Odes 3.2 (Gladstone): Angustam Amice

Let hardy youth in warfare dare
Robustly pinching want to bear;
The savage Parthian then shall fear
Our riders skilled to hurl the spear.

Free air, and stir from hour to hour
Be his; on him from foeman's tower
Some tyrant's queen shall bend her eye,
The fair young maid beside her sigh,

Forecasting sadly, lest her spouse,
Royal but all untutored, rouse
This lion fierce, careering o'er
Wild carnage and the field of gore.

'T is sweet for native land to die,
'T is noble: Death takes them that fly:
For coward back it has no ruth,
Nor spares the flight of dastard youth.

To Virtue shame is all unknown;
She shines with honours of her own;
Nor, as the public smile or frown,
Takes office up, or lays it down.

By paths unknown she cleaves the sky,
And lifts the souls too great to die;
She spurns, on pinions upward bound,
The vulgar crowd, the spongy ground.

And trusty silence earns its mite.
One, Ceres, blabs thy sacred rite:
No common roof for him with me,
No common bark to tempt the sea!

Neglected, Jove oft smites good men
Mixed with the guilty herd: but when
Did Doom, though lame, not bide its time
To clutch the nape of sculking crime?