Now have I reared a monument
more durable than brass,
And one that doth the royal scale
of pyramids surpass,
Nor shall defeated Aquilo
destroy, nor soaking rain,
Nor yet the countless tide of years,
nor seasons in their train.
Not all of me shall die: my praise
shall grow, and never end,
While pontiff and mute vestal shall
the Capitol ascend,
And so a mighty share of me
shall Libitina foil.
Where bellows headstrong Aufidus,
where, on his arid soil,
King Daunus ruled a rural folk,
of me it shall be told
That, grown from small to great, I first
of all men subtly wrought
Aeolian strains to unison
with our Italian thought.
So take thine honours earned by deeds;
and graciously do thou,
Melpomenè, with Delphic bays
adorn thy poet’s brow.

*****

Making a name for himself at Oxford as a conservative orator, Gladstone evolved into a reform-minded politician, enacting legislation that in later years he ruefully called socialist. He was strongly opposed to war and was outspoken against the Opium Wars in which Britain forced China to legalise the importation of opium (“a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace…”) and the Crimean War for which as Chancellor of the Exchequer he refused to borrow money, but raised the income tax rate by half in order to make the war less popular (“The expenses of a war are the moral check which it has pleased the Almighty to impose upon the ambition and lust of conquest that are inherent in so many nations … The necessity of meeting from year to year the expenditure which it entails is a salutary and wholesome check, making them feel what they are about, and making them measure the cost of the benefit upon which they may calculate.”)

Queen Victoria complained that Gladstone “addressed me as though I were a public meeting” and far preferred his political rival Disraeli. Disraeli published a dozen novels as well as short stories, poetry, drama and nonfiction. Gladstone at least translated a bit of Horace into verse. Here is the original ‘Odes, 3.30’:

Exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.
non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus
et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium
regnavit populorum, ex humili potens,
princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos
deduxisse modos. sume superbiam
quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica
lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.

I have taken the Gladstone translation from the excellent ‘Poem Into Poem’ (ed. George Steiner, Penguin) which also contains Ezra Pound’s translation:

This monument will outlast metal and I made it
More durable than the king’s seat, higher than pyramids.
Gnaw of the wind and rain? Impotent
The flow of the years to break it, however many.
Bits of me, many bits, will dodge all funeral,
O Libitina-Persephone and, after that,
Sprout new praise. As long as
Pontifex and the quiet girl pace the Capitol
I shall be spoken where the wild flood Aufidus
Lashes, and Daunus ruled the parched farmland:
Power from lowliness: ‘First brought Aeolic song to Italian fashion’–
Wear pride, work’s gain! O Muse Melpomene,
By your will bind the laurel. My hair, Delphic laurel.

I’ll take Gladstone’s version any day. No surprise.

Illustration: drawing of Gladstone by Carlo Pellegrini, published in Vanity Fair 6 February 1869