Act V scene I.-An Apartment in the Palace.

Enter Caesar, Mecaenas, Gallus, tibullus, Horace,
and Equites Romani.

Caes. 
   We, that have conquer’d still, to save the conquer’d,
   And loved to make inflictions fear’d, not felt;
   Grieved to reprove, and joyful to reward;
   More proud of reconcilement than revenge;
   Resume into the late state of our love,
   Worthy Cornelius Gallus, and Tibullus: 
   You both are gentlemen:  and, you, Cornelius,
   A soldier of renown, and the first provost
   That ever let our Roman eagles fly
   On swarthy AEgypt, quarried with her spoils. 
   Yet (not to bear cold forms, nor men’s out-terms,
   Without the inward fires, and lives of men)
   You both have virtues shining through your shapes;
   To shew, your titles are not writ on posts,
   Or hollow statues which the best men are,
   Without Promethean stuffings reach’d from heaven! 
   Sweet poesy’s sacred garlands crown your gentry: 
   Which is, of all the faculties on earth,
   The most abstract and perfect; if she be
   True-born, and nursed with all the sciences. 
   She can so mould Rome, and her monuments,
   Within the liquid marble of her lines,
   That they shall stand fresh and miraculous,
   Even when they mix with innovating dust;
   In her sweet streams shall our brave Roman spirits
   Chase, and swim after death, with their choice deeds
   Shining on their white shoulders; and therein
   Shall Tyber, and our famous rivers fall
   With such attraction, that the ambitious line
   Of the round world shall to her centre shrink,
   To hear their music:  and, for these high parts,
   Caesar shall reverence the Pierian arts.

Mec. 
   Your majesty’s high grace to poesy,
   Shall stand ’gainst all the dull detractions
   Of leaden souls; who, for the vain assumings
   Of some, quite worthless of her sovereign wreaths,
   Contain her worthiest prophets in contempt. 
   Gal.  Happy is Rome of all earth’s other states,
   To have so true and great a president,
   For her inferior spirits to imitate,
   As Caesar is; who addeth to the sun
   Influence and lustre; in increasing thus
   His inspirations, kindling fire in us.

Hor. 
   Phoebus himself shall kneel at Caesar’s shrine,
   And deck it with bay garlands dew’d with wine,
   To quit the worship Caesar does to him: 
   Where other princes, hoisted to their thrones
   By Fortune’s passionate and disorder’d power,
   Sit in their height, like clouds before the sun,
   Hindering his comforts; and, by their excess
   Of cold in virtue, and cross heat in vice,
   Thunder and tempest on those learned heads,
   Whom Caesar with such honour doth advance.

Tib. 
   All human business fortune doth command
   Without all order; and with her blind hand,
   She, blind, bestows blind gifts, that still have nurst,
   They see not who, nor how, but still, the worst.