When, Rome, I read thee in thy mighty pair, And see both climbing up the slippery stair Of Fortune's wheel by Lucan driven about, And the world in it, I begin to doubt, At every line some pin thereof should slack At least, if not the general engine crack. But when again I view the parts so peized, And those in number so, and measure raised, As neither Pompey's popularity, Caesar's ambition, Cato's liberty, Calm Brutus' tenor start; but all along Keep due proportion in the ample song, It makes me, ravished with just wonder, cry What muse, or rather god of harmony Taught Lucan these true moods! Replies my sense, What gods but those of arts, and eloquence? Phoebus and Hermes? They whose tongue, or pen Are still the interpreters 'twixt gods, and men! But who hath them interpreted, and brought Lucan's whole frame unto us, and so wrought, As not the smallest joint, or gentlest word In the great mass, or machine there is stirred? The self-same genius! So the work will say. The sun translated, or the son of May. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONNET: OF THREE GIRLS AND OF THEIR TALK by GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO FIRST BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 17. SIC TRANSIT by THOMAS CAMPION DIRGE (1) by RALPH WALDO EMERSON PSALM 137: EXILE by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE INLAND SEA by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |