When Fame to count thy acts and years proceeds, Thy years appear but ciphers to thy deeds. For thee, brave youth, as for our commonwealth, We pray, and drink, in yours, the public health: Your praise the senate and plebeians sing; With your loved name the court and cottage ring: You make our shepherds and our sailors glad; And not a house in this vast city’s sad.”

But mortal bliss will never come sincere: Pleasure may lead, but grief brings up the rear: While, for his son’s arrival, rev’lling joy Aegeus and all his subjects does employ; While they for only costly feasts prepare, His neighb’ring monarch, Minos, threatens war: Weak in land forces, nor by sea more strong, But powerful in a deep-resented wrong; For a son’s murder, arm’d with pious rage: Yet prudently, before he would engage, To raise auxiliaries resolved to sail, And with the powerful princes to prevail.