TO TITUS VALGIUS.
Horace
Showers do not perpetually pour down upon the rough fields, nor do
varying hurricanes forever harass the Caspian Sea; nor, my friend
Valgius, does the motionless ice remain fixed throughout all the months,
in the regions of Armenia; nor do the Garganian oaks [always] labor
under the northerly winds, nor are the ash-trees widowed of their
leaves. But thou art continually pursuing Mystes, who is taken from
thee, with mournful measures: nor do the effects of thy love for him
cease at the rising of Vesper, or when he flies the rapid approach of
the sun. But the aged man who lived three generations, did not lament
the amiable Antilochus all the years of his life: nor did his parents or
his Trojan sisters perpetually bewail the blooming Troilus. At length
then desist from thy tender complaints; and rather let us sing the fresh
trophies of Augustus Caesar, and the Frozen Niphates, and the river
Medus, added to the vanquished nations, rolls more humble tides, and the
Gelonians riding within a prescribed boundary in a narrow tract of land.
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