Our youth, of labour patient, earn their bread;
Hardly they work, with frugal diet fed.
From ploughs and harrows sent to seek renown,
They fight in fields, and storm the shaken town.
No part of life from toils of war is free,
No change in age, or difference in degree.
We plough and till in arms: our oxen feel,
Instead of goads, the spur and pointed steel:
The inverted lance makes furrows in the plain.
Even time, that changes all, yet changes us in vain—