"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we may." Dryden's splendid paraphrase of this Ode is one of the glories of our literature, but it is a paraphrase, and a version closer to the original may be more appropriate here:-- "Scion of Tuscan kings, in store I've laid a cask of mellow wine, That never has been broached before. I've roses, too, for wreaths to twine, And Nubian nut, that for thy hair An oil shall yield of fragrance rare. * * * * * "The plenty quit, that only palls, And, turning from the cloud-capped pile That towers above thy palace halls, Forget to worship for a while The privileges Rome enjoys, Her smoke, her splendour, and her noise. "It is the rich who relish best To dwell at times from state aloof; And simple suppers, neatly dressed, Beneath a poor man's humble roof, With neither pall nor purple there, Have smoothed ere now the brow of care. * * * * * "Now with his spent and languid flocks The wearied shepherd seeks the shade, The river cool, the shaggy rocks, That overhang the tangled glade, And by the stream no breeze's gush Disturbs the universal hush. "Thou dost devise with sleepless zeal What course may best the state beseem, And, fearful for the City's weal, Weigh'st anxiously each hostile scheme That may be hatching far away In Scythia, India, or Cathay. "Most wisely Jove in thickest night The issues of the future veils, And laughs at the self-torturing wight Who with imagined terrors quails. The present only is thine own, Then use it well, ere it has flown. "All else which may by time be bred Is like a river of the plain, Now gliding gently o'er its bed Along to the Etruscan main, Now whirling onwards, fierce and fast, Uprooted trees, and boulders vast, "And flocks, and houses, all in drear Confusion tossed from shore to shore, While mountains far, and forests near Reverberate the rising roar, When lashing rains among the hills To fury wake the quiet rills. "Lord of himself that man will be, And happy in his life alway, Who still at eve can say with free Contented soul, 'I've lived to-day! Let Jove to-morrow, if he will, With blackest clouds the welkin fill, "'Or flood it all with sunlight pure, Yet from the past he cannot take Its influence, for that is sure, Nor can he mar or bootless make Whate'er of rapture and delight The hours have borne us in their flight.'"