Odes From Horace. - To Phidyle. Exhorting Her To Be Content With A Frugal Sacrifice. Book The Third, Ode The Twenty-Third.

My Phidyle, retir'd in shady wild,
    If thou thy virgin hands shalt suppliant raise,
If primal fruits are on thy altars pil'd,
    And incense pure thy duteous care conveys,
To sooth the LARES, when the moon adorns,
With their first modest light, her taper horns;

And if we pierce the throat of infant swine,
    A frugal victim, not the baleful breath
Of the moist South shall blast our tender vine;
    Nor shall the lambs sink in untimely death
When the unwholesome gales of Autumn blow,
And shake the ripe fruit from the bending bough.

Let snowy Algidum's wide vallies feed,
    Beneath their stately holme, and spreading oak,
Or the rich herbage of Albania's mead,
    The Steer, whose blood on lofty Shrines shall smoke!
Red may it stain the Priest's uplifted knife,
And glut the higher Powers with costly life!

The rosemary and myrtle's simple crown
    Thou on our household Gods, with decent care
Art gently placing; and they will not frown;
    No stern demand is theirs, that we prepare
Rich Flocks, and Herds, at Duty's solemn call,
And, in the pomp of slaughter, bid them fall.

O! if an innocent hand approach the shrine,
    The little votive cake it humbly lays,
The crackling salt, that makes the altar shine,
    Flung on the cheerful sacrificial blaze,
To the mild LARES shall be grateful found
As the proud Steer, with all his garlands crown'd.

Anna Seward

Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet often called the 'Swan of Lichfield'. She was known for both her poetry and her extensive letter writing, which provided insight into 18th-century literary life. Seward was a steadfast critic of the neoclassicism that dominated much of the contemporary poetry scene, favoring a Romantic approach that sought to capture emotion and natural beauty. Her works often revolved around themes of love, loss, and nature. She was also a close friend of writers such as Erasmus Darwin and Samuel Johnson.

Anna Seward

Odes From Horace. - To Lyce, On Her Refusing To Admit His Visits. Book The Third, Ode The Tenth.

Anna Seward, Simple Poetry

Sonnet LXI. To Mr. Henry Cary[1], On Reading His Sonnets Written At Sixteen.

Anna Seward, Simple Poetry

Sonnet LXXX.

Anna Seward, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XXX.

Anna Seward, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Odes From Horace. - To Apollo. Book The First, Ode The Thirty-First.

    What asks the POET, when he pours
His first libation in the Delphic Bowers?
    Duteous before the altar standing,
    With lively hope his soul expanding,
O! what demands he, when the crimson wine
Flows sparkling from the vase, and laves the golden shrine?

    Not the rich and swelling grain
    That yellows o'er Sardinia's isle;
Nor snowy herds, slow winding thro' the plain,
When warm Calabria's rosy mornings smile;
    Nor gold, nor gems, that India yields,
    Nor yet those fair and fertile fields,
Which, thro' their flow'ry banks as calm he glides,
The silent [1]Liris' azure stream divides.

    Let those, for whom kind fortune still
Leads lavish tendrils o'er the sloping hill,
    Let such, with care their vineyard dressing,
    Their...

Anna Seward

To Phidyle.

(HOR. III., 23.)


Incense, and flesh of swine, and this year's grain,
At the new moon, with suppliant hands, bestow,
O rustic Phidyle! So naught shall know
Thy crops of blight, thy vine of Afric bane,
And hale the nurslings of thy flock remain
Through the sick apple-tide. Fit victims grow
'Twixt holm and oak upon the Algid snow,
Or Alban grass, that with their necks must stain
The Pontiff's axe: to thee can scarce avail
Thy modest gods with much slain to assail,
Whom myrtle crowns and rosemary can please.
Lay on the altar a hand pure of fault;
More than rich gifts the Powers it shall appease,
Though pious but with meal and crackling salt.

Henry Austin Dobson

Odes From Horace. - To Phyllis. Inviting Her To Celebrate The Birthday Of MÆcenas. Book The Fourth, Ode The Eleventh.

Sweet Phyllis, leave thy quiet home,
For lo! the ides of April come!
    Then hasten to my bower;
A cask of rich Albanian wine,
In nine years mellowness, is mine,
    To glad the festal hour.

My garden-herbs, in fragrance warm,
Our various chaplets wait to form;
    My tender ivies grow,
That, twining in thy amber hair,
Add jocund spirit to thine air,
    And whiteness to thy brow.

My walls with silver vessels shine;
Chaste vervain decks the modest shrine,
    That longs with crimson stains
To see its foliage sprinkled o'er,
When the devoted Lamb shall pour
    The treasure of his veins.

The household Girls, and menial Boy,
From room to room assiduous fly,
    And busy hands extend;
Our numerous fires are quivering br...

Anna Seward

Odes From Horace. - To Mæcenas. Book The First, Ode The First.

I.

Mæcenas, from Etrurian Princes sprung,
    For whom my golden lyre I strung,
Friend, Patron, Guardian of its rising song,
    O mark the Youth, that towers along,
    With triumph in his air;
    Proud of Olympic dust, that soils
    His burning cheek and tangled hair!
Mark how he spreads the palm, that crown'd his toils!
    Each look the throbbing hope reveals
    That his fleet steeds and kindling wheels,
Swept round the skilfully-avoided goal,
Shall with illustrious Chiefs his echo'd name enrol.


II.

    Who the civic crown obtains,
    Or bears into his granaries large
The plenteous tribute of the Libyan Plains;
Or he, who watches still a rural charge,
    O'er his own fields directs the plough,
    Sees his own fr...

Anna Seward

Odes From Horace. - To [1]Thaliarchus. Book The First, Ode The Ninth.

In dazzling whiteness, lo! Soracte towers,
As all the mountain were one heap of snow!
Rush from the loaded woods the glittering showers;
The frost-bound waters can no longer flow.

Let plenteous billets, on the glowing hearth,
Dissolve the ice-dart ere it reach thy veins;
Bring mellow wines to prompt convivial mirth,
Nor heed th' arrested streams, or slippery plains.

High Heaven, resistless in his varied sway,
Speaks! - The wild elements contend no more;
Nor then, from raging seas, the foamy spray
Climbs the dark rocks, or curls upon the shore.

And peaceful then yon aged ash shall stand;
In breathless calm the dusky cypress rise;
To-morrow's destiny the Gods command,
To-day is thine; - enjoy it, and be wise!

Youth's radiant tide too swif...

Anna Seward

Odes From Horace. - [1]On The Pleasures Of Rural Life. Book The Fifth, Epode The Second.

I.

Thrice happy he, whose life restores
    The pleasures pure of early times;
That ne'er, with anxious heart, explores
    The rugged heights Ambition climbs;
Exempt from all the din, the toil, the care,
That Cities for their busy Sons prepare;
    Fatigue, beneath the name of pleasure,
    Contentious law, usurious treasure,
A tedious mean attendance on the Great,
And emulation vain of all their pomp and state.


II.

    Not his sound and balmy sleep
    The trumpet's martial warning breaks;
Nor the loud billows of the angry Deep,
When thro' the straining cords the Tempest shrieks;
    But the Morning's choral lay,
    Chanted wild from every spray.
Swift at the summons flies the wilder'd dream,
And up he springs alert, t...

Anna Seward