John Conington Quotes

But, Roman, thou, do thou control
The nations far and wide;
Be this thy genius, to impose The rule of peace on vanquished foes, Show pity to the humbled soul, And crush the sons of pride.

Each for himself, we all sustain
The durance of our ghostly pain;
Then to Elysium we repair,
The few, and breathe this blissful air.

Here sees he the illustrious dead
Who fighting for their country bled;
Priests who while earthly life remained
Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained;
Blest bards, transparent souls and clear,
Whose song was worthy Phoebus' ear;
Inventors who by arts refined
The common lot of human kind,
With all who grateful memory won
By services to others done:
A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.

They reach the realms of tranquil bliss. Green spaces folded in with trees,
A paradise of pleasances.

No, had I e'en a hundred tongues,
A hundred mouths, and iron lungs,
Those types of guilt I could not show,
Nor tell the forms of penal woe.

This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold.

A lethargy of sleep,
Most like to death, so calm, so deep.

No longer dream that human prayer
The will of Fate can overbear.

At Orcus' portals hold their lair
Wild Sorrow and avenging Care;
And pale Diseases cluster there,
And pleasureless Decay
Foul Penury, and Fears that kill,
And Hunger, counsellor of ill,
A ghastly presence they:
Suffering and Death the threshold keep,
And with them Death's blood-brother, Sleep.

Along the illimitable shade
Darkling and lone their way they made, Through the vast kingdom of the dead, An empty void, though tenanted:
So travellers in a forest move
With but the uncertain moon above,
Beneath her niggard light.

Now for a heart that scorns dismay:
Now for a soul prepared.

The journey down to the abyss
Is prosperous and light:
The palace gates of gloomy Dis
Stand open day and night:
But upward to retrace the way
And pass into the light of day
There comes the stress of labour; this
May task a hero's might.

War, dreadful war, and Tiber flood
I see incarnadined with blood.

My chief, let Fate cry on or back,
'Tis ours to follow, nothing slack:
Whate'er betide, he only cures
The stroke of Fortune who endures.

They can because they think they can.