Horace Ode 1.24

What shame or measure is there to desire for so dear a head? Teach mourning songs, Melpomene, to whom the father gave a pure voice with the lyre. Now a perpetual sleep presses Quintilius! When will Decency, and the sister of Justice, incorruptible Faith, and naked Truth ever see an equal to him (lit. whom)? That man fell wept by many good men, more wept for by no one than by you, Vergil. You, pious in vain—alas—ask the gods for Quintilius not thus entrusted. What if you, more pleasantly than Thracian Orpheus, should tune a song heard by the trees, would blood then return to the empty ghost, which once and for all with his frightful staff Mercury drove to his black herd? It is not to open fates with soft prayers. It is hard: but whatever is wrong to set right, let it become easier by the suffering.