In trembling wonder hufh'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,
Whofe 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 feftive games, the school of heroes, fee; Her Circus, ardent with contending youth; Her ftreets, her temples, palaces, and baths, Full of fair forms, of Beauty's eldest-born, And of a people caft in virtue's mold.

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While sculpture lives around, and Asian hills

&CO

Lend their beft ftores 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 strong, in heighten'd luftre met.

Need I the contraft mark? unjoyous view!
A land in all, in government, in arts,

<< In virtue, genius, earth and heaven, revers'd.
Who but, these far-fam'd ruins to behold,
Proofs of a people, whofe heroic aims
Soar'd far above the little felfish fphere

Of doubting modern life; who but, inflam'd
With claffic zeal, thefe confecrated scenes
Of men and deeds to trace; unhappy land,
Would truft thy wilds, and cities loofe of fway?
Are these the vales, that, once, exulting states
In their warm bofom fed? the mountains thefe,
On whofe 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 difguis'd,
Oppreffion, come! and in thy works rejoice!
See nature's richest plains to putrid fens

Turn'd by thy fury. From their chearful 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 plough;
And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe.
'Tis thine entire. The lonely fwain himself,
Who loves at large along the graffy downs

His flocks to pafture, thy drear champain flies.
Far as the fickening eye can fweep around,
'Tis all one defert, defolate, and grey,
Graz'd by the fullen buffalo alone;
And where the rank uncultivated growth
Of rotting ages taints the paffing gale.
Beneath the baleful blaft 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;

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While ancient ways, ingulph'd, are feen no more.

Such thy dire plains, thou self-defroyer! foe
To human kind! Thy mountains too, profufe,
Where favage nature blooms, feem 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 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,

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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 Ceres, thin the radiant blush
Of orchard reddens in the warmest ray.
To weedy wildnefs run, no rural wealth
(Such as dictators fed) the garden pours.
Crude the wild olive flows, and foul the vine;
Nor juice Cocubian,, nor Falernian, more,
Streams life and joy, fave in the Muse'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 desert gale.
Through the vile thorn the tender myrtle twines.
Inglorious droops the laurel, dead to fong,
And long a stranger to the hero's brow.

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Nor

Nor half thy triumph this: caft, from brute fields,

Into the haunts of men thy ruthless eye.

There buxom Plenty never turns her horn;

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The grace and virtue of exterior life,

No clean Convenience reigns; ev'n Sleep itself,

Leaft delicate of powers, reluctant, there,

Lays on the bed impure his heavy head.
Thy horrid walk! dead, empty, unadorn'd,
See ftreets whofe echoes never know the voice
Of chearful 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-madnefs all to them!
By thee relentless seiz'd their betters joys,
To the foft aid of cordial airs they fly,
Breathing a kind oblivion o'er their woes,
And love and mufic melt their fouls away.
From feeble Juftice see how rafh Revenge,
Trembling, the balance fnatches; and the fword,
Fearful himself, to venal ruffians gives.

See where God's altar, nurfing 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 rife amid the lifeless waste,

Expiring nature all corrupted round;

While the lone Tyber, through the desert plain,

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Winds his wafte ftores, and fullen fweeps along.
Patch'd from my fragments, in unsulid pomp,
Mark how the temple glares; and, artful drest,
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 defert fee.
See the rank vine o'er fubterranean roofs,
Indecent, spread; beneath whofe fretted gold
It once, exulting, flow'd. The people mark,
Matchlefs, while fir'd by me; to public good
Inexorably firm, juft, generous, brave,
Afraid of nothing but unworthy life,

Elate with glory, an heroic foul

Known to the vulgar breaft: behold them now
A thin despairing number, all-fubdued,
The flaves of flaves, by fuperftition fool'd,
By vicé unmann'd and a licentious rule,

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In guile ingenious, and in murder brave.

Such in one land, beneath the fame fair clime,

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Thy fons, Oppreffion, are; and fuch were Mine.

Ev'n with thy labour'd pomp, for whofe vain fhow Deluded thoufands ftarve; all age-begrim'd, Torn, robb'd and scatter'd in unnumber'd facks, And by the tempest of two thousand years Continual fhaken, let my ruins vie.

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Thefe