These themes ill suit the merry lyre. Whither, muse, are you
going?--Cease, impertinent, to relate the language of the gods, and to
debase great things by your trifling measures.

* * * * *



ODE IV.

TO CALLIOPE.


Descend from heaven, queen Calliope, and come sing with your pipe a
lengthened strain; or, if you had now rather, with your clear voice, or
on the harp or lute of Phoebus. Do ye hear? or does a pleasing frenzy
delude me? I seem to hear [her], and to wander [with her] along the
hallowed groves, through which pleasant rivulets and gales make their
way. Me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep the woodland
doves, famous in story, covered with green leaves in the Apulian Vultur,
just without the limits of my native Apulia; so that it was matter of
wonder to all that inhabit the nest of lofty Acherontia, the Bantine
Forests, and the rich soil of low Ferentum, how I could sleep with my
body safe from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how I could be covered
with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, though a child, not
animated without the [inspiration of the] gods. Yours, O ye muses, I am
yours, whether I am elevated to the Sabine heights; or whether the cool
Praeneste, or the sloping Tibur, or the watery Baiae have delighted me.
Me, who am attached to your fountains and dances, not the army put to
flight at Philippi, not the execrable tree, nor a Palinurus in the