The facrifice of flattery

To lawless Neros, or Bourbonian kings.
True virtue to her kindred stars afpires,
Does all our pomp of stone and verse surpass,
And mingling with etherial fires,

No useless ornament requires

From speaking colours, or from breathing brass.

II.

Greatest of princes! where the wand'ring fun
Does o'er earth's habitable regions roll,

From th' eastern barriers to the western goal,
And fees thy race of glory run

With fwiftnefs equal to his own:

Thee on the banks of Flandrian Scaldis fings
The jocund fwain, releas'd from Gallic fear:

The English voice unus'd to hear,

Thee the repeating banks, thee every valley rings.
III.

The fword of heav'n how pious ANNA wields,

And heav'nly vengeance on the guilty deals,

Let the twice fugitive Bavarian tell;

Who, from his airy hope of better state,

By luft of fway irregularly great,

Like an apoftate angel fell:

Who,

Who, by imperial favour rais'd,
I' th' highest rank of glory blaz'd:
And had 'till now unrivall'd fhone,

More than a king, contented with his own;
But Lucifer's bold steps he trod,

Who durft affault the throne of GOD;

And for contented realms of blissful light,

Gain'd the fad privilege to be

The first in solid misery,

Monarch of hell, and woes, and everlasting night.

Corruption of the best is always worst;

And foul ambition, like an evil wind,

Blights the fair bloffoms of a noble mind;

And if a feraph fall, he's doubly curft.

IV.

Had guile, and pride, and envy grown

In the black groves of Styx alone,

Nor ever had on earth the baleful crop been fown;
The fwain without amaze, had till'd

The Flandrian glebe, a guiltless field:
Nor had he wonder'd, when he found

The bones of heroes in the ground :

No crimson streams had lately fwell'd
The Dyle, the Danube, and the Scheld.

2

But evils are of neceffary growth,

To rouze the brave, and banish sloth;
And fome are born to win the stars,

By sweat and blood, and worthy scars.
Heroic virtue is by action feen,

And vices ferve to make it keen;

And as gigantic tyrants rise,

NASSAUS and CHURCHILLS leave the fkies,

The earth-born monsters to chastise.

V.

If, heav'nly Muse, you burn with a defire
To praise the man whom all admire;
Come from thy learn'd Caftalian fprings,
And stretch aloft thy Pegafean wings :
Strike the loud Pindaric ftrings,
Like the lark who foars and fings;

And as you fail the liquid skies,

a

Cast on Menapian fields your weeping eyes:

For weep they furely muft,

To fee the bloody annual facrifice;

To think how the neglected duft,

Which with contempt is bafely trod,

Was once the limbs of captains, brave and just,

The mortal part of fome great demi-god;

The Menapii were the ancient inhabitants of Flanders.

Who

Who for thrice fifty years of stubborn war,
With flaught'ring arms, the gun and fword,
Have dug the mighty fepulchre,

And fell as martyrs on record,
Of tyranny aveng'd, and liberty restor❜d.

VI.

See, where at Audenard, with heaps of flain,
Th' heroic man, infpir'dly brave,

Mowing across, bestrews the plain,

And with new tenants crowds the wealthy grave.
His mind unfhaken at the frightful scene,
His looks as chearfully ferene,

The routed battle to pursue,

As once adorn'd the Paphian queen,
When to her Thracian paramour she flew.
The gath'ring troops he kens from far,
And with a bridegroom's paffion and delight,
Courting the war, and glowing for the fight,
The new Salmoneus meets the Celtic thunderer.
Ah, curfed pride! infernal dream !

Which drove him to this wild extream,

That duft a deity should seem;

Be thought, as through the wondering ftreets he rode,

A man immortal, or a god:

With rattling brafs, and trampling horse, Should counterfeit th' inimitable force

Of divine thunder: horrid crime !

But vengeance is the child of time,
And will too furely be repaid
On his profane devoted head,
Who durft affront the powers above,
And their eternal flames difgrace,

Too fatal, brandish'd by the real Jove,

1

Or Pallas, who affumes, and fills his aweful place:

VII.

C

The British Pallas! who, as Homer's did

For her lov'd Diomede,

Her hero's mind with wisdom fills,

And heav'nly courage in his heart inftils.

Hence through the thickest squadrons does he ride, With ANNA's angels by his fide.

With what uncommon speed

He fpurs his foaming fiery steed,

And pushes on through midmost fires,

Where France's fortune, with her fons, retires!

b VICEM GERIT ILLA TONANTIS.

Homer, in his fifth Iliad, because his hero is to do wonders beyond the power of man, premifes, in the beginning, that Pallas had peculiarly fitted him for that day's exploits.

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