Horatian Ode On The Tercentenary Of "Don Quixote"

(Published at Madrid, by Francisco de Robles, January 1605)     "Para mi sola nacio don Quixote, y yo para el."--CERVANTES.     Advents we greet of great and small;     Much we extol that may not live;     Yet to the new-born Type we give     No care at all!     This year,[1]--three centuries past,--by age     More maimed than by LEPANTO'S fight,--     This year CERVANTES gave to light     His matchless page,     Whence first outrode th' immortal Pair,--     The half-crazed Hero and his hind,--     To make sad laughter for mankind;     And whence they fare     Throughout all Fiction still, where chance     Allies Life's dulness with its dreams--     Allies what is, with what but seems,--     Fact and Romance:--     O Knight of fire and Squire of earth!--     O changing give-and-take between     The aim too high, the aim too mean,     I hail your birth,--     Three centuries past,--in sunburned SPAIN,     And hang, on Time's PANTHEON wall,     My votive tablet to recall     That lasting gain!