The Odes and Carmen Saeculare/Book 2/Part 9
IX.
Non semper imbres.
THE rain, it rains not every day
On the soak'd meads; the Caspian main
Not always feels the unequal sway
Of storms, nor on Armenia's plain,
Dear Valgius, lies the cold dull snow
Through all the year; nor northwinds keen
Upon Garganian oakwoods blow,
And strip the ashes of their green.
You still with tearful tones pursue
Your lost, lost Mystes; Hesper sees
Your passion when he brings the dew,
And when before the sun he flees.
Yet not for loved Antilochus
Grey Nestor wasted all his years
In grief; nor o'er young Troilus
His parents' and his sisters' tears
For ever flow'd. At length have done
With these soft sorrows; rather tell
Of Cæsar's trophies newly won,
And hoar Niphates' icy fell,
And Medus' flood, 'mid conquer'd tribes
Rolling a less presumptuous tide,
And Scythians taught, as Rome prescribes,
Henceforth o'er narrower steppes to ride.