For me, whom years and love of high renown
Impel through far and various lands to roam,
The muses, ever waking in my breast
Sad thoughts, bid me invoke the heroic dead.
They sit and guard the sepulchres:—and when
Time with cold wing sweeps tombs and fanes to ruin,
The gladdened desert echoes with their song,
And its loud harmony subdues the silence
Of noteless ages.
Yet on Ilium’s plain,