Classic Poem

No walls with ivory inlaid
Adorn my house; no colonnade
Proudly supports my citron beams,
Nor rich with gold my ceiling flames;
Nor have I, like an heir unknown,
Seized upon Attalus's throne;
Nor dames, to happier fortunes bred,
Draw down for me the purple thread;
Yet with a firm and honest heart,
Unknowing or of fraud or art,
With liberal vein of genius blessed,
I 'm by the rich and great caressed.
My patron's gift, my Sabine field,
Shall all its rural plenty yield;
And happy in that rural store,
Of Heaven and him I ask no more.
Day presses on the heels of day,
And moons increase to their decay;
But you, with thoughtless pride elate,
Unconscious of impending fate,
Command the pillared dome to rise,
When, lo! thy tomb forgotten lies;
And, though the waves indignant roar,
Forward you urge the Baian shore;
While earth's too narrow bounds in vain
Your guilty progress would restrain,
The sacred landmark strives in vain
Your impious avarice to restrain:
You break into your neighbour's grounds,
And overleap your client's bounds.
Driven out by thee, to new abodes
They carry their paternal gods;
The wife her husband's sorrow shares,
And on her breast her squalid infant bears.
Yet destined by unerring fate,
Shall death this wealthy lord await:
Then whither tend thy wide domains?
For Earth impartial entertains
Her various sons, and in her breast
Princes and beggars equal rest.
Nor gold could bribe, nor art deceive
The gloomy life-guard of the grave,
Backward to tread the shadowy way,
And waft Prometheus into day.
Yet he, who Tantalus detains,
With all his haughty race in chains,
Invoked or not, the wretch receives,
And from the toils of life relieves.