You have hands to square and hewVast marble-blocks, hard on your day of doom,Ever building mansions new,Nor thinking of the mansion of the tomb.Now you press on ocean's bound,Where waves on Baiae beat, as earth were scant;Now absorb your neighbour's ground,And tear his landmarks up, your own to plant.Hedges set round clients' farmsYour avarice tramples; see, the outcasts fly,Wife and husband, in their armsTheir fathers' gods, their squalid family.Yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'dWaits you more surely than the wider roomTraced by Death's yet greedier hand.Why strain so far? you cannot leap the tomb.Earth removes the impartial sodAlike for beggar and for monarch's child:Nor the slave of Hell's dark godConvey'd Prometheus back, with bribe beguiled.