C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
To Virgil
By Horace (658 B.C.)
W
Why blush that they should freely flow and long
To think of that dear head in death laid low?
Do thou inspire my melancholy song,
Melpomene, in whom the Muses’ sire
Joined with a liquid voice the mastery of the lyre!
Closed o’er Quinctilius,—our Quinctilius dear?
Where shall be found the man of woman born
That in desert might be esteemed his peer—
So simply meek, and yet so sternly just,
Of faith so pure, and all so absolute of trust?
And but the good and noble wept for him;
But dearer cause thou, Virgil, hadst than any,
With friendship’s tears thy friendless eyes to dim.
Alas, alas! not to such woeful end
Didst thou unto the gods thy prayers unceasing send!
With defter skill than Orpheus of old Thrace,
When deftliest he played, and with its spell
Moved all the listening forest from its place,
Yet never, never can thy art avail
To bring life’s glowing tide back to the phantom pale
Hermes, austere and pitiless as fate,
Hath forced to join the dark and spectral band,
In their sad journey to the Stygian gate.
’Tis hard—great Heavens, how hard! But to endure
Alleviates the pang we cannot crush or cure.