| Ode 1 |
| Translation one Fitts & Fitzgerald Numberless are the world wonders but none more wonderful than man: the stormgray sea yields to his prows the juge crests bear him high earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven with shining furrows where his plows have gone year after year, the timeless labor of stallions. The lightboned birds and beasts that cling to cover. The lithe fish lighting their reaches of dim water, all are taken, tamed in the net of his mind: the lion on the hill, the wild horse windy maned resign to him; and his blunt yoke has broken The sultry shoulders of the mountain bull. Words also, and thought as rapid as air he fachions to his good use; statecraft is his, And his the skill that deflects the arrow of snow. The spears of winter rain;: from every wind he has make himself secure from all but one: In the late wind of death he cannot stand. O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure! O fate of man, working both good and evil! / When the laws are kept how proudly his city stands when the laws are broken what of his city than? Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth, Necer be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts. |