Volume 1 — HORACE, BOOK IV, ODE IX
Reading edition
ADDRESSED TO ARCHBISHOP KING,[1] 1718
Virtue conceal'd within our breast Is inactivity at best: But never shall the Muse endure To let your virtues lie obscure; Or suffer Envy to conceal Your labours for the public weal. Within your breast all wisdom lies, Either to govern or advise; Your steady soul preserves her frame, In good and evil times, the same. Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud, Stand in your sacred presence awed; Your hand alone from gold abstains, Which drags the slavish world in chains. Him for a happy man I own, Whose fortune is not overgrown;[2] And happy he who wisely knows To use the gifts that Heaven bestows; Or, if it please the powers divine, Can suffer want and not repine. The man who infamy to shun Into the arms of death would run; That man is ready to defend, With life, his country or his friend.
[Footnote 1: With whom Swift was in constant correspondence, more or less friendly. See Journal to Stella, "Prose Works," vol. ii, passim; and an account of King, vol. iii, p. 241, note.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: "Non possidentem multa vocaveris recte beatum: rectius occupat nomen beati, qui deorum muneribus sapienter uti duramque callet pauperiem pati, pejusque leto flagitium timet."]