Classic Poem

To drink and dance with all the glee
Of men that find their country free
Now, now's the time — now deck the hallow'd shrine,
Like Mars his active priests, and make the temple fine.
Before it was no lawful thing
The long-kept Caecuban to bring,
While for th'imperial capitol the queen
Ruin and wrath prepar'd, and every deadly scene,
With her contaminated train
Of eunuchs, arrogant and vain,
In hopes to compass every point at last,
Drunk with a long success, and her good fortune past.
But now her rage is somewhat tame,
Since scarce a ship escap'd the flame,
And, tho' at large the Egyptian grape she swill'd,
With real horrors now her frantic soul is fill'd.
For as from Italy she flies,
His urgent oar Augustus plies,
And, as the hawk pursues the dove, he rows,
Or sportsman hunts the hare trac'd in Aemonian snows,
That he this monster of her kind
Might in coercive fetters bind —
But she, while for a nobler death she tried,
Nor fear'd the hostile sword, nor sought herself to hide.
Then to her downcast court she went,
With look serene, as in content,
And to her gen'rous veins the aspicks laid;
By pre-determin'd death more fierce and desp'rate made.
For the Liburnian fleet, she grudg'd
The fate to which she was adjudg'd,
A woman of her pow'r and pomp allow'd,
In triumph to be dragg'd before the clam'rous crowd.