The Drusian line, Camillus loaded home With standards well redeem’d, and foreign foes o’ercome The pair you see in equal armour shine, Now, friends below, in close embraces join; But, when they leave the shady realms of night, And, cloth’d in bodies, breathe your upper light, With mortal hate each other shall pursue: What wars, what wounds, what slaughter shall ensue! From Alpine heights the father first descends; His daughter’s husband in the plain attends: His daughter’s husband arms his eastern friends. Embrace again, my sons, be foes no more; Nor stain your country with her children’s gore! And thou, the first, lay down thy lawless claim, Thou, of my blood, who bear’st the Julian name! Another comes, who shall in triumph ride, And to the Capitol his chariot guide, From conquer’d Corinth, rich with Grecian spoils. And yet another, fam’d for warlike toils, On Argos shall impose the Roman laws, And on the Greeks revenge the Trojan cause; Shall drag in chains their Achillean race; Shall vindicate his ancestors’ disgrace, And Pallas, for her violated place. Great Cato there, for gravity renown’d, And conqu’ring Cossus goes with laurels crown’d. Who can omit the Gracchi? who declare The Scipios’ worth, those thunderbolts of war, The double bane of Carthage? Who can see Without esteem for virtuous poverty, Severe Fabricius, or can cease t’ admire The plowman consul in his coarse attire? Tir’d as I am, my praise the Fabii claim; And thou, great hero, greatest of thy name, Ordain’d in war to save the sinking state, And, by delays, to put a stop to fate! Let others better mould the running mass Of metals, and inform the breathing brass, And soften into flesh a marble face; Plead better at the bar; describe the skies, And when the stars descend, and when they rise. But, Rome, ’tis thine alone, with awful sway, To rule mankind, and make the world obey, Disposing peace and war by thy own majestic way; To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free: These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.”