While Dacian mountains streamed with barbarous blood;
Twice taught the Rhine beneath his laws to
And stretched his empire to the frozen pole,
Or long before with early valour strove,
In youthful arms to assert the cause of Jove. 30
And thou, great heir of all thy father's fame,
Increase of glory to the Latian name!
Oh bless thy Rome with an eternal reign,
Nor let desiring worlds entreat in vain.
What though the stars contract their heavenly
And crowd their shining ranks to yield thee
Though all the skies, ambitious of thy sway, Conspire to court thee from our world away; Though Phoebus longs to mix his rays with thine,
And in thy glories more serenely shine; Though Jove himself no less content would be, To part his throne and share his heaven with
Yet stay, great Cæsar! and vouchsafe to reign
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the watery main ;
Resign to Jove his empire of the skies,
And people heaven with Roman deities.
The time will come, when a diviner flame Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar's fame : Meanwhile permit, that my preluding Muse In Theban wars an humbler theme may choose: Of furious hate surviving death, she sings, 51 A fatal throne to two contending kings, And funeral flames that, parting wide in air, Express the discord of the souls they bear: Of towns dispeopled, and the wandering ghosts Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts;
When Dirce's fountain blushed with Grecian
And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep,
In heaps, his slaughtered sons into the deep. 60
What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?
The rage of Tydeus, or the Prophet's fate?
Or how with hills of slain on every side,
Hippomedon repelled the hostile tide ?
Or how the youth with every grace adorned,'
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourned ?;
Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend,
And sing with horror his prodigious end.
Now wretched Edipus, deprived of sight,
Led a long death in everlasting night;
But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray
Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day,
The clear reflecting mind presents his sin
In frightful views, and makes it day within;
Returning thoughts in endless circles roll, 75
And thousand furies haunt his guilty soul:
The wretch then lifted to the unpitying skies
Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes,
Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he
strook,
While from his breast these dreadful accents broke. 80
"Ye gods! that o'er the gloomy regions
Where guilty spirits feel eternal pain;
Thou, sable Styx! whose livid streams are rolled
Through dreary coasts, which I, though blind, behold;
Tisiphone, that oft hast heard my prayer, 85
Assist, if Edipus deserve thy care!
you received me from Jocasta's womb, And nursed the hope of mischiefs yet to come : If leaving Polybus, I took my way
To Cyrrha's temple, on that fatal day,
When by the son the trembling father died,
Where the three roads the Phocian fields divide:
If I the Sphinx's riddles durst explain,
Taught by thyself to win the promised reign:
If wretched I, by baleful furies led,
With monstrous mixture stained my mother's
bed,
For hell and thee begot an impious brood,
And with full lust those horrid joys renewed;
Then self-condemned to shades of endless night,
Forced from these orbs the bleeding balls of
sight:
Oh hear! and aid the vengeance I require,
If worthy thee, and what thou mightst inspire.
My sons their old, unhappy sire despise,
Spoiled of his kingdom, and deprived of eyes;
Guideless I wander, unregarded mourn,
While these exalt their sceptres o'er my urn;
These sons, ye gods! who with flagitious pride
Insult my darkness, and my groans deride.
Art thou a father, unregarding Jove!
And sleeps thy thunder in the realms above? 110 Thou Fury, then some lasting curse entail, Which o'er their children's children shall pre
Place on their heads that crown distained with
Which these dire hands from my slain father
Go, and a parent's heavy curses bear;
Break all the bonds of nature, and prepare Their kindred souls to mutual hate and war.
Give them to dare, what I might wish to see, Blind as I am, some glorious villainy!
Soon shalt thou find, if thou but arm their hands,
Their ready guilt preventing thy commands: Couldst thou some great, proportioned mischief
They'd prove the father from whose loins they came."
The Fury heard, while on Cocytus' brink Her snakes, untied, sulphureous waters drink; But at the summons rolled her eyes around, 126 And snatched the starting serpents from the ground.
Not half so swiftly shoots along in air,
The gliding lightning, or descending star.
Through crowds of airy shades she winged her
flight,
And dark dominions of the silent night;
Swift as she passed, the flitting ghosts withdrew,
And the pale spectres trembled at her view :
To the iron gates of Tænarus she flies,
There spreads her dusky pinions to the skies.
The day beheld, and sickening at the sight, 136
Veiled her fair glories in the shades of night.
Affrighted Atlas, on the distant shore,
Trembled, and shook the heavens and gods he
bore.
Now from beneath Malea's airy height
Aloft she sprung, and steered to Thebes her
With eager speed the well-known journey took,
Nor here regrets the hell she late forsook.
A hundred snakes her gloomy visage shade,
A hundred serpents guard her horrid head, 145
In her sunk eyeballs dreadful meteors glow;
Such rays from Phoebe's bloody circle flow,
When labouring with strong charms, she shoots from high
A fiery gleam, and reddens all the sky.
Blood stained her cheeks, and from her mouth there came
Blue steaming poisons, and a length of flame.
From every blast of her contagious breath
Famine and drought proceed, and plagues, and
death.
A robe obscene was o'er her shoulders thrown,
A dress by Fates and Furies worn alone. 155
She tossed her meagre arms; her better hand
In waving circles whirled a funeral brand:
A serpent from her left was seen to rear
His flaming crest, and lash the yielding air.
But when the Fury took her stand on high,
Where vast Citharon's top salutes the sky, 161
A hiss from all the snaky tire went round;
The dreadful signal all the rocks rebound,
And through the Achaian cities send the sound.
Ete, with high Parnassus, heard the voice;
Eurotas' banks remurmured to the noise;
Again Leucothea shook at these alarms,
And pressed Palæmon closer in her arms.
Headlong from thence the glowing Fury
springs,
And o'er the Theban palace spreads her wings, Once more invades the guilty dome, and shrouds
Its bright pavilions in a veil of clouds.
Straight with the rage of all their race possessed,
Stung to the soul, the brothers start from rest,
And all their furies wake within their breast.
Their tortured minds repining Envy tears, 176
And Hate, engendered by suspicious fears;
And sacred thirst of sway; and all the ties
Of nature broke; and royal perjuries;
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