e:--

"Kin before kith; to prosper is my prayer;
Poets, we know, are heaven's peculiar care.
We've Homer; and what other's worth a thought?
I call him chief of bards who costs me naught."

Yet what if all your chests with gold are lined?
Is this enjoying wealth? Oh fools and blind!
Part on your heart's desire, on minstrels spend
Part; and your kindred and your kind befriend:
And daily to the gods bid altar-fires ascend.
Nor be ye churlish hosts, but glad the heart
Of guests with wine, when they must needs depart:
And reverence most the priests of sacred song:
So, when hell hides you, shall your names live long;
Not doomed to wail on Acheron's sunless sands,
Like some poor hind, the inward of whose hands
The spade hath gnarled and knotted, born to groan,
Poor sire's poor offspring, hapless Penury's own!

Their monthly dole erewhile unnumbered thralls
Sought in Antiochus', in Aleuas' halls;
On to the Scopadae's byres in endless line
The calves ran lowing with the horned kine;
And, marshalled by the good Creondae's swains
Myriads of choice sheep basked on Cranron's plains.
Yet had their joyaunce ended, on the day
When their sweet spirit dispossessed its clay,
To hated Acheron's ample barge resigned.
Nameless, their stored-up luxury left behind,
With the lorn dead through ages had they lain,
Had not a minstrel bade them live again:--
Had not in woven words the Ceian sire
Holding sweet converse with his full-toned lyre
Made even their swift steeds for aye renowned,
When from the sacred lists they came home crowned.
Forgot were Lycia's chiefs, and Hector's hair
Of gold, and Cycnus femininely fair;
But that bards bring old battles back to mind.
Odysseus--he who roamed amongst mankind
A hundred years and more, reached utmost hell
Alive, and 'scaped the giant's hideous cell--
Had lived and died: Eumaeus and his swine;
Philoetius, busy with his herded kine;
And great Laertes' self, had passed away,
Were not their names preserved in Homer's lay.
Through song alone may man true glory taste;
The dead man's riches his survivors waste.

But count the waves, with yon gray wind-swept main
Borne shoreward: from a red brick wash his stain
In some pool's violet depths: 'twill task thee yet
To reach the heart on baleful avarice