This Canada of ours and other poems/Nunc est Bibendum
For other English-language translations of this work, see Nunc est bibendum.
NUNC EST BIBENDUM.
TRANSLATION.
Horace, Ode 37, Book I.
Now drink and dance, my comrades, And spread the splendid feast,The haughty Queen of Egypt Is fleeing to the East.
When Caesar led his war-ships, Spread far in battle line,A panic fell upon her, Half mad with lust and wine.
She fled before his galleys Far from the Italian shore; The herd of loathsome traitors Now threaten Rome no more.
As swoops the eagle on the dove, The hunter on the hare, So Cæsar followed swiftly To bind her in her lair.
The daughter of a hundred kings, She spurned the Roman chains,And sought to spill the fiery blood That swelled her ruby veins.
She failed! but in her woman's breast Her courage rose serene; She walked again her father's halls, And still was Egypt's queen.
She pictured the proud triumph Beneath the Roman sky,And fiercely flamed her passion, And sternly flashed her eye;
In her ears the chariots rumbled, In her ears the shoutings rang, Then she bared her snowy bosom To the serpent's poisoned fang.