HKB
Me that night Let no man bid fare forth upon the deep, Nor rend the rope from shore. But if, when both He brings again and hides the day's return, Clear-orbed he shineth, idly wilt thou dread The storm-clouds, and beneath the lustral North See the woods waving. What late eve in fine Bears in her bosom, whence the wind that brings Fair-weather-clouds, or what the rain South Is meditating, tokens of all these The sun will give thee. Who dare charge the sun With leasing? He it is who warneth oft Of hidden broils at hand and treachery, And secret swelling of the waves of war. He too it was, when Caesar's light was quenched, For Rome had pity, when his bright head he veiled In iron-hued darkness, till a godless age Trembled for night eternal; at that time Howbeit earth also, and the ocean-plains, And dogs obscene, and birds of evil bode Gave tokens. Yea, how often have we seen Etna, her furnace-walls asunder riven, In billowy floods boil o'er the Cyclops' fields, And roll down globes of fire and molten rocks! A clash of arms through all the heaven was heard By Germany; strange heavings shook the Alps. Yea, and by many through the breathless groves A voice was heard with power, and wondrous-pale Phantoms were seen upon the dusk of night, And cattle spake, portentous! streams stand still, And the earth yawns asunder, ivory weeps For sorrow in the shrines, and bronzes sweat. Up-twirling forests with his eddying tide, Madly he bears them down, that lord of floods, Eridanus, till through all the plain are swept Beasts and their stalls together. At that time In gloomy entrails ceased not to appear Dark-threatening fibres, springs to trickle blood, And high-built cities night-long to resound With the wolves' howling. Never more than then From skies all cloudless fell the thunderbolts, Nor blazed so oft the comet's fire of bale. Therefore a second time Philippi saw The Roman hosts with kindred weapons rush To battle, nor did the high gods deem it hard That twice Emathia and the wide champaign Of Haemus should be fattening with our blood. Ay, and the time will come when there anigh, Heaving the earth up with his curved plough, Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike On empty helmets, while he gapes to see Bones as of giants from the trench untombed. Gods of my country, heroes of the soil, And Romulus, and Mother Vesta, thou Who Tuscan Tiber and Rome's Palatine Preservest, this new champion at the least Our fallen generation to repair Forbid not. To the full and long ago Our blood thy Trojan perjuries hath paid, Laomedon. Long since the courts of heaven Begrudge us thee, our Caesar, and complain That thou regard'st the triumphs of mankind, Here where the wrong is right, the right is wrong, Where wars abound so many, and myriad-faced Is crime; where no meet honour hath the plough;