Odes 3.1 (Martin): Odi Profanum

Ye rabble rout, avaunt!
Your vulgar din give o'er,
Whilst I, the Muses' own hierophant,
To the pure ears of youths and virgins chant
In strains unheard before!

Great kings, whose frown doth make
Their crouching vassals quake,
Themselves must own
The mastering sway of Jove, imperial god,
Who from the crash of giants overthrown
Triumphant honours took, and by his nod
Shakes all creation's zone.

Whate'er our rank may be,
We all partake one common destiny!
In fair expanse of soil,
Teeming with rich returns of wine and oil,
His neighbour one outvies;
Another claims to rise
To civic dignities,
Because of ancestry, and noble birth,
Or fame, or proved pre-eminence of worth,

Or troops of clients, clamorous in his cause;
Still Fate doth grimly stand,
And with impartial hand
The lots of lofty and of lowly draws
From that capacious urn,
Whence every name that lives is shaken in its turn.

To him, above whose guilty head,
Suspended by a thread,
The naked sword is hung forevermore,
Not feasts Sicilian shall
With all their cates recall
That zest the simplest fare could once inspire;
Nor song of birds, nor music of the lyre
Shall his lost sleep restore:
But gentle sleep shuns not
The rustic's lowly cot,
Nor mossy bank, o'ercanopied with trees,
Nor Tempe's leafy vale stirr'd by the western breeze.

The man, who lives content with whatsoe'er
Sufficeth for his needs,
The storm-toss'd ocean vexeth not with care,
Nor the fierce tempest which Arcturus breeds,
When in the sky he sets,
Nor that which Hoedus, at his rise, begets:
Nor will he grieve, although
His vines be all laid low
Beneath the driving hail,
Nor though, by reason of the drenching rain,
Or heat, that shrivels up his fields like fire,
Or fierce extremities of winter's ire.
Blight shall o'erwhelm his fruit-trees and his grain,
And all his farm's delusive promise fail.

The fish are conscious that a narrower bound
Is drawn the seas around
By masses huge hurl'd down into the deep;
There at the bidding of a lord, for whom
Not all the land he owns is ample room,
Do the contractor and his labourers heap
Vast piles of stone, the ocean back to sweep.
But let him climb in pride,
That lord of halls unblest.
Up to his lordly nest,
Yet ever by his side
Climb Terror and Unrest;
Within the brazen galley's sides
Care, ever wakeful, flits,
And at his back, when forth in state he rides,
Her withering shadow sits.

If thus it fare with all;
If neither marbles from the Phrygian mine
Nor star-bright robes of purple and of pall,
Nor the Falernian vine,
Nor costliest balsams, fetch'd from farthest Ind,
Can soothe the restless mind;
Why should I choose
To rear on high, as modern spendthrifts use,
A lofty hall, might be the home for kings,
With portals vast, for malice to abuse,
Or Envy make her theme to point a tale;
Or why for wealth, which new-born trouble brings,
Exchange my Sabine vale?