No More Learning

Only an epitaph on a tombstone, and tombstones themselves perish; for
even a tree may split them!

Produce the urn that Hannibal contains,
And weigh the paltry dust which yet remains.
AND IS THIS ALL? Yet THIS was once the bold,
The aspiring chief, whom Afric could not hold.
Spain conquered, o'er the Pyrenees he bounds;
Nature opposed her everlasting mounds,
Her Alps and snows. O'er these with torrent force
He pours, and rends through rocks his dreadful course.
Already at his feet Italia lies.
Yet, thundering on, "Think nothing done," he cries,
"Till Rome, proud Rome, beneath my fury falls,
And Afric's standards float without her walls! "
But what ensued? Illusive glory, say.
Subdued on Zama's memorable day,
He flies in exile to a petty state,
With headlong haste; and, at a despot's gate,
Sits, mighty suppliant, of his life in doubt,
Till the Bithynian monarch's nap be out!
Nor swords, nor spears, nor stones from engines hurled,
Shall quell the man whose frown alarmed the world:
The vengeance due to Cannae's fatal field,
And floods of gore, a poisoned ring shall yield!
Fly, madman, fly! At toil and danger mock,
Pierce the deep snow, and scale the eternal rock,
To please the rhetoricians, and become
A declamation--for the boys of Rome!

Consider next the yearning after long life.
Pernicious prayer! for mark what ills attend
Still on the old, as to the grave they bend:
A ghastly visage, to themselves unknown;
For a smooth skin, a hide with scurf o'ergrown;
And such a cheek, as many a grandam ape
In Tabraca's thick woods is seen to scrape.

The old man rouses feelings of impatient loathing in those around him;
his physical strength and faculties for enjoyment are gone. Even if
he remain hale, he may suffer harrowing bereavements. Nestor, Peleus,
and Priam had to lament the death of heroic sons; and in Roman history
Marius and Pompey outlived their good fortune.

Campania, prescient of her Pompey's fate,
Sent a kind fever to arrest his date:
When lo! a thousand suppliant altars rise,
And public prayers obtain him of the skies.
The city's fate and his conspired to save
His head, to perish near the Egyptian wave.

Again, there is the frequent prayer for good looks. But beauty is a
danger. If linked with unchastity, it leads to evil courses. Even if
linked with chastity, it may draw on its possessor the tragic fate
of a Lucretia, a Virginia, a Hippolytus, or a Bellerophon. What is a
Roman knight to do if an empress sets her heart on him?

Amid all such vanities, then, is there nothing left for which men may
reasonably pray?

Say, then, shall man, deprived all power of choice,
Ne'er raise to Heaven the supplicating voice?
Not so; but to the gods his fortunes trust.