Fann'd by kind zephyïs, ever kiss the shore
And funs unclouded fhine, thro' purest air:
Or in the fpacious neighbourhood of Rome;
Far-fhining upward to the Sabine hills,
To Anio's roar, and Tibur's olive shade;
To where Preneste lifts her airy brow;
Or downward spreading to the funny shore,
Where Alba breathes the freshness of the main.
See diftant mountains leave their valleys dry,
And o'er the proud Arcade their tribute pour,
To lave Imperial Rome. For ages laid,
Deep, maffy, firm, diverging every way,
With tombs of heroes facred, fee her roads:
By various nations trod, and fuppliant kings;
With legions flaming, or with triumph gay.

Full in the centre of these wondrous works,
The pride of earth! Rome in her glory fee!
Behold her demigods, in fenate met;
All head to counsel, and all heart tojact;...
The commonweal inspiring every tongue
With fervent eloquence, unbrib'd, and bold;
Ere tame Corruption taught the fervile herd
To rank obedient to a master's voice.

Her Forum fee, warm, popular, and loud,

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In trembling wonder hush'd, when the two SIRES,
As they the private father greatly quell'd,
Stood up the public fathers of the state. *,
See Juftice judging there, in human shape. !
Hark! how with Freedom's voice it thunders high,
Or in foft murmurs finks to TULLY's tongue.

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;

L. JUNIUS BRUTUS and VIRGINIUS.

U 3

$90

Ere

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, see;
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 mold.
While sculpture lives around, and Aftan hills,
Lend their best stores to heave the pillar'd dome :
All that to Roman strength the softer touch
Of Grecian art can join. But language fails
To paint this Sun, this center of mankind;
Where every virtue, glory, treasure, art,
Attracted strong, in heightened luftre met.
Need I the contraft 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 claffic zeal, these confecrated scenes
Of men and deeds to trace; unhappy land,
Would trace thy wilds, and cities loose of sway ;
Are these the vales, that, once, exulting states
In their warm bosom fed? The mountains these,
On whofe high-blooming fides my fons, of old,
I bred to glory? Thefe dejected towns,
Where, mean, and fordid, life can scarce subsist,
The scenes of antient opulence, and pomp?

Come! by whatever facred name disguis'd,
OPPRESSION, COmne ! and in thy works rejoice!
See Nature's richest plains to putrid fens

125 Turn'd

Turn'd by thy fury. From their chearful bounds,
See raz'd th' enlivening village, farm, and seat.
First, rural toil, by thy rapacious hand
Robb'd of his poor reward, refign'd the plough;

And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe.
'Tis thine entire. The lonely fwain hunself,
Who loves at large along the graffy downs-
His flocks to pafture, thy drear champian flies.
Far as the fickening eye can sweep around,
'Tis all one defart, defolate, and grey;.
Graz'd by the fullen bufalo alone;

And where the rank uncultivated growth
Of rotting ages taints the paffing gale.
Beneath the baleful blaft the city pines,
Or finks infeebled, or infected burns.
Beneath it mourns the folitary road,

Roll'd in rude mazes o'er th' abandon'd waste;
While antient ways, ingulph'd, are seen no more.

Such thy dire plains, thou felf-destroyer! Foe:
To human-kind!: Thy mountains too, profuse,
Where favage: Nature blooms, seem their fad plaint
To raise against thy defolating rod.
There on the breezy brow, where thriving states,
And famous cities, once, to the pleas'd fun.

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Far other scenes of rifing culture spread,.

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Pale fhine 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,

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Than wake their rage with unavailing toil.

Hence drooping Art almost to Nature-leaves

The rude unguided year. Thin wave the gifts
Of yellow Geres, thin the radiant blush

of

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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 Coecubian, nor Falernian, more,
Streams life and joy, save in the Mufe's bowl.
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 defart 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: cast, from brute fields,

Into the haunts of men thy ruthless eye.

There buxom Plenty never turns her horn;

The grace and virtue of exterior life,

No clean Convenience.reigns; even fleep itself,
Leaft delicate of powers, reluctant, there,

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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 chearful hurry, commerce many tongue'd, .
And art mechanic at his various tafl

Fervent, employ'd. Mark the defponding race,.
Of occupation void, as void of hope;

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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 Juftice fee how rafh Revenge,

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Trembling,

B

Trembling, the balance fnatches; and the fword,
Fearful himself, to venal ruffians gives.

See where God's altar, nursing murder, stands,
With the red touch of dark affaffins ftain'd,
But chief let Rome, the mighty city! Speak
The full-exerted genius of thy reign.
Behold her rise amid the lifeless wafte,.
Expiring nature all corrupted round;

While the lone Tyber, thro' the defart plain,..

Winds his waste ftores, and fullen fweeps along.

195,

Patch'd from my fragments, in unfolid pomp,
Mark how the temple glares; and, artful drest, 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, whofe melancholy walls
Seem its voracious grandeur to reproach.
Within the city bounds, the desart see.
See the rank yine o'er fubterranean roofs,
Indecent, spread; beneath whose fretted gold.
It once, exulting, flow'd. The people mark,
Matchlefs, 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

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Known to the vulgar breaft: behold them now.

A thin despairing number, all-fubdu'd,
The flaves of flaves, by fuperftition' fool'd,
By vice unman'd, and a licentious rule,

In guile ingenious, and in murder brave.

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Such in one land, beneath the fame fair clime,

Thy fons, OPPRESSION, are; and fuch were MINE