The far-off future all is thine!
Thy hallowed augurs can divine
Whate'er dark song the birds of omen sing;
Of augury thou art the king,
And thy wise haruspex finds meaning fit
For what the gods have in the victims writ.
The hoary Sibyl taught of thee
Never sings of Rome untrue,
Chanting forth in measures due
Her mysterious prophecy.

Once she bade Aeneas look
In her all-revealing book,
What time from Trojan shore
His father and his fallen gods he bore.
Doubtful and dark to him was Rome's bright name,
While yet his mournful eyes
Saw Ilium dying and her gods in flame.
Not yet beneath the skies
Had Romulus upreared the weight
Of our Eternal City's wall,
Denied to Remus by unequal fate.
Then lowly cabins small
Possessed the seat of Capitolian Jove;
And, over Palatine, the rustics drove
Their herds afield, where Pan's similitude
Dripped down with milk beneath an ilex tall,
And Pales' image rude
Hewn out by pruning-hook, for worship stood.
The shepherd hung upon the bough