Welcome, great C'sar, welcome now you are
As dearest peace after destructive war:
Welcome as slumbers, or as beds of ease
After our long and peevish sicknesses.
O pomp of glory! Welcome now, and come
To repossess once more your long'd-for home.
A thousand altars smoke: a thousand thighs
Of beeves here ready stand for sacrifice.
Enter and prosper; while our eyes do wait
For an ascendent throughly auspicate:
Under which sign we may the former stone
Lay of our safety's new foundation:
That done, O C'sar! live and be to us
Our fate, our fortune, and our genius;
To whose free knees we may our temples tie
As to a still protecting deity:
That should you stir, we and our altars too
May, great Augustus, go along with you.
Chor. Long live the King! and to accomplish this,
We'll from our own add far more years to his.