Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79.
The Death of Cleopatra
By Horace (658 B.C.)N
Now let us strike the holy ground;
With couches deck the temple round
For Saliaric banquets meet.
His costly wines, what time the Queen,
Puffed up with pride and female spleen,
Encircled by a loathsome herd
Marshalled her powers to overwhelm
Our Capitol and ancient realm,
And lay Rome’s glories in the dust?
Begot of Mareotic fumes,
When the devouring fire consumes,
Ship after ship, her Actium fleet.
Like hawk or hunter giving chase
To timorous dove or hare of Thrace,
Urges his crew to overtake
She homeward steers, resolved to die,
Preferring death to slavery
Or exile from her old domains.
Upon her breast she dares to clasp
The venom of the deadly asp,
Unshrinking, to the last a Queen.
In keel Liburnian over sea,
No golden-fettered captive she
To grace the triumph of her foe.