Classic Poem

ODE 3

The just man's single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will
Which is as rock; not warrior winds.

That keep the seas in wild unrest;
Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled:
The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.

Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed,
The fiery bastions of the skies;
Thus Pollux; with them Caesar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.

Honoured for this, by tigers drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before
Untamed; for this War's horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron.

To the pleased gods had Juno said
In conclave: " Troy is in the dust;
Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange woman prostrated.

" The day Laomedon ignored
His god-pledged word, resigned to me
And Pallas ever pure, was she,
Her people, and their traitor lord.

" Now the Greek woman's guilty guest
Dazzles no more: Priam's perjured sons
Find not against the mighty ones
Of Greece a shield in Hector's breast:

" And, long drawn out by private jars,
The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o'er:
And him the Trojan vestal bore
(Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,

" To Mars restore I. His be rest
In halls of light: by him be drained
The nectar-bowl, his place obtained
In the calm companies of the blest.

" While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves
A length of ocean, where they will
Rise empires for the exiles still:
While Paris's and Priam's graves.

" Are trod by kine, and she-wolves breed
Securely there, unharmed shall stand
Rome's lustrous Capitol, her hand
Curb with proud laws the trampled Mede.

" Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne
Her story; where the central main
Europe and Libya parts in twain,
Where full Nile laves a land of corn:

" The buried secret of the mine,
(Best left there) leTher dare to spurn,
Nor unto man's base uses turn,
Profane hands laying on things divine.

" Earth's utmost end, where'er it be,
LeTher hosts reach; careering proud
O'er lands where watery rain and cloud,
Or where wild suns hold revelry.

" But, to the warriors of Rome,
Tied by this law, such fates are willed;
That they seek never to rebuild,
Too fond, too bold, their grandsires' home.

" With darkest omens, deadliest strife,
Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat
Her history; I the victor-fleet
Shall lead, Jove's sister and his wife.

" Thrice let Apollo rear the wall
Of brass; and thrice my Greeks shall hew
The fabric down: thrice matrons rue
In chains their sons', their husbands' fall. "

Ill my light lyre such notes beseem
Stay, Muse; nor, wayward still, rehearse
Sayings of Gods in meagre verse
That may but mar a mighty theme.