Their leafy brows sustain: fair Corinth first
Boasted their order, with Callimachus
(Reclining studious on Asopus'banks
Beneath an urn of some lamented nymph)
Haply compos'd; the urn with foliage curl'd
Thinly conceal'd the chapiter inform'd.
See the tall obelisks from Memphis old,
One stone enormous each, or Thebes, convey'd; 200
Like Albion's spires they rush into the skies :
And there the temple where the summon'd state
In deep of night conven'd: ev'n yet methinks
The veh'ment orator in rent attire
Persuasion pours; Ambition sinks her crest; 205
And, lo! the villain, like a troubled sea
That tosses up her mire! Ever disguis'd
Shall treason walk? shall proud Oppression yoke
The neck of virtue? Lo! the wretch abash'd,
Self-betray'd Catiline! O Liberty!
Parent of happiness, celestial born;
When the first man became a living soul
His sacred genius thou: be Britain's care;
With her secure prolong thy lov'd retreat;
'Thence bless mankind; while yet among her sons,
E'en yet there are, to shield thine equal laws, 216
Whose bosoms kindle at the sacred names
Of Cecil, Raleigh, Walsingham, and Drake.
May others more delight in tuneful airs,
The temple of Concord, where the Senate met on Catiline's conspiracy.
In mask and dance excel; to sculptur'd stone
Give with superior skill the living look ;
More pompous piles erect, or pencil soft
With warmer touch the visionary board:
But thou thy nobler Britons teach to rule,
To check the ravage of tyrrannic sway,
To quell the proud, to spread the joys of peace,
And various blessings of ingenious trade.
Be these our arts; and ever may we guard,
Ever defend thee with undaunted heart.
Inestimable good! who giv'st us truth,
Whose hands upleads to light, divinest Truth!
Array'd in ev'ry charm; whose hand benign
Teaches unweary'd Toil to clothe the fields,
And on his various fruits inscribes 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 isles, and peopled seas,
Rejoic'd around her lyre; th' heroic note
(Smit with sublime delight) Ausonia caught,
And plann'd imperial Rome. Thy hand benign
Rear'd up her tow'ry battleinents in strength,
Bent her wide bridges o'er the swelling stream
Of Tuscan Tiber; thine those solemn domes 245
Devoted to the voice of humbler pray'r;
And thine those piles* undeck'd, capacious, vast,
In days of dearth, where tender Charity
Dispens'd her timely succours to the poor.
Thine, too, those musically-falling founts,
To slake 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 desert, bright'ning in the sun, 255
Proud and more proud in their august approach:
High o'er irriguous vales, and woods, and towns,
Glide the soft-whisp'ring waters in the wind,
And, here united, pour their silver streams
Among the figur'd rocks, in murm'ring falls, 260
Musical ever. These thy beauteous works;
And what beside felicity could tell
Of human benefit: more late the rest ;
At various times their turrets chanc'd to rise,
When impious Tyranny vouchsaf'd to smile. 265
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
Rush'demulous, to fling the pointed lance,
To vault the steed, or with the kindling wheel
In dusty whirlwinds sweep the trembling goal;
Or, wrestling, cope with adverse swelling breast,
Strong grappling arms, close heads, and distant feet;
Or clash the lifted gauntlets: there they form'd 275
Their ardent virtues: in the bossy piles,
The proud triumphal arches, all their wars,
Their conquests, honours, in the sculptures live. And see from ev'ry gate those ancient roads, With tombs high verg'd, the solemn paths of Fame! Deserve they not regard? o'er whose broad flints Such crowds have roll'd, so many storms of war, So many pomps, so many wond'ring realms : Yet still thro' mountains pierc'd, or vallies rais'd, In even state to distant seas around
285 They stretch their pavements. Lo! the fane of Peace, Built by that prince who to the trust of * pow'r Was honest, the delight of human-kind.
Three nodding aisles remain, the rest an heap
Of sand and weeds; her shrines, her radiant roofs,
And columns proud, that from her spacious floor,
As from a shining sea, majestic rose
An hundred foot aloft, like stately beech Around the brim of Dion's glassy lake, Charming the mimic painter: on the walls Hung Salem's sacred spoils; the golden board And golden trumpets, now conceal'd, entomb'd By the sunk roof.-O'er which, in distant view, Th' Etruscan mountains swell, with ruins crown'd Of ancient towns; and blue Soracte spires, Wrapping his sides in tempests. Eastward hence, Nigh where the Cestian pyramid † divides The mould'ring wall, behold yon' fabric huge, Whose dust the solemn antiquarian turns,
Begun by Vespasian and finished by Titus.
+ The tomb of Cestius, partly within and partly without the walls.
And thence, in broken sculptures cast abroad, 305 Like Sybil'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 sides, 315
Stand in the clouds, their branches scatter'd round
After the tempest; Mausoleums, Cirques,
Naumachios, Forums; Trajan's column tall,
From whose low base the sculptures wind aloft,
And lead thro' various toils up the rough steep 320
Its hero to the skies; and his dark tow'r †
Whose execrable hand the City fir'd,
And while the dreadful conflagration blaz'd
Play'd to the flames; and Phœbus' letter'd dome ☀;
And the rough relics of Carine's street,
Where now the shepherd to his nibbling sheep,
Sits piping with his oaten reed, as erst
There pip'd the shepherd to his nibbling sheep,
When th' humble roof Anchises' son explor'd
Of good Evander, wealth-despising king!
Amid the thickets: so revolves the scene;
The baths of Caracalla, a vast ruin.
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