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The FIRST BOOK of
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 chuse:
Of furious hate surviving death, she sings,
A fatal throne to two contending Kings,
And fun'ral flames, that parting wide in air,
Express the discord of the souls they bear:
Of towns dispeopled, and the wand'ring ghosts
Of Kings unbury'd on the wasted coasts;
When Dirce's fountain blush'd with Grecian blood,
And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep
In heaps, his slaughter'd sons into the deep.
What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?
The raging Tydeus, or the Prophet's fate?
Or how with hills of slain on ev'ry side,
Hippomedon repell'd the hostile tyde?
Or how the [1]youth with ev'ry grace adorn'd,
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourn'd?
Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar's fame:
Meanwhile permit, that my preluding Muse.
In Theban wars an humbler theme may chuse:
Of furious hate surviving death, she sings,
A fatal throne to two contending Kings,
And fun'ral flames, that parting wide in air,
Express the discord of the souls they bear:
Of towns dispeopled, and the wand'ring ghosts
Of Kings unbury'd on the wasted coasts;
When Dirce's fountain blush'd with Grecian blood,
And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep
In heaps, his slaughter'd sons into the deep.
What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?
The raging Tydeus, or the Prophet's fate?
Or how with hills of slain on ev'ry side,
Hippomedon repell'd the hostile tyde?
Or how the [1]youth with ev'ry grace adorn'd,
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourn'd?
Then
- ↑ Parthenopæus.
