Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace Imitated. The Ninth Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace

A Fragment

LEST you should think that verse shall die

Which sounds the silver Thames along,

Taught on the wings of truth to fly

Above the reach of vulgar song;

Tho’ daring Milton sits sublime,

In Spenser native muses play;

Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,

Nor pensive Cowley’s moral lay—

Sages and Chiefs long since had birth

Ere Cæsar was or Newton named;

These rais’d new empires o’er the earth,

And those new heav’ns and systems framed.

Vain was the Chief’s, the Sage’s Pride!

They had no Poet, and they died.

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!

They had no Poet, and are dead.