Odes 2.1 (Martin): Motum Ex Metello

The civil broils that date
Back from Metellus' luckless consulate,
The causes of the strife,
Its vices, with fresh seeds of turmoil rife,
The turns of fortune's tide,
The leagues of chiefs to direful ends allied,
The arms of Romans wet
With brothers' blood, not expiated yet.
These are thy chosen theme.
An enterprise that doth with peril teem,
For everywhere thy tread
On ashes falls, o'er lull'd volcanoes thinly spread!

Mute for some little time
Must be the Muse of tragedy sublime
Within our theatres; anon,
The task of chronicling our story done,
Thy noble bent pursue,
And the Cecropian buskin don anew,
Pollio, thou shield unstain'd
Of woful souls, that are of guilt arraign'd,
On whose persuasive tongue
The senate oft in deep debate hath hung,
Whose fame for laurels won
In fields Dalmatian shall through farthest ages run!

And now our ears you pierce
With clarions shrill, and trumpets' threatenings fierce,
Now flashing arms affright
Horses and riders, scattering both in flight;
Now do I seem to hear
The shouting of the mighty leaders near,
And see them strike and thrust,
Begrimed with not unhonourable dust;
And all earth own control.
All, all save only Cato's unrelenting soul!

Juno, and whosoe'er
Among the gods made Afric's sons their care,
On that same soil, which they,
Of vengeance foiled, had turned from in dismay,
Unto Jugurtha's shade
His victor's grandsons as an offering paid,
Where is the plain, that by
Its mounds sepulchral doth not testify
To many an impious fray,
Where Latian blood made fat the yielding clay,
And to fell havoc's sound
Peal'd from the west to Media's farthest bound?
What bays, what rivers are
By ills unvisited of woful war?
What oceans by the tide
Of slaughter rolling red have not been dyed?
Where shall be found the shore,
Is not incarnadined by Roman gore?

But, froward Muse, refrain,
Affect not thou the elegiac strain!
With lighter touch essay
In Dionaean cave with me some sprightlier lay!