But as her beams reflected pafs

Through our own Nature or Ill-custom's glass :

And 'tis no wonder, fo,

If with dejected eye

In standing pools we feek the sky,

That stars, fo high above, should seem to us below.

Can we ftand by and fee

Our mother robb'd, and bound, and ravish'd be,
Yet not to her affistance stir,

Pleas'd with the strength and beauty of the ravisher?
Or fhall we fear to kill him, if before

The cancel'd name of friend he bore?
Ingrateful Brutus do they call?

Ingrateful Cæfar, who could Rome enthrall!
An act more barbarous and unnatural
(In th' exact balance of true virtue try’d)
Than his fucceffor Nero's parricide!

There's none but Brutus could deferve
That all men elfe fhould wish to ferve,

And Cæfar's ufurp'd place to him should proffer; None can deserve 't but he who would refuse the offer.

Ill Fate affum'd a body thee t' affright,

And wrap'd itself i' th' terrors of the night :
"I'll meet thee at Philippi," faid the sprite;
"I'll meet thee there," faidft thou,

With fuch a voice, and fuch a brow,
As put the trembling ghost to fudden flight ;
It vanish'd, as a taper's light

Goes out when fpirits appear in fight.

D 2

One

One would have thought 't heard the morning crow,
Or feen her well-appointed star
Come marching up the Eastern hill afar.
Nor durft it in Philippi's field appear,

But unfeen attack'd thee there:

Had it prefum'd in any fhape thee to oppofe,
Thou would'st have forc'd it back upon thy foes:
Or flain 't, like Cæfar, though it be

A conqueror and a monarch mightier far than he

What joy can human things to us afford,
When we fee perish thus, by odd events,

Ill men, and wretched accidents,

The best cause and best man that ever drew a fword?
When we fee

The falfe Octavius and wild Antony,
God-like Brutus ! conquer thee ? *

What can we fay, but thine own tragic word-
That Virtue, which had worship'd been by thee®
As the moft folid Good, and greatest Deity,
By this fatal proof became

An idol only, and a name.
Hold, noble Brutus ! and restrain

The bold voice of thy generous disdain :

These mighty gulphs are yet

Too deep for all thy judgment and thy wit.
The time 's fet forth already which shall quell
Stiff Reason, when it offers to rebel ;

Which these great fecrets shall unfea),
And new philofophies reveal;

5

A few

A few years more, so soon hadst thou not dy'd,
Would have confounded human Virtue's pride,
And fhew'd thee a God crucify'd.

H

TO DR. SCARBOROUGH.

OW long, alas! has our mad nation been
Of epidemic war the tragic fcene,

When Slaughter all the while

Seem'd like its fea, embracing round the isle,
With tempefts, and red waves, noife, and affright!
Albion no more, nor to be nam'd from white}.
What province or what city did it spare?
It, like a plague, infected all the air.
Sure the unpeopled land

Would now untill'd, defert, and naked stand,-
Had God's all-mighty hand

At the fame time let loose Diseases' rage

Their civil wars in man to wage.

But thou by Heaven wert fent

This defolation to prevent,

A medicine, and a counter-poifon, to the age.
Scarce could the fword dispatch more to the grave
Than thou didst fave;

By wondrous art, and by fuccessful care,
The ruins of a civil war thou doft alone repair !!

The inundations of all liquid Pain,

And deluge Dropfy, thou dost drain.

Fevers, so hot that one would say

Thou might'ft as foon hell-fires allay
(The damn'd scarce more incurable than they)
Thou doft fo temper, that we find,

Like gold, the body but refin'd,
No unhealthful drofs behind.

The subtle Ague, that for fureness' fake
Takes its own times th' affault to make,

And at each battery the whole fort does shake,
When thy ftrong guards, and works, it spies,
Trembles for itself, and flies.

The cruel Stone, that reftless pain,

That's fometimes roll'd away in vain,
But ftill, like Syfiphus's ftone, returns again,
Thou break'st and meltest by learn'd juices' force
(A greater work, though short the way appear,
Than Hannibal's by vinegar!)
Oppreffed Nature's necessary course

It stops in vain; like Mofes, thou
Strik'ft but the rock, and strait the waters freely flow.

The Indian fon of Luft (that foul disease

Which did on this his new-found world but lately feize,

Yet fince a tyranny has planted here,

As wide and cruel as the Spaniard there)
Is fo quite rooted-out by thee,

That thy patients feem to be

Reftor'd not to health only, but virginity.

The

The Plague itself, that proud imperial ill,
Which destroys towns, and does whole armies kill,
If thou but fuccour the befieged heart,
Calls all its poifons forth, and does depart,

As if it fear'd no lefs thy art,

Than Aaron's incense, or than Phineas' dart.
What need there here repeated be by me
The vast and barbarous lexicon

Of man's infirmity?

At thy ftrong charms it must be gone
Though a disease, as well as devil, were called Legion,

From creeping mofs to foaring cedar thou
Doft all the powers and feveral portions know,
Which father-Sun, and mother-Earth below,
On their green infants here beftow:

Canft all those magic virtues from them draw,
That keep Disease and Death in awe ;

Who, whilft thy wondrous skill in plants they see,
Fear left the tree of life should be found out by thee.
And thy well-travel'd knowledge, too, does give
No lefs account of th' empire fenfitive;
Chiefly of man, whose body is

That active foul's metropolis.

As the great artift in his sphere of glafs
Saw the whole fcene of heavenly motions pafs;
So thou know'st all fo well that 's done within,
As if fome living crystal man thou 'dft seen.