One of many odes in the form of a prayer. A prayer to a spring is not just a metaphor, as natural features could have true religious significance for Greeks and Romans. 10 October was a Roman festival, the Fontinalia, when flowers and wine were offered to springs and wells. The poem praises, not just the spring, but also Horace’s poetry, because that is what is going to make the spring’s fame last.
The sacrifice of the kid is off-putting for us, and a reminder that Roman attitudes to death were very different from ours. The spring might well be a real one, but as usual we can’t be absolutely certain.
I once found this ode on my duvet cover in a seaside bed-and-breakfast in Devon, proving Horace right when he said that his odes were a monument more enduring than bronze.
Metre: fourth Asclepiad
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