Odes 1.3 (Gladstone): Sic Te Diva

So may the Queen of Cyprian heights,
So Helen's brethren, starry lights,
So speed thy course the Lord of wind,
And all, save Zephyr, fastly bind:

O Ship, thou hast a debt to pay,
Our Virgil: hold him well I pray,
Unharmed to Attic bounds consign,
And save that life, the half of mine.

'Twas armed with oak and triple brass,
His breast, who first made bold to pass
In fragile bark the truculent seas
Nor feared the boding Hyades,

Nor south-west wind at war with north,
Nor headlong Notus blustering forth,
Like whom no tyrant Adria sways
The tempest to allay or raise.

All forms of death will he defy
Who views rude waves with tearless eye,
Sea-monsters, and thy deadly sweep,
Thou sheer Acroceraunian steep.

Of purpose Heaven by severing main
Divided lands; but all in vain
If rebel ships, in Heaven's despite,
May leap the waves, and lands unite.

For men, o'erbold to do and dare,
Right down the heavenly barriers tear,
And Japhet's race, portentous birth,
By guilty theft bring fire to earth.

That crime achieved, a strange array
Of Fevers, and unknown Decay,
Swept down on man, and Death perforce
Made speedier his appointed course.

The might of Hercules destroyed
Hell's bars, and in the airy void
With lawless wings, not given to man,
The flight of Daedalus began.

In nought, we think, can mortals fail:
We seek, like fools, high heaven to scale;
With crime so rife, Jove cannot lay
The bolts, that speak his wrath, away.