But wave whate'er to Cadmus may belong, And fix, O Muse! the barrier of thy song 20 At Oedipus--from his disasters trace The long confusions of his guilty race: Nor yet attempt to stretch thy bolder wing, And mighty Caesar's conquering eagles sing; How twice he tamed proud Ister's rapid flood, While Dacian mountains stream'd with barbarous blood; Twice taught the Rhine beneath his laws to roll, And stretch'd his empire to the frozen pole; Or, long before, with early valour strove In youthful arms t' assert the cause of Jove. 30 And thou, great heir of all thy father's fame, Increase of glory to the Latian name! Oh! bless thy Rome with an eternal reign, Nor let desiring worlds entreat in vain. What though the stars contract their heavenly space, And crowd their shining ranks to yield thee place; Though all the skies, ambitious of thy sway, Conspire to court thee from our world away; Though Phoebus longs to mix his rays with thine, And in thy glories more serenely shine; 40 Though Jove himself no less content would be To part his throne, and share his heaven with thee: Yet stay, great Caesar! and vouchsafe to reign O'er the wide earth, and o'er the watery main; Resign to Jove his empire of the skies, And people heaven with Roman deities. The time will come when a diviner flame Shall warm my breast to sing of Caesar's fame; Meanwhile, permit that my preluding Muse In Theban wars an humbler theme may choose: 50 Of furious hate surviving death she sings, A fatal throne to two contending kings, And funeral flames, that, parting wide in air, Express the discord of the souls they bear: Of towns dispeopled, and the wandering ghosts Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts; When Dirce's fountain blush'd with Grecian blood, And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood, With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep In heaps his slaughter'd sons into the deep. 60 What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate? The rage of Tydeus, or the prophet's fate? Or how, with hills of slain on every side, Hippomedon repell'd the hostile tide? Or how the youth, with every grace adorn'd, Untimely fell, to be for ever mourn'd? Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend, And sing with horror his prodigious end. Now wretched Oedipus, deprived of sight, Led a long death in everlasting night; 70 But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day, The clear reflecting mind presents his sin In frightful views, and makes it day within; Returning thoughts in endless circles roll, And thousand Furies haunt his guilty soul: The wretch then lifted to th' unpitying skies Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes, Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he strook, While from his breast these dreadful accents broke: 80