Classic Poem

The thund'rer, as in heav'n supreme,
We from his dreadful bolts esteem;
And Caesar, like a god, directs our helm,
Picts and vexatious Persians added to our realm.
Have they, who under Crassus fought,
With base barbarian wives been caught,
And (O inverted manners, alter'd times!)
With step-fathers grown old in foreign slavish climes?
The Marsian and Appulian band,
Beneath an haughty Mede's command,
Forgetting Numa's shields, and name, and gown,
Jove's Capitol, and Rome subsisting in renown!
The soul of Regulus the great
Precluded such a shameful fate,
Scorning all base conditions ev'n in thought,
As exemplary bad, with future mischief fraught:
If not unpity'd and unspar'd,
Their doom the captive youth had shar'd —
" I've seen our standard hung up for a show,
And troops by Punic foes disarm'd without a blow.
I've seen our citizens confin'd,
Ty'd with their free-born arms behind;
The hostile gates op'd in defiance wide,
And fields, we ravag'd, till'd in ostentatious pride.
What! shall the soldier bought and sold
Be braver when exchang'd for gold?
You add but loss unto an impious stain,
The poison'd wool its whiteness never can regain.
Nor valour, wrought to a reverse,
Can be repair'd by worse and worse —
If rescu'd from the toils, the tim'rous deer
Will turn and fight the hounds — then he shall cease to fear,
Who once has trusted to deceit;
And shall the Punic host defeat
Another time — who felt a ruffian tie
His coward hands with thongs, and was asham'd to die.
Such, helpless where to fix a ground
For hope, could peace and war confound —
O shame! O Carthage! infamously great
By our confirm'd disgrace, and Rome's subverted state!"
'Tis said, from his chaste wife's embrace
And little boys, he turn'd his face,
And look'd as one amerc'd upon the dust,
With aspect manly stern, determin'd to be just,
Until the conscript fathers all,
With council most original,
He did confirm — and 'midst his friends dismay
And tears, the godlike exile forc'd himself away.
And yet full clearly did he know
The torments he should undergo —
But waving all his kin with unconcern,
And crowds of Roman people grutching his return,
He cooly took his leave, as one,
The business of the forum done,
Goes for vacation to Venefran lands,
Or where Tarentum, built by that fam'd Spartan, stands.