Her Tribes her Cenfus fee; her generous troops,
Whose pay was glory, and their best reward
Free for their country and for Me to die,
Ere mercenary murder grew a trade.
Mark, as the purple triumph waves along,
The highest pomp and lowest fall of life.
Her festive games, the school of heroes, fee; 95 Her Circus, ardent with contending youth; Her streets, her temples, palaces, and baths, Full of fair forms, of Beauty's eldest born, And of a people cast in Virtue's mould: While Sculpture lives around, and Asian hills 100 Lend their best stores to heave the pillar'd dome; All that to Roman strength the fofter touch Of Grecian art can join. But language fails To paint this fun, this centre of mankind, Where every virtue, glory, treasure, art, Attracted ftrong, in heightened lustre met. Need I the contrast mark? unjoyous view! A land in all, in government and arts, In virtue, genius, earth, and heaven, revers'd. Who but these far-fam'd ruins to behold,
Proofs of a people whose heroic aims
Soar'd far above the little selfish sphere
Of doubting modern life; who but inflam'd
With classic zeal, these confecrated scenes
Of men and deeds to trace, unhappy Land!
Would trust thy wilds, and cities loofe of sway?
Are these the vales that, once, exulting states
In their warm bosom fed? the mountains these
On whose high-blooming fides My fons, of old,
I bred to glory? these dejected towns,
Where, mean and fordid, life can scarce fubfift,
The scenes of ancient opulence and pomp?
Come! by whatever facred name disguis'd, Oppreffion! come, and in thy works rejoice! See Nature's richest plains to putrid fens Turn'd by thy fury. From their cheerful bounds See raz'd th' enlivening village, farm, and feat. First rural Toil, by thy rapacious hand
Robb'd of his poor reward, refign'd the plow,
And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe: 130
'Tis thine entire. The lonely swain himself,
Who loves at large along the graffy downs
His flocks to pasture, thy drear champain flies.
Far as the fickening eye can sweep around,
'Tis all one defert, defolate, and gray,
Graz'd by the fullen buffalo alone;
And where the rank uncultivated growth
Of rotting ages taints the passing gale.
Beneath the baleful blast the city pines,
Or finks enfeebled, or infected burns.
Beneath it mourns the folitary road,
Roll'd in rude mazes o'er th' abandon'd waste,
While ancient ways, ingulf'd, are seen no more,
Such thy dire plains, thou Self-destroyer! foe
To human-kind! Thy mountains, too, profufe, 145
Where savage Nature blooms, feem their sad plaint
To raise against thy defolating rod.
There on the breezy brow, where thriving ftates
And famous cities, once, to the pleas'd fun
Far other scenes of rising culture spread,
Pale shine thy ragged towns. Neglected round
Each harvest pines, the livid, lean produce
Of heartless Labour; while thy hated joys,
Not proper pleasure, lift the lazy hand.
Better to fink in floth the woes of life,
Than wake their rage with unavailing toil.
Hence drooping Art almost to Nature leaves
The rude unguided year. Thin wave the gifts
Of yellow Ceres, thin the radiant blush
Of orchard reddens in the warmest ray.
To weedy wildness run, no rural wealth
(Such as dictators fed) the garden pours.
Crude the wild olive flows, and foul the vine;
Nor juice Cœcubian nor Falernian more
Streams life and joy, save in the Muse's bowl. 165
Unfeconded by Art, the spinning race
Draw the bright thread in vain, and idly toil.
In vain, forlorn in wilds, the citron blows,
And flowering plants perfume the defert gale.
Thro' the vile thorn the tender myrtle twines: 170
Inglorious droops the laurel, dead to fong,
And long a stranger to the hero's brow.
Nor half thy triumph this, caft from brute fields
Into the haunts of men thy ruthless eye.
There buxom Plenty neyer turns her horn;
The grace and virtue of exterior life,
No clean Convenience reigns; even Sleep itself,
Leaft delicate of powers, reluctant, there
Lays on the bed impure his heavy head.
Thy horrid walk! dead, empty, unadorn'd; 180
See streets whose echoes never know the voice
Of cheerful Hurry, Commerce many-tongu'd,
And Art mechanic at his various task,
Fervent, employ'd. Mark the desponding race,
Of occupation void, as void of hope;
Hope, the glad ray glanc'd from Eternal Good,
That life enlivens, and exalts its powers,
With views of fortune-madness all to them!
By thee relentless seiz'd their better joys,
To the foft aid of cordial airs they fly,
Breathing a kind oblivion o'er their woes,
And love and music melt their fouls away.
From feeble Justice see how rash Revenge,
Trembling, the balance snatches, and the fword,
Fearful himself, to venal ruffians gives.
See where God's altar, nurfing Murder, stands
With the red touch of dark afsassins stain'd.
But chief let Rome, the mighty City! speak
The full-exerted genius of thy reign.
Behold her rife amid the lifeless waste,
Volume II.
Expiring Nature all corrupted round;
While the lone Tiber, thro' the defert plain
Winds his waste stores, and fullen sweeps along.
Patch'd from my fragments, in unfolid pomp, Mark how the temple glares, and, artful dreft, 205
Amufive, draws the fuperftitious train.
Mark how the palace lifts a lying front,
Concealing often, in magnific jail,
Proud Want; a deep unanimated gloom!
And oft' adjoining to the drear abode
Of Mifery, whose melancholy walls
Seem its voracious grandeur to reproach.
Within the City-bounds the defert see:
See the rank vine o'er fubterranean roofs
Indecent spread, beneath whose fretted gold
It once exulting flow'd. The people mark,
Matchless, while fir'd by Me; to public good
Inexorably firm, just, generous, brave,
Afraid of nothing but unworthy life,
Elate with glory, an heroic foul
Known to the vulgar breast; behold them now
A thin defpairing number, all-fubdu'd,
The flaves of flaves, by superstition fool'd,
By vice unmann'd, and a licentious rule,
In guile ingenious, and in murder brave.
Such in one land, beneath the fame fair clime,
Thy fons, Oppreffion! are, and such were Mine.
Even with thy labour'd pomp, for whose vain show
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