Page:Odes and Carmen Saeculare.djvu/97

 The dangers of the hour! no thought We give them; Punic seaman's fear Is all of Bosporus, nor aught Recks he of pitfalls otherwhere; The soldier fears the mask'd retreat Of Parthia; Parthia dreads the thrall Of Borne; but Death with noiseless feet Has stolen and will steal on all. How near dark Pluto's court I stood, And Æacus' judicial throne, The blest seclusion of the good, And Sappho, with sweet lyric moan Bewailing her ungentle sex, And thee, Alcæus us, louder far Chanting thy tale of woful wrecks, Of woful exile, woful war I In sacred awe the silent dead Attend on each: but when the song Of combat tells and tyrants fled, Keen ears, press'd shoulders, closer throng What marvel, when at those sweet airs The hundred-headed beast spell-bound Each black ear droops, and Furies' hairs Uncoil their serpents at the sound? Prometheus too and Pelops' sire In listening lose the sense of woe; Orion hearkens to the lyre, And lets the lynx and lion go.