TO HIS LYRE.
Horace
We are called upon. If ever, O lyre, in idle amusement in the shade with
thee, we have played anything that may live for this year and many, come
on, be responsive to a Latin ode, my dear lyre--first tuned by a Lesbian
citizen, who, fierce in war, yet amid arms, or if he had made fast to
the watery shore his tossed vessel, sung Bacchus, and the Muses, and
Venus, and the boy, her ever-close attendant, and Lycus, lovely for his
black eyes and jetty locks. O thou ornament of Apollo, charming shell,
agreeable even at the banquets of supreme Jove! O thou sweet alleviator
of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee!
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