Be lowly wise: Think only what concerns thee and thy being.

Suffering for truth's sake Is fortitude to highest victory, And to the faithful death the gate of life.

The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail.

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.

Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.

Freely we serve, because freely we love.