And richer spilth the pavement, stain.
"Our vaults have wept
With drunken spilth of wine."
Book II, Ode 18.
Suns are hurrying suns a-west,
And newborn moons make speed to meet their end.
The thought seems to be that the rapid course of time, hurrying men to the grave, proves the wisdom of contentment and the folly of avarice. My version formerly did not express this, and I have altered it accordingly, while I have rendered "Novæque pergunt interire lunæ" closely, as Horace may perhaps have intended to speak of the moons as hastening to their graves as men do.
Yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'd
Waits you more surely than the wider room
Traced by Death's yet greedier hand.
Fine is the instrumental ablative constructed with destinata, which is itself an ablative agreeing with aula understood. The rich man looks into the future, and makes contracts which he may never live to see executed (v. 17—Tu secanda marmora Locas sub ipsum funus"); meantime Death, more punctual than any contractor, more greedy than any encroaching proprietor, has planned with his measuring line a mansion of a different kind, which will infallibly be ready when the day arrives.
Book II, Ode 20.
I, whom you call
Your friend, Mæcenas.
With Ritter I have rendered according to the interpre-
