Classic Poem

What can the conscript fathers do,
Or Romans join'd, with all their souls;
To give th'Augustan worth the honours due,
Grav'd on eternal brass, or written in the rolls.
O thou, the most illustrious prince,
Where'er the sun the world illumes;
'Twas thine the rough north Alpines to convince,
What dignity of rank your martial fame assumes.
For by your troops did Drusus rout
The fierce Genaunians, Brennians keen,
And more than once, raz'd many a strong redoubt
They pil'd upon the Alps tremendous to be seen.
Anon, the elder Nero fought
A dreadful fight with your success;
And drove th'enormous Rhetians, quick as thought,
From ev'ry post of war they ventur'd to possess.
Nero, a glorious sight to see,
How he bore down the mighty bane
Of souls, resolv'd to die or to be free,
Ev'n as the south attacks the ocean's proud disdain,
While Pleiad, and her sisters, cleave
The clouds, the furious victor sped
Thro' midmost fire, the murm'ring troops to grieve,
And with his warrior horse ev'n there the troops to head.
As Aufidus, that rolls before
Appulian Daunus, is in scorn;
And, like the meadow's lord, augments his roar,
And meditates vastation to the fields of corn:
Thus Claudius, thro' each iron rank
Of these barbarians, forc'd renown;
And, charging first and hindmost, front and flank,
Victorious, without loss, he mow'd their armies down.
With thine advice, and prosp'rous fates —
For, on that memorable day,
When suppliant Alexandria ope'd her gates,
With nought within her courts but terror and dismay;
Before the fifteen years ran out,
Fortune successful in the end
The glory, so long wish'd for, brought about,
And made th'imperial arms their final pow'r extend.
Cantabrians, unsubdu'd till now,
Medes, Indians, with submissive mien;
Thee the vague Scythian honour and allow,
Guard of the Latian name, and Rome the world's great queen.
Thee Nilus, that conceals his fount,
Thee Danube, rapid Tigris fear;
Thee the swoln waves, on which such monsters mount,
'Till British cliffs, remote, the horrid bellowing hear.
The region of th'intrepid Gaul,
And all Iberia's harden'd race;
And thee, their lord, the tam'd Sicambrians call,
And, bloody as they were, thy terms of peace embrace.