SEE diftant mountains leave their valleys dry,
And o'er the proud Arcade their tribute
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 counfel, and all heart to act :
The commonweal infpiring 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, 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, fée; her generous troops, Whofe pay was glory, and their best reward
* L. J. BRUTUS, and VIRGINIUS.
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 loweft fall of life.
HER feftive games, the school of heroes, fee; 95 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 caft in virtue's mold. While sculpture lives around, and Afian hills Lend their best stores to heave the pillar'd dome: All that to Roman ftrength the fofter touch Of Grecian art can join. But language fails To paint this fun, this center of mankind; Where every virtue, glory, treasure, art, Attracted ftrong, in heightened luftre met.
NEED I the contrast 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 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 antient opulence, and pomp?
COME! by whatever facred name disguis'd,
OPPRESSION, Come! and in thy works rejoice!
See nature's richest plains to putrid fens 125
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 plow;
And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe. 130
'Tis thine intire. The lonely fwain himself,
Who loves at large along the graffy downs
His stocks to pafture, thy drear champian flies.
Far as the fickening eye can fweep 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 blast 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 feen no more.
SUCH thy dire plains, thou self-deftroyer! Foe
To human-kind! Thy mountains too, profufe, 145
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,
Far other scenes of rifing culture spread,
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,
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 wildness run, no rural wealth
(Such as dictators fed) the garden pours.
Crude the wild olive flows, and foul the vine;
Nor juice Cacubian, nor Falernian, more,
Streams life and joy, fave in the Mufe's bowl.. 165
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..
Inglorious droops the laurel, dead to fong,
And long a stranger to the heroe's brow.
C 6
NOR half thy triumph this: caft, 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,
Lays on the bed impure his heavy head.
Thy horrid walk! dead, empty, unadorn'd,
See ftreets whofe echos never know the voice
Of chearful hurry, commerce many-tongue'd,
And art mechanic at his various task,
Fervent, employ'd. Mark the defponding race,
Of occupation void, as void of hope;
185
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 feiz'd their better 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 Justice fee how rafh Revenge,
Trembling, the balance fnatches; and the fword,
Fearful himself, to venal ruffians gives.
See where GoD's altar, nurfing murder, ftands,
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,
|