Original - Duke Divinity School

Horace, B. I, Ode 22.
By the Earl of Roscommon
Out of Dryden’s Miscellany, Vol. 1. 55
[p.] 61 Virtue, Dear Friend, needs no Defence,
The surest Guard is Innocence:
None knew, till Guilt created Fear,
What Darts or poison’d arrows were.
Integrity undaunted goes.
Through Libyan Sands or Scythian Snows,
Or where Hydaspes wealthy side
Pays Tribute to the Persian Pride.
For as (by am’rous Thoughts betray’d)
Careless in Sabin Woods I stray’d,
A grisly foaming Wolf unfed,
Met me unarm’d, yet, trembling, fled. …
Set me in the remotest place,
That Neptune’s frozen Arms embrace;
Where angry Jove did never spare
One Breath of kind and temp’rate Air.
Set me where on some pathless Plain
The swarthy Africans complain,
To see the Chariot of the Sun
So near their scorching Country run.
The burning Zone, the frozen Isles,
Shall hear me sing of Celia’s Smiles;
55 “The Twenty-Second Ode of the First Book of Horace,” By the Earl of Roscommon, in John Dryden
(1631–1700), editor, Miscellany Poems, 4 th edition, 6 vols. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1716), 1:61–62. Page numbers
cited by Wesley make clear it is this edition he is citing. Wesley records reading this volume in his Oxford diary (14
Apr. 1726).
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