horace

​The snow is fled: the trees their leaves put on,
The fields their green:
Earth owns the change, and rivers lessening run
Their banks between.
Naked the Nymphs and Graces in the meads
The dance essay:
“No 'scaping death” proclaims the year, that speeds
This sweet spring day.
Frosts yield to zephyrs; Summer drives out Spring,
To vanish, when
Rich Autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,--
Winter again!
Yet the swift moons repair Heaven's detriment:
We, soon as thrust
Where good Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,
What are we? dust.
Can Hope assure you one more day to live
From powers above?
You rescue from your heir whate'er you give
The self you love.
When life is o'er, and Minos has rehearsed
The grand last doom,
Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst
Torquatus' tomb.
Not Dian's self can chaste Hippolytus
To life recall,
Nor Theseus free his loved Pirithous
From Lethe's thrall.

Footnote: Lethe is one of the rivers of Hades or Hell; lethal derives from Lethe.
 
Diffugere  nives, redeunt iam gramina campis
    arboribusque comae;
mutat terra vices et decrescentia  ripas
    flumina praetereunt;
Gratia  cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet
    ducere nuda choros.
Inmortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum
    quae rapit hora diem.
Frigora mitescunt zephyris, ver proterit aestas
    interitura, simul
pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox
    bruma recurrit iners.
Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae;
    nos ubi decidimus,
quo pius Aeneas, quo Tullus dives et Ancus,
    pulvis et umbra sumus.
Quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae
    tempora di superi?
Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico
    quae dederis animo.
Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos
    fecerit arbitria,
non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
    restituet pietas;
Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum
    liberat Hippolytum,
nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro
  vincula Pirithoo.

Courtesy of antiquitatem.com

Horace (65 BC – 8 BC). The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. John Conington. trans. London. George Bell and Sons. 1882.