This be our part--let Heaven dispose the rest; If Jove commands, the winds shall sleep That now wage war upon the foamy deep, And gentle gales spring from the balmy west. E'en let us shift to-morrow as we may: When to-morrow's passed away, We at least shall have to say, We have lived another day; Your auburn locks will soon be silvered o'er, Old age is at our heels, and youth returns no more. "GATHER YE ROSEBUDS WHILE YE MAY" Secure those golden early joys, That youth unsoured with sorrow bears, Ere withering time the taste destroys With sickness and unwieldy years. For active sports, for pleasing rest, This is the time to be possessed; The best is but in season best. The appointed tryst of promised bliss, The pleasing whisper in the dark, The half-unwilling willing kiss, The laugh that guides thee to the mark, When the kind nymph would coyness feign, And hides but to be found again-- These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain. GOD AND EMPEROR Saturnian Jove, parent and guardian god Of human kind, to thee the Fates award The care of Cæsar's reign; to thine alone Inferior, let his empire rise. Whether the Parthian's formidable power Or Indians or the Seres of the East, With humbled pride beneath his triumph fall, Wide o'er a willing world shall he Contented rule, and to thy throne shall bend Submissive. Thou in thy tremendous car Shalt shake Olympus' head, and at our groves Polluted hurl thy dreadful bolts. THE STRENGTH OF INNOCENCE The man of life, unstained and free from craft, Ne'er needs, my Fuscus, Moorish darts to throw; He needs no quiver filled with venomed shaft, Nor e'er a bow. Whether he fare thro' Afric's boiling shoals, Or o'er the Caucasus inhospitable, Or where the great Hydaspes river rolls, Renowned in fable. Once in a Sabine forest as I strayed Beyond my boundary, by fancy charmed, Singing my Lalage, a wolf, afraid, Shunned me unarmed. The broad oak-woods of hardy Daunia, Rear no such monster mid their fiercest scions, Nor Juba's arid Mauretania, The nurse of lions. Set me where, in the heart of frozen plains, No tree is freshened by a summer wind, A quarter of the globe enthralled by rains, And Jove unkind; Or set me 'neath the chariot of the Sun, Where, overnear his fires, no homes may be; I'll love, for her sweet smile and voice, but one-- My Lalage. TRANQUILLITY Should fortune frown, live thou serene; Nor let thy spirit rise too high, Though kinder grown she change the scene; Bethink thee, Delius, thou must die. Whether thy slow days mournful pass, Or swiftly joyous fleet away, While thou reclining on the grass Dost bless with wine the festal day.