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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;
Whereas th' unjust and covetous above,

In deep unlovely vaults,

By the just decrees of Jove,
Unrelenting torments prove,

The heavy necessary effects of voluntary faults.

Whilst in the lands of unexhausted light,
O'er which the god-like sun's unwearied sight
Ne'er winks in clouds, or sleeps in night,
And endless spring of age the good enjoy,
Where neither Want does pinch, nor Plenty cloy:
There neither earth nor sea they plow,

Nor aught to labour owe

For food, that whilst it nourishes does decay,
And in the lamp of life consumes away.

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
Dance through the perfum'd air:

There silver rivers through enamel'd meadows glide,
And golden trees enrich their side;

The illustrious leaves no dropping autumn fear,
And jewels for their fruit they bear,

Which by the blest are gathered

For bracelets to the arm, and garlands to the head.
Here all the Heroes, and their Poets, live;
Wise Rhadamanthus did the sentence give,
Who for his justice was thought fit
With sovereign Saturn on the bench to sit.
Peleus here, and Cadmus, reign;

Here great Achilles, wrathful now no more,
Since his blest mother (who before
Had try'd it on his body' in vain)

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
At all the game that does but cross thine eye!
Shoot, and spare not, for I see

Thy sounding quiver can ne'er emptied be:
Let Art use method and good-husbandry,
Art lives on Nature's alms, is weak and poor;
Nature herself has unexhausted store,

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:
Whilst Nature, like the sacred bird of Jove,
Now bears loud thunder; and anon with silent joy
The beauteous Phrygian boy

Defeats the strong, o'ertakes the flying prey,
And sometimes basks in th' open flames of day;
And sometimes too he shrowds

His soaring wings among the clouds.

Leave, wanton Muse! thy roving flight;
To thy loud string the well-fletcht arrow put;
Let Agrigentum be the Butt,

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),
Swear, in no city e'er before,

A better man, or greater-soul'd, was born;
Swear, that Theron sure has sworn

No man near him should be poor;

Swear, that none e'er had such a graceful art
Fortune's free gifts as freely to impart,

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 great Alpheus' close and amorous race!
Fair Delos' sister, the child-bed

Of bright Latona, where she bred

Th' original new-moon!

Who saw'st her tender forehead ere the horns were

grown!

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