Blessed youth, know the face of glory
and the joyful voices,
and how a hard-won virtue surpasses
effeminate idleness. Listen: listen,
generous champion (your courage sets
the reward of your fame against the swift
flow of the years ) listen and lift your heart
towards noble desires. The arena,
and the stadium echo for you, and tremble
as popular applause calls you to glory.
Today, our beloved country
prepares to renew the ancient exemplars
in you, resplendent in your youthfulness.

      It was not he who gazed stupidly
at the Olympian course, naked athletes,
and the gymnasium’s rigour,
without being stirred to emulation
by the lovely palm and the crown,
who stained his hand
with barbarians’ blood at Marathon.
Such as perhaps had washed the dusty flanks
and manes of his conquering team in the Alpheus,
and now led Greek standards and Greek spears
against the pale swarms of weary fleeing Persians:
till the wide banks and servile shores of Euphrates
echoed with mournful cries.

      Is it vanity that rouses and frees
the rekindled spark
of natural virtue? And revives the sunken
fervour of vital spirits, dulled
in the sick breast? Since Phoebus
first turned his sad wheels, has human effort
ever been other than a game? And is truth
less a vanity than the lie? Nature gave
happy illusions, felicitous shadows,
to console us: and when foolish custom
could no longer shake off certain error
the nation changed its study
of the glorious to dark, bare, inaction.

      Perhaps a time will come when indifferent
herds will browse
the ruins of Italy, and the Seven Hills
will feel the plough: and perhaps
in only a few years, sly foxes
will inhabit Latin cities, and the dark woods’
murmuring surround the high walls:
if fate cannot rid perverted minds
of this sad forgetfulness
for the things of their country,
and if heaven remembering past greatness,
is not kind, in averting
the final ruin of an abject race.

      O worthy son, grieve that you survive
of our unhappy country.
When she bore the palm, which she has lost
through our fatal error, you would have
brought her fame. That age is gone:
today no one looks for honour from her womb:
but lift your spirit to heaven for yourself alone:
what value does our life have? Only to be despised:
blessed only when no danger threatens,
and we forget ourselves, when we do not measure
the hurt of slow destructive hours, or listen to their flow:
blessed only when we draw back
from Lethe’s channel, to seek more grace.