Odes 1.37 (Martin): Nunc Est Bibendum

Now, comrades, fill each goblet to the brim,
Now, now with bounding footsteps strike the ground,
With costliest offerings every fane be crown'd,
Laud we the gods with thousand- voiced hymn!

It had been impious, till this glad hour
To bid our grandsires' Caecuban to flow,
While Egypt's queen was listed to o'erthrow
Rome's empire, Rome itself, — home, temple, tower!

O, doting dream! — She, with her eunuch train,
Effeminate and vile, to conquer us!
Drunk with success, and madly venturous,
Swift ruin quell'd the fever of her brain.

Her fleet, save one poor bark, in flames and wrack,
The frenzied fumes, by Egypt's vintage bred,
Were turn'd to real terrors as she fled.
Fled from our shores with Caesar on her track.

As hawk pursues the dove, as o'er the plains
Of snow- wrapt Scythia, like the driving wind.
The huntsman tracks the hare, he swept behind,
To fix that fair and fatal pest in chains.

But her's no spirit was to perish meanly;
A woman, yet not womanishly weak.
She ran her galley to no sheltering creek,
Nor quail'd before the sword, but met it queenly.

So to her lonely palace-halls she came,
With eye serene their desolation view'd,
And with firm hand the angry aspics woo'd
To dart their deadliest venom through her frame.

Then with a prideful smile she sank; for she
Had robb'd Rome's galleys of their royal prize,
Queen to the last, and ne'er in humbled guise
To swell a triumph's haughty pageantry!