He then treats of navigation: and concludes with some desultory precepts of religion, moral decorum, and superstition: and lastly, with a specification of DAYS: which are divided into holy, auspicious, and inauspicious: mixed and intermediary: or such as are entitled to no remarkable observance. WORKS. I. Come, Muses! ye, that from Pieria raise The song of glory, sing your father’s praise. By Jove’s high will th’ unknown and known of fame Exist, the nameless and the fair of name. ’Tis He with ease [27]the bowed feeble rears, And casts the mighty from their highest spheres: With ease of human grandeur shrouds the ray: With ease on abject darkness pours the day: Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud; Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud. Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear: Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear: While I to Perses’ heart would fain convey The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay. Two STRIFES on earth of soul divided rove: The wise will this condemn and that approve: Accursed the one spreads misery from afar, And stirs up discord and pernicious war: Men love not this: yet heaven-enforced maintain The strife abhorr’d, but still abhorr’d in vain. [28]The other elder rose from darksome night: The God high-throned, who dwells in ether’s light, Fix’d deep in earth, and centred midst mankind This better strife, which fires the slothful mind. The needy idler sees the rich, and hastes Himself to guide the plough, and plant the wastes: Ordering his household: thus the neighbour’s eyes Mark emulous the wealthy neighbour rise: Beneficent this strife’s incensing zeal: The potters angry turn the forming wheel: Smiths beat their anvils; [29]almsmen zealous throng, And minstrels kindle with the minstrel’s song. Oh Perses! thou within thy secret breast Repose the maxims by my care imprest; Nor ever let that evil-joying strife Have power to wean thee from the toils of life; The whilst thy prying eyes the forum draws, Thine ears the process, and the din of laws. Small care be his of wrangling and debate For whose ungather’d food the garners wait; Who wants within the summer’s plenty stored, Earth’s kindly fruits, and Ceres’ yearly hoard. With these replenish’d, at the brawling bar For others’ wealth go instigate the war. But this thou mays’t no more: let justice guide, Best boon of heaven, and future strife decide. Not so we shared [30]the patrimonial land When greedy pillage fill’d thy grasping hand: The bribe-devouring Judges lull’d by thee The sentence gave and stamp’d the false decree: Oh fools! who know not in their selfish soul How far the half is better than the whole: [31]The good which asphodel and mallows yield, The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field!