Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/341
SILVAE, V. ii. 169—iii. 8
whence that present deity looks forth upon the walls of his own Rome hard by, enters outstripping Rumour, and with his news fills all thy house, Crispinus? Surely was I saying: “Not idly run the prophecies of the seers.” Lo! Caesar unbars for thee the mighty threshold of renown, and entrusts the sword of Ausonia to thy keeping. Forward, lad! having striven so far have strength for this great privilege, happy, who even now dost swear homage to thy mighty Chief, and to whom divine Germanicus doth give thy first sword! This is no lesser gift, than if the God of war himself bestowed on thee his strong eagles, and set his grim casque upon thy head. Go in good heart, and learn to merit yet higher honours!
III. THE POET’S LAMENT FOR HIS FATHER
The longest and most elaborate of the epicedia, and marked by much deeper and more genuine feeling than the others (except perhaps v. 5); it is to be noticed that it only appears in the fifth book of the Silvae, though his father had died about fifteen years previously. Possibly the last book was posthumous; it has no preface to it, as the others have, only a letter to Abascantus, and its last poem is an unfinished one.
Do thou thyself, most learned sire, vouchsafe me from Elysian springs a bitter potency in the music of grief, and the touch of an ill-omened lyre. For without thee I may not move the Delian grottoes, or awake Cirrha to wonted strains. All that Phoebus of late revealed in his Corycian bower,[1] and Euhan upon the hills of Ismara,[2] I have unlearnt. The fillets of Parnassus have dropped from my brow, and I have beheld in fear the deadly yew creep in among
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