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Translated by Sir Stephen E. De Vere
Ode XXXVII
(Died August 30, 30 B.C.)
DRINK, comrades, drink; give loose to mirth! | |
| With joyous footstep beat the earth, | |
| And spread before the War-God’s shrine | |
| The Salian feast, the sacrificial wine. | |
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| Bring forth from each ancestral hoard, | 5 |
| Strong draughts of Cæcuban long stored, | |
| Till now forbidden. Fill the bowl! | |
| For she is fallen, that great Egyptian Queen, | |
| With all her crew contaminate and obscene, | |
| Who, mad with triumph, in her pride, | 10 |
| The manly might of Rome defied, | |
| And vowed destruction to the Capitol. | |
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| As the swift falcon swooping from above | |
| With beak unerring strikes the dove, | |
| Or as the hunter tracks the deer | 15 |
| Over Hæmonian plains of snow, | |
| Thus Cæsar came. Then on her royal state | |
| With Mareotic fumes inebriate, | |
| A shadow fell of fate and fear, | |
| And thro’ the lurid glow | 20 |
| From all her burning galleys shed | |
| She turned her last surviving bark and fled. | |
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| She sought no refuge on a foreign shore. | |
| She sought her doom: far nobler ’twas to die | |
| Than like a panther caged in Roman bonds to lie. | 25 |
| The sword she feared not. In her realm once more, | |
| Serene among deserted fanes, | |
| Unmoved mid vacant halls she stood; | |
| Then to the aspic gave her darkening veins, | |
| And sucked the death into her blood. | 30 |
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| Deliberately she died: fiercely disdained | |
| To bow her haughty head to Roman scorn, | |
| Discrowned, and yet a Queen; a captive chained; | |
| A woman desolate and forlorn. | |
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