Whose bosoms kindle at the facred names
Of Cecil, Raleigh, Walfingham, and Drake.
May others more delight in tuneful airs;
In mafque and dance excell; to sculptur'd ftone
Give with fuperior skill the living look;
More pompous piles erect, or pencil foft
With warmer touch the visionary board:
But thou, thy nobler Britons teach to rule;
To check the ravage of tyrannic fway;
To quell the proud; to fpread the joys of peace
And various bleffings of ingenious trade.
Be these our arts; and ever may we guard,
Ever defend thee with undaunted heart,
Ineftimable good! who giv'ft us Truth,
Whose hand upleads to light, divinest Truth,
Array'd in every charm: whofe hand benign
Teaches unwearied toil to cloath the fields,
And on his various fruits infcribes the name
Of Property: O nobly hail'd of old
By thy majestic daughters, Judah fair,
And Tyrus and Sidonia, lovely nymphs,
And Libya bright, and all-enchanting Greece,
Whose num'rous towns and ifles, and peopled feas,
Rejoic'd around her lyre; th' heroic note
(Smit with fublime delight) Aufonia caught,
And plan'd imperial Rome. Thy hand benign
Rear'd up her tow'ry battlements in strength;
Bent her wide bridges o'er the swelling ftream.
Of Tuscan Tiber; thine thofe folemn domes
Devoted to the voice of humble pray'r;
And thine those piles undeck'd, capacious, vast,
In days of dearth, where tender Charity
Difpens'd her timely fuccours to the poor.
Thine too those mufically-falling founts
To flake the clammy lip; adown they fall,
Musical ever; while from yon blue hills
Dim in the clouds, the radiant aqueducts
Turn their innumerable arches o'er
The spacious defert, bright'ning in the fun,
Proud and more proud, in their august approach:
High o'er irriguous vales and woods and towns,
Glide the soft whispering waters in the wind,
And here united pour their filver streams
Among the figur'd rocks, in murmʼring falls,
Musical ever.
These thy beauteous works:
And what befide felicity could tell
Of human benefit: more late the rest;
At various times their turrets chanc'd to rife,
When impious tyranny vouchfaf'd to smile.
Behold by Tiber's flood, where modern Rome
Couches beneath the ruins: there of old
With arms and trophies gleam'd the field of Mars:
There to their daily sports the noble youth
Rufh'd emulous; to fling the pointed lance;
To vault the steed; or with the kindling wheel
In dufty whirlwinds fweep the trembling goal;
Or wrestling, cope with adverfe fwelling breasts,
Strong, grappling arms, clos'd heads, and diftant feet;
Or clash the lifted gauntlets: there they form'd
Their ardent virtues: lo the boffy piles,
The proud triumphal arches; all their wars,
Their conquefts, honours, in the sculptures live.
And fee from every gate those ancient roads,
With tombs high verg'd, the folemn paths of Fame;
Deferve they not regard? O'er whose broad flints
Such crowds have roll'd, fo many storms of war;
Such trains of confuls, tribunes, fages, kings;
So many pomps; fo many wond'ring realms:
8 Modern Rome ftands chiefly on the old Campus Martius.
Yet ftill through mountains pierc'd, o'er vallies rais'd, In even state, to distant seas around,
They stretch their pavements. Lo the fane of Peace,
Built by that prince, who to the trust of pow'r
Was honeft, the delight of human kind.
Three nodding ifles remain; the reft an heap
Of fand and weeds; her fhrines, her radiant roofs
And columns proud, that from her fpacious floor,
As from a fhining sea, majestic rose
An hundred foot aloft, like ftately beech
Around the brim of Dion's glaffy lake,
Charming the mimic painter: on the walls
Hung Salem's facred fpoils; the golden board,
And golden trumpets, now conceal'd, entomb'd
By the funk roof.-O'er which in distant view
Th' Etrufcan mountains fwell, with ruins crown'd
Of ancient towns; and blue Soracte fpires,
Wrapping his fides in tempefts. Eastward hence,
Nigh where the Cestian pyramid divides'
The mould'ring wall, behold yon
Whofe duft the folemn antiquarian turns,
And thence, in broken sculptures caft abroad,
h Begun by Vefpafian, and finifhed by Titus.
i The tomb of Ceftius, partly within, and partly without the walls.
Like Sibyl's leaves, collects the builder's name
Rejoic'd, and the green medals frequent found
Doom Caracalla to perpetual fame :
The stately pines, that spread their branches wide
In the dun ruins of its ample halls *
Appear but tufts; as may whate'er is high
Sink in comparison, minute and vile.
These, and unnumber'd, yet their brows uplift,
Rent of their graces; as Britannia's oaks
On Merlin's mount, or Snowden's rugged fides,
Stand in the clouds, their branches scatter'd round,
After the tempeft; Maufoleums, Cirques,
Naumachio's, Forums; Trajan's column tall,
From whofe low base the sculptures wind aloft,
And lead through various toils, up the rough steep,
Its hero to the fkies: and his dark tow'r1
Whofe execrable hand the city fir'd,
And while the dreadful conflagration blaz'd,
Play'd to the flames; and Phœbus' letter'd dome m;
And the rough reliques of Carina's street,
Where now the fhepherd to his nibbling sheep
Sits piping with his oaten reed; as erst
The baths of Caracalla, a vast ruin.
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