Of this hoary-headed woe [_Epode._ Song made memory long ago; Now a younger grief to mourn Needs a new song younger born. Who shall teach our tongues to reach What strange height of saddest speech, For the new bride's sake that is given to be A stay to fetter the foot of the sea, 630 Lest it quite spurn down and trample the town, Ere the violets be dead that were plucked for its crown, Or its olive-leaf whiten and wither? Who shall say of the wind's way That he journeyed yesterday, Or the track of the storm that shall sound to-morrow, If the new be more than the grey-grown sorrow? For the wind of the green first season was keen, And the blast shall be sharper than blew between That the breath of the sea blows hither. 640
Old men, grey borderers on the march of death, Tongue-fighters, tough of talk and sinewy speech, Else nerveless, from no crew of such faint folk Whose tongues are stouter than their hands come I To bid not you to battle; let them strike Whose swords are sharper than your keen-tongued wail, And ye, sit fast and sorrow; but what man Of all this land-folk and earth-labouring herd For heart or hand seems foremost, him I call If heart be his to hearken, him bid forth 650 To try if one be in the sun's sight born Of all that grope and grovel on dry ground That may join hands in battle-grip for death With them whose seed and strength is of the sea.
Know thou this much for all thy loud blast blown, We lack not hands to speak with, swords to plead, For proof of peril, not of boisterous breath, Sea-wind and storm of barren mouths that foam And rough rock's edge of menace; and short space May lesson thy large ignorance and inform 660 This insolence with knowledge if there live Men earth-begotten of no tenderer thews Than knit the great joints of the grim sea's brood With hasps of steel together; heaven to help, One man shall break, even on their own flood's verge, That iron bulk of battle; but thine eye That sees it now swell higher than sand or shore Haply shall see not when thine host shall shrink.
Not haply, nay, but surely, shall not thine.
That lot shall no God give who fights for thee. 670
Shall Gods bear bit and bridle, fool, of men?
Nor them forbid we nor shalt thou constrain.