Classic Poem

Go smooth-lipped flatteries; this verse of mine
Is now made free. I need no more abase
My Muse, nor call our chief a ‘Lord Divine’,
Henceforth in Rome have ye no resting-place.

Seek the bedizened Persian King who craves
Abjects about his jewelled feet to crawl;
Here Trajan rules, no lord of grovelling slaves,
A senator, most righteous of them all;

From death to life is rugged truth restored,
And here in simple grandeur reigneth she;
O Rome, be wise—forget the words abhorred
That tyranny aforetime wrung from thee!