< Page:Pindar and Anacreon.djvu
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FOURTH PYTHIAN ODE.

131

For thee in gratitude is wove

The garland of a people's love;
Then still let bless'd Cyrene share
Thy kind and persevering care. ⁠492


Now, monarch, with attentive ear⁠500
This maxim of the poet hear;[1]
A virtuous messenger will crown
Each action with supreme renown;
And thus will to the muse accrue
Praise from the herald's message true.⁠505
Long time through fair Cyrene's town
Has just Demophilus been known;
And Battus' glorious house confess'd
The graces of his spotless breast.
Ere yet complete youth's narrow span,⁠510
Among the boys he shone a man:
In solemn counsel he appears
The Nestor of a hundred years:
Slander's free tongue he bids be mute,
His virtues all her tales confute: ⁠504⁠515


Taught the base railer to abhor,
And with the good to wage no war;
Protracting naught by slow delay,
For short with man occasion's stay.
Well can he seize the fitting hour,[2]⁠520
No slave to wayward fortune's power.
The heaviest this of human woes,
That he who each fair blessing knows,
Bound by necessity's strong chain,
Must his encumber'd foot restrain.⁠525
Like Atlas, tottering with the weight

⁠Of all the bright incumbent heaven,
  1. ↑ The maxim of Homer, called by eminence the poet, to which Pindar alludes, is contained in the fifteenth book of the Iliad, in the exhortation of Neptune to Iris.
  2. ↑ Alludes to Demophilus, who had been banished by Arcesilaus, and whom Pindar wishes the monarch to recall.
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