Not ceaseless falls the heavy shower
That drenches deep the furrow'd lea;
Nor do continual tempests pour
On the vex'd [2]Caspian's billowy sea;
Nor yet the ice, in silent horror, stands
Thro' _all_ the passing months on pale [3]Armenia's Lands.
Fierce storms do not for _ever_ bend
The Mountain's vast and labouring oak,
Nor from the ash its foliage rend,
With ruthless whirl, and widowing stroke;
But, Valgius, thou, with grief's eternal lays
Mournest thy vanish'd joys in MYSTES' shorten'd days.
When [4]Vesper trembles in the west,
Or flies before the orient sun,
Rise the lone sorrows of thy breast.--
Not thus did aged Nestor shun
Consoling strains, nor always sought the tomb,
Where sunk his [5]filial Hopes, in life and glory's bloom.
Not thus, the lovely Troilus slain,
His Parents wept the Princely Boy;
Nor thus his Sisters mourn'd, in vain,
The blasted Flower of sinking Troy;
Cease, then, thy fond complaints!--Augustus' fame,
The new Cesarian wreaths, let thy lov'd voice proclaim!
So shall the listening World be told
[6]Medus, and cold Niphates guide,
With all their mighty Realms controul'd,
Their late proud waves in narrower tide;
That in scant space their steeds the [7]Scythians rein,
Nor dare transgress the bounds our Victor Arms ordain.
1: This Ode is addressed to his Friend, an illustrious Roman, who had
lost a beloved Son. The poetic literature of Titus Valgius is
ascertained by the honourable mention made of him by Horace, in his
Tenth Satire, Book the First. Valgius, like Sir Brooke Boothby, in
these days, had poured forth a train of elegiac Sorrows over the
blight of his filial hopes. Horace does not severely reprove these
woes, he only wishes they may not be eternal, and that he will, at
least, suspend them and share the public joy; for this Ode was
composed while the splendid victories, which Augustus had obtained in
the East, were recent.
2: The _Caspian_ is a stormy and harbourless Sea--Yet the
Poet observes that not even the _Caspian_ is _always_
tempestuous--insinuating, that inevitable as his grief must be for
such a loss, it yet ought not to be incessant.
3: The coldness of _Armenia_ is well known, surrounded as it is by
the high mountains of _Niphates_, _Taurus_, _Pariades_, _Antiaurus_,
and _Ararat_, which are always covered with snow.
4: VESPER--alike the Evening and Morning Star--appearing _first_ and
remaining last in the Horizon, it ushers in both the Evening and the
Dawn. In the first instance it is called Vesper, or Hesperus, in the
last Lucifer, or Phospher.
5: _Filial Hopes._ Antilochus, the Son of Nestor, observing his
Father likely to fall in Battle, by the sword of his Adversary, threw
himself between the Combatants, and thus sacrificed his own life to
preserve that of his Parent.
6: By the Rivers _Medus_, and _Niphates_, are meant the _Parthians_,
or _Scythians_, for they are the same people, and the _Armenians_.
The River Tigris, rising in the cold Mountain, Niphates, Horace gives
its name to the Stream, as he does that of Medus to the Euphrates,
which Plato asserts to have been formerly so called. Uniting those
Rivers in his verse, the Poet means to denote the Roman Conquest over
two Enemies widely distant from each other.
7: The Scythians, or Parthians, were a warlike People, famous for
their Equestrian prowess, for the speed of their horses, and for the
unerring aim of their arrows, shot when flying on full speed.
Augustus obliged their King, Phraätes, not only to restore the Roman
Standards and Prisoners, taken many years before, but to withdraw his
Troops from Armenia.