In ruins on itself. Then spend thy life As nature doth direct; frequent the town, And live in friendly union with thy kind. _Hippolytus:_ There is no life so free, so innocent, Which better cherishes the ancient rites, Than that which spurns the crowded ways of men And seeks the silent places of the woods. 485 His soul no maddening greed of gain inflames Who on the lofty levels of the hills His blameless pleasures finds. No fickle breath Of passing favor frets him here, no sting Of base ingratitude, no poisonous hate. He fears no kingdom's laws; nor, in the quest 490 Of power, does he pursue the phantom shapes Of fame and wealth. From hope and fear alike Is he removed. No black and biting spite With base, malicious tooth preys on him here. He never hears of those base, shameful things That spawn amid the city's teeming throngs. It is not his with guilty heart to quake At every sound; he need not hide his thoughts 495 With guileful words; in pride of sinful wealth He seeks to own no lordly palace propped Upon a thousand pillars, with its beams In flaunting arrogance incased with gold. No streams of blood his pious altars drench; No hecatombs of snowy bullocks stand 500 Foredoomed to death, their foreheads sprinkled o'er With sacred meal; but in the spacious fields, Beneath the sky, in fearless innocence, He wanders lord of all. His only guile, To set the cunning snare for beasts of pray; And, when o'erspent with labors of the chase, He soothes his body in the shining stream Of cool Ilissus. Now swift Alpheus' banks 505 He skirts, and now the lofty forest's deep, Dense places treads, where Lerna, clear and cool, Pours forth her glimmering streams. Here twittering birds make all the woods resound, And through the branches of the ancient beech The leaves are all a-flutter in the breeze. 510 How sweet upon some vagrant river's bank, Or on the verdant turf, to lie at length, And quaff one's fill of deep, delicious sleep, Whether in hurrying floods some copious stream Pours down its waves, or through the vernal flowers Some murmuring brook sings sweetly as it flows. The windfall apples of the wood appease 515 His hunger, while the ripening berries plucked From wayside thickets grant an easy meal. He gladly shuns the luxuries of kings. Let mighty lords from anxious cups of gold Their nectar quaff; for him how sweet to catch With naked hand the water of the spring! 520 More certain slumber soothes him, though his couch Be hard, if free from care he lay him down. With guilty soul he seeks no shameful deeds In nooks remote upon some hidden couch, Nor timorous hides in labyrinthine cell; He courts the open air and light of day,