SEE the wild waste of all-devouring years! | |
| How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears! | |
| With nodding arches, broken temples spread, | |
| The very tombs now vanish’d like their dead! | |
| Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil’d, | 5 |
| Where mix’d with slaves the groaning martyr toil’d; | |
| Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods, | |
| Now drain’d a distant country of her floods; | |
| Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey, | |
| Statues of men, scarce less alive than they! | 10 |
| Some felt the silent stroke of mould’ring age, | |
| Some hostile fury, some religious rage: | |
| Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, | |
| And Papal piety, and Gothic fire. | |
| Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame, | 15 |
| Some buried marble half preserves a name: | |
| That name the learn’d with fierce disputes pursue | |
| And give to Titus old Vespasian’s due. | |
| Ambition sigh’d: she found it vain to trust | |
| The faithless column and the crumbling bust; | 20 |
| Huge moles, whose shadow stretch’d from shore to shore, | |
| Their ruins perish’d, and their place no more! | |
| Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, | |
| And all her triumphs shrink into a coin. | |
| A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, | 25 |
| Beneath her palm here sad Judea weeps: | |
| Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, | |
| And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine: | |
| A small Euphrates thro’ the piece is roll’d, | |
| And little eagles wave their wings in gold. | 30 |
| The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame, | |
| Thro’ climes and ages bears each form and name: | |
| In one short view subjected to our eye, | |
| Gods, Emp’rors, Heroes, Sages, Beauties, lie. | |
| With sharpen’d sight pale antiquaries pore, | 35 |
| Th’ inscription value, but the rust adore. | |
| This the blue varnish, that the green endears, | |
| The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years! | |
| To gain Pescennius one employs his schemes, | |
| One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams. | 40 |
| Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devour’d, | |
| Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scour’d; | |
| And Curio, restless by the fair one’s side, | |
| Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride. | |
| Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine: | 45 |
| Touch’d by thy hand, again Rome’s glories shine; | |
| Her Gods and godlike Heroes rise to view, | |
| And all her faded garlands bloom anew. | |
| Nor blush these studies thy regard engage: | |
| These pleas’d the fathers of poetic rage; | 50 |
| The verse and sculpture bore an equal part, | |
| And art reflected images to art. | |
| Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim, | |
| Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame? | |
| In living medals see her wars enroll’d, | 55 |
| And vanquish’d realms supply recording gold? | |
| Here, rising bold, the patriot’s honest face, | |
| There warriors frowning in historic brass. | |
| Then future ages with delight shall see | |
| How Plato’s, Bacon’s, Newton’s looks agree; | 60 |
| Or in fair series laurell’d bards be shown, | |
| A Virgil there, and here an Addison. | |
| Then shall thy Craggs (and let me call him mine) | |
| On the cast ore another Pollio shine; | |
| With aspect open shall erect his head, | 65 |
| And round the orb in lasting notes be read, | |
| ‘Statesman, yet friend to truth; of soul sincere, | |
| In action faithful, and in honour clear; | |
| Who broke no promise, serv’d no private end, | |
| Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend; | 70 |
| Ennobled by himself, by all approv’d | |
| And prais’d, unenvied by the Muse he lov’d.’ | |
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