IV.

To-morrow and her works defy,

Lay hold upon the present hour, And snatch the pleasures paffing by, Το put them out of fortune's pow'r : Nor love, nor love's delights difdain ; Whate'er thou get'ft to-day, is gain.

V.

Secure thofe golden early joys,

That youth unfour'd with forrow bears,
Ere with'ring time the taste destroys,
With fickness and unweildy years.
For active sports, for pleafing rest,
This is the time to be poffeft;

The best is but in feafon best.

VI.

Th' appointed hour of promis'd bliss,
The pleasing whisper in the dark,

The half unwilling willing kiss,

The laugh that guides thee to the mark, When the kind nymph would coynefs feign, And hides but to be found again;

These, these are joys the Gods for youth ordain.

*

THE

Twenty-ninth ODE of the First Book

OF

HORACE,

Paraphras'd in Pindaric verfe, and infcribed to the Right Hon. Laurence Earl of Rochefter.

D

I.

ESCENDED of an ancient line,

That long the Tuscan fceptre fway'd,

Make hafte to meet the generous wine,
Whose piercing is for thee delay'd;
The rofy wreath is ready made ;
And artful hands prepare

The fragrant Syrian oil, that shall perfume thy hair.

II.

When the wine fparkles from afar,

And the well-natur'd friend cries, Come away; Make haste, and leave thy business and thy care: No mortal int'reft can be worth thy stay.

III.

Leave for a while thy coftly country feat ;
And, to be great indeed, forget

The nauseous pleasures of the great:

Make hafte and come:

Come, and forfake thy cloying store;

Thy turret that furveys, from high,

The fmoke, and wealth, and noife of Rome; And all the bufy pageantry

That wife men fcorn, and fools adore:

Come, give thy foul a loose, and tafte the pleasures

Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try
A short viciffitude, and fit of poverty:
A favory dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the ftately fpacious room,
The Perfian carpet, or the Tyrian loom,
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.

V.

The fun is in the lion mounted high;
The Syrian ftar,

Barks from afar,

And with his fultry breath infects the sky;

The ground below is parch'd, the Heav'ns above

us fry.

The shepherd drives his fainting flock

Beneath the covert of a rock,

And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh;

The Sylvans to their shades retire,

Those very fhades and ftreams new fhades and

ftreams require,

[raging fire. And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the

VI.

Thou, what befits the new Lord Mayor,
And what the city factions dare,

And what the Gallic arms will do,
And what the quiver-bearing foe,
Art anxiously inquifitive to know:
But God has, wifely, hid from human fight
The dark decrees of future fate,

And fown their feeds in depth of night;

He laughs at all the giddy turns of state; When mortals fearch too foon, and fear too late. VII.

Enjoy the present smiling hour;

And put it out of fortune's pow'r :
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is fometimes high, and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb, or a tempeftuous flow,
And always in extreme.

Now with a noiseless gentle course

It keeps within the middle bed;

Anon it lifts aloft the head,

[force:

And bears down all before it with impetuous

And trunks of trees come rowling down, Sheep and their folds together drown: Both house and homested into feas are borne; And rocks are from their old foundations torn, And woods, made thin with winds, their scatter'd [honors mourn.

VIII.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who, fecure within, can fay,

To-morrow do thy worst, for I have liv'd to

[day

Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have poffefs'd, in fpite of fate are mine,

Not Heav'n itself upon the paft has pow'r; But what has been, has been, and I have had my

IX.

Fortune, that, with malicious joy,

Does man her flave oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,

[hour.

Is feldom pleas'd to bless:
Still various and unconftant ftill,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in ftrife,

And makes a lottery of life.

I can enjoy her while fhe's kind; But when the dances in the wind,