Page:Odes and Carmen Saeculare.djvu/79

 For lo! the Sire of heaven on high, By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven, To-day through an unclouded sky His thundering steeds and car has driven. E'en now dull earth and wandering floods, And Atlas' limitary range, And Styx, and Tænarus' dark abodes Are reeling. He can lowliest change And loftiest; bring the mighty down And lift the weak; with whirring flight Comes Fortune, plucks the monarch's crown, And decks therewith some meaner wight.

ADY of Antium, grave and stern! O Goddess, who canst lift the low To high estate, and sudden turn A triumph to a funeral show! Thee the poor hind that tills the soil Implores; their queen they own in thee, Who in Bithynian vessel toil Amid the vex'd Carpathian sea. Thee Dacians fierce, and Scythian hordes, Peoples and towns, and Rome, their head, And mothers of barbarian lords, And tyrants in their purple dread,