Translation Cons. Phil. Book 1 Metrum 4
Metrum 4
1 `He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate,
2 and set proud death beneath his feet,
3 can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad:
4 his countenance unconquered he can shew.
5 The rage and threatenings of the sea
6 will not move him though they stir from its depths the upheaving swell:
7 Vesuvius's furnaces may never so often burst forth,
8 and he may send rolling upwards smoke and fire;
9 the lightning, whose wont it is to smite down lofty towers,
10 may flash upon its way, but such men shall they never move.
11 Why then stand they wretched and aghast
12 when fierce tyrants rage in impotence?
13 Fear naught, and hope naught:
14 thus shall you have a weak man's rage disarmed.
15 But whoso fears with trembling, or desires aught from them,
16 he stands not firmly rooted, but dependent:
17 thus has he thrown away his shield ; he can be rooted up,
18 and he links for himself the very chain whereby he may be dragged.