“No more the Greek girl’s guilty guest Sits splendour-girt: Priam’s perjured sons Find not against the mighty ones Of Greece a shield in Hector’s breast:
“And, long drawn out by private jars, The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o’er: And him the Trojan vestal bore (Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,
“To Mars restore I. His be rest In halls of light: by him be drained The nectar-bowl, his place obtained In the calm companies of the blest.
“While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves A length of ocean, where they will Rise empires for the exiles still: While Paris’s and Priam’s graves
“Are hoof-trod, and the she-wolf breeds Securely there, unharmed shall stand Rome’s lustrous Capitol, her hand Impose proud laws on trampled Medes.
“Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne Her story; where the central main Europe and Libya parts in twain, Where full Nile laves a land of corn:
“The buried secret of the mine, (Best left there) resolute to spurn, And not to man’s base uses turn With hand that spares not things divine.
“Earth’s utmost end, where’er it be, May her hosts reach; careering proud O’er lands where watery rain and cloud, Or where wild suns hold revelry.
“But, to the soldier-sons of Rome, Tied by this law, such fates are willed; That they seek never to rebuild, Too fond, too bold, their grandsires’ home.
“With darkest omens, deadliest strife, Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat Her history; I the victor-fleet Shall lead, Jove’s sister and his wife.
“Thrice let Apollo rear the wall Of brass; and thrice my Greeks shall hew The fabric down; thrice matrons rue In chains their sons’, their husbands’ fall.”
Ill my light lyre such notes beseem. Stay, Muse; nor, wayward still, rehearse God-utterances in puny verse That may but mar a mighty theme.
WOOER of young Nymphs who fly thee, Lightly o’er my sunlit lawn Trip, and go, nor injured by thee Be my weanling herds, O Faun:
If the kid his doomed head bows, and Brims with wine the loving cup, When the year is full; and thousand Scents from altars hoar go up.
Each flock in the rich grass gambols When the month comes which is thine; And the happy village rambles Fieldward with the idle kine:
Lambs play on, the wolf their neighbour: Wild woods deck thee with their spoil; And with glee the sons of labour Stamp thrice on their foe, the soil.