Page:Odes and Carmen Saeculare.djvu/109



O suffer hardness with good cheer, In sternest school of warfare bred, Our youth should learn; let steed and spear Make him one day the Parthian's dread; Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life. Methinks I see from rampired town Some battling tyrant's matron wife, Some maiden, look in terror down, — "Ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war! O tempt not the infuriate mood Of that fell lion! see! from far He plunges through a tide of blood!" What joy, for fatherland to die! Death's darts e'en flying feet o'ertake, Nor spare a recreant chivalry, A back that cowers, or loins that quake. True Virtue never knows defeat: Her robes she keeps unsullied still, Nor takes, nor quits, her curule seat To please a people's veering will. True Virtue opens heaven to worth: She makes the way she does not find: The vulgar crowd, the humid earth, Her soaring pinion leaves behind.