And [56]walks in awful grief the city-ways: Her wail is heard, her tear upbraiding falls [57]O’er their stain’d manners, their devoted walls. But they who never from the right have stray’d, Who as the citizen the stranger aid; [58]They and their cities flourish: genial Peace Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase: Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar, Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war. Nor scathe nor famine on the righteous prey; Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day: Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost trees With clustering acorns full, the trunks with hiving bees. Burthen’d with fleece their panting flocks: the race Of woman soft [59]reflects the father’s face: Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main; The fruits of earth are pour’d from every plain. But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong The thought of evil, and the deed of wrong, Saturnian Jove of wide-beholding eyes Bids the dark signs of retribution rise: And oft the crimes of one destructive fall: The crimes of one are visited on all. The god sends down his angry plagues from high, Famine and pestilence: in heaps they die. He smites with barrenness the marriage-bed, And generations moulder with the dead: Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls: Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain, And whelms their strength with mountains of the main. Ponder, oh judges! in your inmost thought The retribution by his vengeance wrought. Invisible, the gods are ever nigh, Pass through the midst, and bend th’ all-seeing eye: The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right, Awless of heaven’s revenge, stand naked to their sight. For thrice ten thousand [60]holy demons rove This breathing world, the delegates of Jove. Guardians of man, [61]their glance alike surveys The upright judgments and th’ unrighteous ways. A virgin pure is Justice: and her birth, August, from him who rules the heavens and earth: A creature glorious to the gods on high, Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky. Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat In lowly grief at Jove’s eternal feet. There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend: [62]So rue the nations when their kings offend: When uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill, They bend the laws and wrest them to their will. Oh gorged with gold! ye kingly judges hear! Make straight your paths: your crooked judgments fear: That the foul record may no more be seen, Erased, forgotten, as it ne’er had been! He wounds himself that aims another’s wound: His evil counsels on himself rebound. Jove at his awful pleasure looks from high With all-discerning and all-knowing eye; Nor hidden from its ken what injured right