O victors of Philippi! many a field
Hath yielded palms to us: one effort more!
By one stern conflict must our doom be seal’d.
Forget not, Romans! o’er a subject world
How royally your eagle’s wing hath spread,
Though, from his eyrie of dominion hurl’d,
Now bursts the tempest on his crested head!
Yet sovereign still, if banish’d from the sky,
The sun’s indignant bird, he must not droop—but die.”
The feast is o’er. ’Tis night, the dead of night—