Classic Poem

'Twas on a luckless day, O tree,
Whatever hand transplanted thee,
And impious bade thee prosper to disgrace
The village of his birth, and crush his future race.
He could, no doubt, to death devote
His sire, or cut his mother's throat,
Or sprinkle his unhospitable ground
At night with stranger's blood, or Colchian drugs compound.
Or whatsoe'er we may conceive
Of desp'rate feats he could atchieve,
O log, the man that plac'd thee in my farm,
Hurl'd on thy master's head, that did not dream of harm.
We never are enough aware
What we should seek, or what forbear —
From Bosphorus the sailor dreads his fate,
Nor heeds what doom at Carthage may his days await.
The soldiers fear the pointed reed,
And Parthian shooting in full speed,
The Parthian fears the Roman strength and chain,
One common lot for all remains, and will remain.
How near but now the lot was mine,
To see the gloomy Proserpine,
And Eäcus his dread judicial seat,
And those Elysian fields, where melancholy sweet
Sappho the sland'rous maids of Greece
Arraigns, and in a fuller piece
Alceus, sings, upon his golden lyre
The conquest or the flight by sea and land how dire!
Each of these hands th'admiring ghost
In holy silence hears, but most
Th'attention and the thicking throng augment,
To hear of patriot fights, and kings in exile sent.
What wonder! since such strains as these
The many-headed beast can please,
Who hangs his hellish ears, and furies list,
While from their wreathed locks delighted snakes untwist.
Nay more, Prometheus, and the sire
Of Pelops to the sound respire,
Nor 'gainst the ounce or lions of the chace,
Will now Orion urge his visionary race.