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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  From the ‘Epinician Ode for Scopas’

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

From the ‘Epinician Ode for Scopas’

By Simonides (c. 556–468 B.C.)

From a careful study of Simonides by John Sterling (Westminster Review, 1838)

A MAN can hardly good in truth become,

With hands, feet, mind, all square, without a flaw.

*****

Nor suits my thought the word of Pittacus,

Though he was sage, that to be virtuous

Is hard. This fits a god alone.

A man must needs to evil fall,

When by hopeless chance o’erthrown.

Whoso does well, him good we call,

And bad if bad his lot be known;

Those by the gods beloved are best of all.

Enough for me in sooth

Is one not wholly wrong,

Nor all perverse, but skilled in useful truth,—

A healthy soul and strong:

He has no blame from me,

Who love not blame;

For countless those who foolish be,

And fair are all things free from shame.

That therefore which can ne’er be found

I seek not, nor desire with empty thought,—

A man all blameless, on this wide-spread ground,

’Mid all who cull its fruitage vainly sought.

If found, ye too this prize of mine

Shall know: meanwhile all those I love

And praise, who do no wrong by will malign;

For to necessity must yield the gods above.