Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt, Quo me detrusit pæne extremis sensibus? Quem nulla ambitio, nulla unquam largitio, Nullus timor, vis nulla, nulla auctoritas Movere potuit in juventa de statu; Ecce in senecta ut facile labefecit loco Viri excellentis mente clemente edita Submissa placide blandiloquens oratio! Etenim ipsi Dii negare cui nihil potuerunt, Hominem me denegare quis possit pati? Ergo bis tricenis actis annis sine nota Eques Romanus lare egressus meo Domum revertas mimus; Nimirum hoc die Uno plus vixi mihi quam vivendum fuit Fortuna, immoderata in bono æque atque in malo, Si tibi erat libitum literarum laudibus Floris cacumen nostræ famæ frangere, Cur quum vigebam membris præviridantibus, Satisfacere populo et tali cum poteram viro, Non flexibilem me concurvasti ut carperes? Nunc me quo dejicis? quid ad scenam affero? Decorem formæ, an dignitatem corporis, Animi virtutem, an vocis jucundæ sonum? Ut hedera serpens vires arboreas necat, Ita me vetustas amplexa annorum enecat, Sepulchri similis nihil nomen retines. O, strong Necessity! of whose swift course So many feel, so few escape the force, Whither, ah whither, in thy prone career, Hast thou decreed this dying frame to bear? Me, in my better days, nor foe, nor friend, Nor threat, nor bribe, nor vanity could bend; Now, lured by flattery, in my weaker age I sink my knighthood and ascend the stage. Yet muse not therefore—how shall man gainsay Him whom the Deities themselves obey? Sixty long years I’ve lived without disgrace A Roman knight!—let dignity give place; I’m Cæsar’s actor now, and compass more In one short hour than all my life before. O Fortune! fickle source of good and ill, If here to place me was thy sovereign will, Why, when I’d youth and faculties to please So great a master, and such guests as these, Why not compel me then, malicious power, To the hard task of this degrading hour? Where now, in what profound abyss of shame, Dost thou conspire with Fate to sink my name? Whence are my hopes? What voice can age supply To charm the ear, what grace to please the eye? Where is the active energy and art, The look that guides its passion to the heart? Age creeps like ivy o’er my withered trunk, Its bloom all blasted and its vigour shrunk; A tomb, where nothing but a name remains To tell the world whose ashes it contains. _Cumberland._