But in no worse than such affections dressed As leave the pure celestial spark at rest, And free in these fair fields to dream away Any chance taint surviving from earth’s clay To dull the sereneness of the fire giv’n To infants, that they may remember Heav’n.” “And now behold the final stage:— this rout, Its cycle—a thousand years—being out— Called by God’s Messenger of Life and Death, Descends where Lethe, in the cleft beneath, Will make it, drinking of the troubled flood, Conscious it once was clothed with flesh and blood. And yearn to take them back, and to return Rude air to breathe, and feel a rude sun burn. Nearer now draw with me, that from this bank Thou mayest watch the comers rank by rank; Read, as I point, the future in each face; See, as I see, the glory of our race— Great as it was, and greater still to be, Graft on Troy’s stock, the bud of Italy. Mark him who leans upon a bloodless spear; ’Tis thy own son; but look upon him here; On earth Thou wilt not; for, when thy long life Is all but spent, Lavinia thy Wife Shall conceive a child, and in full time bear Silvius in the woods to be thy heir; King of Alba, like many of his line, As Procas and Æneas, namesake thine. And still kings come—I cannot number them, Each adding to old a fresh diadem! But stay! who advances crested like to Mars— For whom Jove keeps a place among the stars? Romulus—City maker? Tenfold more! From him Earth’s arbiter, matchless in war, With no limits to empire but the Pole, And none below Olympus to the soul!— —As Joys Cybele to have peopled Heav’n, Rome boasts a breed to which Earth is giv’n! Turn thy eyes; regard this Company; know What a full tide of grandeur is to flow Hence of thy name; how from Thyself, and from Iulus, in time shall Julius come, And one as great, long destined to be born By Fate’s decree—else were Fate’s self forsworn— That, where King Saturn reigned in days of yore, Augustus shall the Golden Age restore. Marches still; already his edicts sway Where our day is night, and our night is day; Among the Gætuli; beyond them; far Outside the orbit, light, of any star; Outside track of Sun and dancing Hours, where Atlas swings the world’s axis, with its gear. Rumours of his approaching overwhelm Quaking Mæotis and the Caspian realm; While sevenfold Nile offers fealty, Trembling for what the Master shall decree. Have we not heard in legends or romance How God or Hero has made his advance, Victor throughout Earth?— Of him who laid low Lerna’s fire-breathing Dragon with his bow, Shot the brazen-footed Hind, and stilled the roar In Arcady of Erymanthian boar!— Of Bacchus in tipsy triumph, a yoke Of spotted tigers in his chariot, broke To obey, for reins, tendrils of a vine— His Mænads leaping down the long incline