ODE XXIV.

TO VIRGIL.


What shame or bound can there be to our affectionate regret for so dear
a person? O Melpomene, on whom your father has bestowed a clear voice
and the harp, teach me the mournful strains. Does then perpetual sleep
oppress Quinctilius? To whom when will modesty, and uncorrupt faith the
sister of Justice, and undisguised truth, find any equal? He died
lamented by many good men, but more lamented by none than by you, my
Virgil. You, though pious, alas! in vain demand Quinctilius back from
the gods, who did not lend him to us on such terms. What, though you
could strike the lyre, listened to by the trees, with more sweetness
than the Thracian Orpheus; yet the blood can never return to the empty
shade, which Mercury, inexorable to reverse the fates, has with his
dreadful Caduceus once driven to the gloomy throng. This is hard: but
what it is out of our power to amend, becomes more supportable by
patience.

* * * * *



ODE XXV.

TO LYDIA.