharpt and barbed spear,
And starts and smiles to hear
Thy warbled chant, while joy flows in upon his mind:
Thy music's weapons pierce, disarm
The demons of celestial kind,
By Apollo's music-charm,
And accent of the zoned, full-bosomed maids
That haunt Pieria's shades.
But they, whom Jove abhors, with shuddering ear
The voices of the Muses hear;
Whether they range the earth or tossing sea:
Such is that hundred-headed giant, he
Of blessed gods an enemy,
Typhon, who lies in chasm of Tartarus drear:
To whom Sicilia's legend-fabled cave
His nourisht being gave:
Now on his shaggy breast
Sicilia's isle and Cuma's sea-girt shore
Are ponderously prest;
And that round pillar of the sky
With congelation hoar,
Ætna, crushes him from high;
While the year rolls slow,
Nurse of keen-encrusted snow.
From forth whose secret caves
Fountains pure of liquid flame
With rush and roaring came;
And rivers rollings steep in fiery waves
In a stream of whitening smoke
On glowing ether broke:
And in the dark and dead of night
With pitchy-gathering cloud and glare of light
The volleying fire was heard to sweep
Masses of shivered rock with crashing sound.
Dasht midst the sullen ocean's waters deep.
There that Vulcanian dragon casts
His fiery whirlpool blasts;
Blazing in horrid light
On the sacred ken of mortal sight;
Far-bursting, marvellous to hear,
On the passing traveller's ear.
A miracle of sight and sound
To him, that muses, how fast-bound
That giant wallows on his flinty bed;
Under Ætna's beetling head
With blackening foliage crowned,
And deep beneath the mountain's roots profound;
While as his limbs at their huge length are spread
His back is scarred with many a rocky wound.
Oh, grant me, Jove! with strains like these
Thy gracious ear to please;
This forehead of green earth, this mount in air
Swelling, sublime, thine eye o'ersees;
The founder of illustrious fame
Bade the neighbouring city bear
The mountain's kindred name;
Its honours to the gazing crowd
Did the herald's voice proclaim
In him who, graced with conquest proud,
In chariots winning fresh renown
Wears now the Pythian crown.
The ocean-faring men,
When first they spread the sail,
Hope the favouring wind may blow;
Conceiving auspice then
That the same happy gale
Shall speed their voyage back athwart the main,
Safe-passing to and fro:
So my prophetic strain
From these auspicious deeds,
Augurs Ætna's future fame
In crowds and conquering steeds,
And harpt in banquets a melodious name,
Delian and Pataraean king!
Phaebus! that lovest Castalia's fount,
Flowing round Parnassus mount,
Hear what now I sing:
Lay it within thy soul to distant time;
And let Sicilia's clime,
As now, with men heroic spring.
For from the gods descend
All high designs that here on earth
Point the virtues to their end:
The wise of thought, the strong of hand,
The eloquent of tongue,
Not from ourselves are sprung,
But from a secret and divine command
Are ushered into birth.
Now while the hope within me stirs, to praise
That man of victory,
While in my poising grasp I raise
The brass-tipt javelin high:
Let it not wide-starting stray;
But speeding on its way
Far overleap each rival's cast:
Time! let the future as the past,
Felicity bestow,
And bid the source of bounty flow
And sickness in oblivion lay.
Jove! grant that such renown
Be theirs, the people and the kings,
Dwelling by clear Amena's springs:
The laws and liberties, whose fame has hung
On every human tongue,
These let them judge themselves and know them for their own.
Guide to virtue! trained by thee
Let this thy son his people turn again
To concord's peaceful ways;
Bound, till his silver-haired decline of days
In mutual order's chain:
Father! I pray thee give the nod of Fate;
Let the Phaenician rest at peace
Within his turret; let the Tuscan shout
Of yelling battle cease;
Who saw at Cuma late
Their navy's wreck and rout.
That leader of the Syracusan host
With galleys swiftly rushing them pursued;
And they his onset rued:
When on the Cuman coast
He dasht their youth in gulfy waves below,
And rescued Greece from heavy servitude.
My strain might grasp the Salaminian day
When Athens frayed the Persian foe;
And glory should her act repay:
Let Sparta tell
How at Cithaeron's foot the Medians fell,
And cast their crooked bows away;
But first my harp should sound the lay
On the banks of Himera's stream,
Whose waters limpid flow;
Dinomenes' brave sons absorb my theme,
Whose valour quelled the Punic foe.
The seasonable speech
Grasping in narrow space the sum of things,
Draws less the biting obloquy
Of man's invidious tongue;
But swoln satiety
Fastidious loathing brings
The hearer's thoughts quick soar beyond its reach;
And fame sheds secret gall
In citizens with envy stung
At envy's noble deeds;
Yet better envy, than the tear let fall
By pity, o'er the ills corruption breeds;
Then pass not virtue by!
In steady justice bold
The nation's rudder hold;
Governed and guided still!
And shape thy tongue and will
On the forge of verity.
The lightest word that falls from thee, O King!
Becomes a mighty and momentous thing;
O'er many placed as arbiter on high,
Many thy goings watchful see;
Thy ways on every side
A host of witnesses descry.
Then let thy liberal temper be thy guide;
If ever to thine ear
Fame's softest whisper yet was dear,
Stint not thy bounty's flowing tide;
Stand at the helm of state; full to the gale
Spread thy wind-gathering sail.
Friend! let not plausive avarice spread
Its lures, to tempt thee from the path of fame:
For know the glory of a name
Follows the mighty dead.
Praise lights the beaten road
Which the departed trod,
And gilds the speaker's tongue, the poet's lays;
Not Craesus' virtue mild decays;
But hateful fame shall ever cling
To Phaleris, him merciless of mind,
Who in the brazen bull's rebellowing void
Burned with the flame his kind;
Never for him the social roof shall ring
With sound of harps in descant sweet;
Ne'er has his name employed
The tongue of boys, that prattling tales repeat;
The virtuous deed
Is honour's highest meed;
That deed's recorded fame
Next touches with delight the human ear;
The man that thus shall act and hear
May the crown of glory claim.