With a frail good they wisely buy The solid purchase of eternity: They, whilst life's air they breathe, consider well, and know Th' account they must hereafter give below; In deep unlovely vaults, By the just decrees of Jove, The heavy necessary effects of voluntary faults. Whilst in the lands of unexhausted light, Nor aught to labour owe For food, that whilst it nourishes does decay, Thrice had these men through mortal bodies pass'd, Did thrice the trial undergo, Till all their little dross was purg'd at last, The furnace had no more to do. Then in rich Saturn's peaceful state Were they for sacred treasures plac'd, The Muse-discovered world of Islands Fortunate. Soft-footed winds with tuneful voices there There silver rivers through enamel'd meadows glide, The illustrious leaves no dropping autumn fear, Which by the blest are gathered For bracelets to the arm, and garlands to the head. Here great Achilles, wrathful now no more, Dipp'd now his soul in Stygian lake, Which did from thence a divine hardness take, That does from passion and from vice invulnerable make. To Theron, Muse! bring back thy wandering song, Whom those bright troops expect impatiently; And may they do so long! How, noble archer! do thy wanton arrows fly Thy sounding quiver can ne'er emptied be: Wallows in wealth, and runs a turning maze, That no vulgar eye can trace. Art, instead of mounting high, About her humble food does hovering fly; Like the ignoble crow, rapine and noise does love: Defeats the strong, o'ertakes the flying prey, His soaring wings among the clouds. Leave, wanton Muse! thy roving flight; And Theron be the White. And, lest the name of verse should give Malicious men pretext to misbelieve, By the Castalian waters swear (A sacred oath no poets dare To take in vain, No more than Gods do that of Styx profane), A better man, or greater-soul'd, was born; No man near him should be poor; Swear, that none e'er had such a graceful art With an unenvious hand, and an unbounded heart. But in this thankless world the givers Are envied ev'n by the receivers : "T is now the cheap and frugal fashion, Rather to hide, than pay, the obligation: Nay, 't is much worse than so; It now an artifice does grow, Wrongs and outrages to do, Lest men should think we owe. Such monsters, Theron! has thy virtue found: But all the malice they profess, Thy secure honour cannot wound; For thy vast bounties are so numberless, That them or to conceal, or else to tell, Is equally impossible! THE FIRST NEMÆAN ODE OF PINDAR. Chromius, the son of Agesidamus, a young gentleman of Sicily, is celebrated for having won the prize of the chariot-race in the Nemean games (a solemnity instituted first to celebrate the funeral of Opheltes, as is at large described by Statius; and afterwards continued every third year, with an extraordinary conflux of all Greece, and with incredible honour to the conquerors in all the exercises there practised), upon which occasion the poet begins with the commendation of his country, which I take to have been Ortygia (an island belonging to Sicily, and a part of Syracuse, being joined to it by a bridge), though the title of the Ode call him Ætnæan Chromius, perhaps because he was made governor of that town by Hieron. From thence he falls into the praise of Chromius's person, which he draws from his great endowments of mind and body, and most especially from his hospitality, and the worthy use of his riches. He likens his beginning to that of Hercules; and, according to his usual manner of being transported with any good hint that meets him in his way, passing into a digression of Hercules, and his slaying the two serpents in his cradle, concludes the Ode with that history. BEAUTEOUS Ortygia! the first breathing-place Of bright Latona, where she bred Th' original new-moon! Who saw'st her tender forehead ere the horns were grown! |