BOOK I.—ODE III.
I.
Thee, may the Cyprian queen divine,
And Helen’s brethren, glittering sign,
And Æolus, the winds’ stern sire,
(Save Iapyx all his subjects bound,)
Ship! prosperous guide; that safe ashore
Our Virgil, to the Attic ground
Thou mayst, thy trusted freight, give o’er,
And save one half my soul entire.
II.
His bosom fenced brass triply stout,
Who first in fragile bark put out,
Braving the ocean; undeterr’d
By south-west winds, in contest dire
With north-east blasts; sad Hyades,
Or by the south wind’s fiercer ire,
Lord o’er the Adriatic seas
Calm’d at its sovereign will, or stirr’d.
III.
What shapes of death could him affright,
Who view’d those ill-famed summits, hight
Acroceraunia, and the swell
And swimming monsters of the main
With steadfast eye? God’s wise decree
Disjoins the lands remote in vain,
If impious, o’er the severing sea
The bark contemptuous sails propel.
IV.
Man, bold to endure where gain’s the cause,
Bursts through divine and human laws.
When bold Prometheus, for our race,
Plunder’d of fire the mansions blest
By wicked fraud, o’er earth new bands
Of fevers brooded; forward prest
The pestilence, and new commands
Quicken’d death’s first retarded pace.
V.
On pinions, unto man denied,
Once Dædalus void æther tried.
By force hell’s bounds Alcides past.
Nought is too arduous for man:
We foolish, heaven itself invade,
Our desperate crimes fresh outbreaks plan;
And force Jove’s hand, by mercy stay’d,
The angry bolts to launch at last.