Odes 2.13 (Martin): Ille Et Nefasto

Whate'er his station in the land,
In evil hour he planted thee,
And with a sacrilegious hand
He nursed, and trained thee up to be
The bane of his succeeding race,
And of our hamlet the disgrace.

He strangled, ay, and with a zest,
His very father, and at dead
Of night stole in upon his guest,
And stabb'd him sleeping in his bed;
Brew'd Colchian poisons in his time,
And practised every sort of crime.

All this he must have done — or could —
I'm sure, — the wretch, that stuck thee down,
Thou miserable stump of wood,
To topple on thy master's crown,
Who ne'er designed thee any harm.
Here on my own, my favourite farm.

No mortal due provision makes
'Gainst ills which any hour may fall;
The Carthaginian sailor quakes
To think of a Levantine squall,
But feels no terror for the fate,
That elsewhere may his bark await.

Our soldiers dread the arrows sped
By Parthians shooting as they thee;
And in their turn the Parthians dread
The chains and keeps of Italy;
But death will tear, as now it tears,
Whole nations down at unawares.

How nearly in her realms of gloom
I dusky Proserpine had seen,
Seen Aeacus dispensing doom,
And the Elysian fields serene,
Heard Sappho to her lute complain
Of unrequited passion's pain;

Heard thee, too, O Alcaeus, tell,
Striking the while thy golden lyre,
With fuller note and statelier swell.
The sorrows and disasters dire
Of warfare and the ocean deep,
And those that far in exile weep.

While shades round either singer throng,
And the deserved tribute pay
Of sacred silence to their song,
Yet chiefly crowd to hear the lay
Of battles old to story known,
And haughty tyrants overthrown.

What wonder they, their ears to feast,
Should thickly throng, when by these lays
Entranced, the hundred-headed beast
Drops his black ears in sweet amaze,
And even the snakes are charmed, as they
Among the Furies' tresses play.

Nay even Prometheus, and the sire
Of Pelops, cheated of their pains,
Forget awhile their doom of ire
In listening to the wondrous strains;
Nor doth Orion longer care
To hunt the lynx or lion there.