Odes 2.1 (Gladstone): Motum Ex Metello

The War, its causes, faults, and states,
That from Metellus Consul dates;
Grim Fortune's jest; the pregnant pacts
Of chiefs; arms dyed with bloody acts

Not yet avenged; these themes supply
A stake where danger loads the die;
Insidious ashes thinly sheath,
Along thy road, the fires beneath.

Thy stately tragic Muse may shun
The stage awhile. Thy labour done,
Th' Athenian buskin, in its room,
And the high gift thou wilt resume.

Pollio, in Court and Senate great,
Prop of th' arraigned, and of the State
Those bays th' Illyrian triumph gave
Are trophies that outlive the grave.

To-day the threatening trumpet's bray
Grates on mine ear; the horns to-day
Are rattling, and the flash of arms
Pale knights and startled steeds alarms.

I seem to hear those sons of fame,
To see them, soiled, but not with shame;
See all that dwells on earth subdued,
Save Cato's never-yielding mood.

Juno, that once, with all her band,
Fled from her Afric's helpless land,
Hath now the victors' grandsons made
An offering to Jugurtha's shade.

What plain but, fat with Latian blood,
By funeral mounds our impious feud
Tells; and how Rome's disaster fills
With echoing sound far Media's hills!

What eddying race, what stream, but knows
Our tearful war? What wave but flows
The redder with Apulian slain?
What coast, but blushes with the stain?

Yet change not, Muse, thy jests for gloom,
Nor tones of Cean dirge assume;
No; come, and in Dione's cave
I'll touch a lyre not quite so grave.