After the carnage of the Thracian plain,
Where in vast ruins fell
The strength of Roman freedom, whence one day
Ausonia's valleys and the Tiber's banks
Should tremble at barbarian foes' affray
By Fortune's doom, and from the rugged woods
Of distant regions cold,
To desolate the lofty walls of Rome
Should Gothic hordes proceed:
O'ercome and crimsoned with fraternal gore,
Brutus, in shadow of the lonely night,
Resolved by self-directed sword to bleed,
The inexorable Gods
And cruel fate defies,
Filling in vain the air with his impassioned cries:
"O idle virtue! In the realms of gloom,
Haunt of the unquiet shades,
Thy dwelling lies; thy footsteps are pursued
By vain repentance. Ye unfeeling Gods,
(If Phlegethon's dark torrents are imbued
With knowledge of your presence, or the skies)
You mock the wretched race
From whom you temples claim. Decrees of fraud
Insult our humankind.
So much the sorrow of terrestrial things
Moves heavenly wrath? Say, Jupiter, art thou
Enthroned the guardian of the evil mind?
When storms terrific rave
And thunder rumbles wide,
Dost on the just and pious thou the lightning guide?
"Unbending Fate! Necessity austere
Crushes with heavy yoke
The slaves of death; and if without an end
They see their ills, the thought consoles them still
That such must be. But doth woe less offend
When without balm? Doth he feel less of pain
Who is despoiled of hope?
An everlasting war, O ruthless Fate!
On thee the brave man wages
Who knows not how to yield; thy tyrant soul,
When thou, victorious, overwhelmest him,
With exultation o'er thy victim rages,
What time his heart august
The fatal sword receives,
And he with mockery spurns the base abode he leaves.
"He who to Hades takes a violent way
Doth rouse the gods to ire.
Such strength lies not in soft, eternal souls.
Stern Fate, perchance, our labours and our cares,
Our bitter fortunes that Despair controls,
Unto their leisure for amusement gave?
Not amid woe and guilt,
But in the woods, a free and spotless age
Did Nature to us give,
Our Goddess once and Queen. Now that undone
By impious custom is the blissful reign,
And 'neath strange laws we unrejoicing live:
When these disastrous days
A dauntless soul doth spurn,
Should Nature, to accuse a shaft not hers, return?
"Of guilt unconscious and of their distress,
The happy beasts are led
By Time serenely to the end ignored.
But if 'gainst rugged trees their heads to strike,
Or from the summit, where the wild winds roared,
Of rocky mountains to hurl down their frame,
They were by grief advised:
To their desire no stern refusal harsh
Would laws mysterious make
Or doubtful minds. Its joys from you alone
Of all the creatures by the earth brought forth,
Sons of Prometheus, did existence take:
From you the shades of death,
When Fate of wrath gives proof,
Alone from you, ye wretched, Jove doth hold aloof.
"Thou art arising from the ocean-wave
That reddened with our gore,
To gaze, fair moon, on the unquiet night
And plain so fatal to Ausonian strength.
Their slaughtered kinsmen meet the conquerors' sight;
The mountains tremble; from her pride's august
Doth ancient Rome decline:
And thou art so unmoved? Thou didst behold
Lavinia's race, the years
Of dazzling glory, and the laurels proud;
And on the Alps thy never-varying ray
Thou still wilt shed when 'mid the grief and tears
Of Italy enslaved,
Her solitary ground
Unto barbarians' tread shall mournfully resound.
"'Mid naked rocks, or on the verdant trees,
Behold, the beasts and birds,
Lost in the oblivion they forever bore,
Remain unconscious of the ruin Vast
And of the shattered world; and as of yore
The peasant's roof shall redden to the sun,
And with their morning lay
The birds awake the valleys, and the speed
Of fiercer beasts pursue
The less resisting over hill and dale.
Oh Fate! Oh idle race! an abject part
We are of nature; not the caves that knew
The sound of sighs, nor glebes
Drenched in our gore, display
Compassion for our grief, nor stars endim their ray.
"The unheeding Kings of Heaven and Hell
Or of the unworthy earth,
Or night, in dying I do not invoke;
Nor ye, last radiance of the shades of death,
Ye future ages. Who the gloom e'er broke
Of haughty tombs, with praise, and sighs, and gifts
Of crowds ignoble? Worse
The years become; and in an evil guard
The honour of the brave
And their last vindication lies, when left
To their degenerate sons. Upon my corpse
May birds of prey in famished fury rave,
And wild beasts rend my limbs,
And what remains be dust,
And to the air be left my name and memory just."