To Thaliarchus. I-9 (From The Odes Of Horace)

You see how our Soracte now is standing             Hoary with heavy snow, and now its weight         To bear the struggling woods are hardly able,             And with the bitter cold the streams stagnate.         The cold melt thou away, oh, Thaliarchus,             By heaping logs upon thy fire, again         Replenishing, and from a Sabine flagon             Wine of a four years' vintage draw thou then.         Leave to the gods the rest; for at the moment             They felled the winds upon the boiling sea         That battled fiercely, then there was not stirring             Or mountain-ash, or ancient cypress tree.         Cease thou to ask what is to be to-morrow,             The day that Fortune gives, score thou as gain.         As when a boy, thou shalt not scorn love's sweetness,             Nor smoothly moving dancers shalt disdain         While crabbed age from thy fresh youth is distant.             Now in the Field and in the Public Square         All the soft whisperings that come at night-fall             Shall at the trysting be repeated there.         Now, too, the tempting laugh from a far corner             That must the maiden lurking there betray!         Also the pledge that she in feigned resistance,             Lets from her arm or hand be taken away!