So when that hour, The last in all the centuries, shall sound The world's disruption, all things shall revert To that primaeval chaos, stars on stars Shall crash; and fiery meteors from the sky Plunge in the ocean.

Earth shall then no more Front with her bulwark the encroaching sea: The moon, indignant at her path oblique, Shall drive her chariot 'gainst her brother Sun And claim the day for hers; and discord huge Shall rend the spheres asunder.
On themselves Great powers are dashed: such bounds the gods have placed Upon the prosperous; nor doth Fortune lend To any nations, so that they may strike The sovereign power that rules the earth and sea, The weapons of her envy.

Triple reign And baleful compact for divided power -- Ne'er without peril separate before -- Made Rome their victim.

Oh! Ambition blind, That stirred the leaders so to join their strength In peace that ended ill, their prize the world! For while the Sea on Earth and Earth on Air Lean for support: while Titan runs his course, And night with day divides an equal sphere, No king shall brook his fellow, nor shall power Endure a rival.

Search no foreign lands: These walls are proof that in their infant days A hamlet, not the world, was prize enough To cause the shedding of a brother's blood.
Concord, on discord based, brief time endured, Unwelcome to the rivals; and alone Crassus delayed the advent of the war.
Like to the slender neck that separates The seas of Graecia: should it be engulfed Then would th' Ionian and Aegean mains (4) Break each on other: thus when Crassus fell, Who held apart the chiefs, in piteous death, And stained Assyria's plains with Latian blood, Defeat in Parthia loosed the war in Rome.
More in that victory than ye thought was won, Ye sons of Arsaces; your conquered foes Took at your hands the rage of civil strife.
The mighty realm that earth and sea contained, To which all peoples bowed, split by the sword, Could not find space for two (5).