And how much brighter virtue was, than gold:
They scarce their swelling thirst of fame could hide;
And boasted poverty with too much pride.
Excess in youth made Scipio less revered;
And Cato dying, seemed to own, he feared.
Julius with honour tamed Rome's foreign foes;
But patriots fell, ere the dictator rose.
And, while with clemency Augustus reigned,
The monarch was adored; the city chained.
With justest honour be their merits dressed;
But be their failings too confessed:
Their virtue, like their Tyber's flood,
Rolling its course, designed the country's good.
But oft the torrent's too impetuous speed
From the low earth tore some polluting weed;
And with the blood of Jove there always ran,
Some viler part, some tincture of the man.
Few virtues after these so far prevail,
But that their vices more than turn the scale;
Valour grown wild by pride, and power by rage,
Did the true charms of majesty impair;
Rome by degrees advancing more in age,
Showed sad remains of what had once been fair:
Till Heaven a better race of men supplies:
And glory shoots new beams from western skies.
Turn then to Pharamond, and Charlemain,
And the long heroes of the Gallic strain;
Experienced chiefs, for hardy prowess known,
And bloody wreaths in venturous battles won.
From the first William, our great Norman king,
The bold Plantagenets, and Tudors bring ;
Illustrious virtues, who by turns have rose
In foreign fields to check Britannia's foes;
With happy laws her empire to sustain,
And with full power assert her ambient main.
But sometimes too industrious to be great,
Nor patient to expect the turns of fate,
They opened camps deformed by civil fight,
And made proud conquest trample over right;
Disparted Britain mourned their doubtful sway,
And dreaded both when neither would obey.
From Didier and imperial Adolph trace
The glorious offspring of the Nassau race
Devoted lives to public liberty;
The chief still dying, or the country free.
Then see the kindred blood of Orange flow
From warlike Cornet, through the loins of Beau;
Through Chalon next, and there with Nassau join,
From Rhone's fair banks transplanted to the Rhine.
Bring next the royal list of Stuarts forth,
Undaunted minds that ruled the rugged north;
Till Heaven's decrees by ripening times are shown;
Till Scotland's kings ascend the English throne;
And the fair rivals live for ever one.
Janus, mighty deity,
Be kind; and, as thy searching eye
Does our modern story trace,
Finding some of Stuart's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.
No harsh reflection let remembrance raise:
Forbear to mention what thou canst not praise;
But as thou dwell'st upon that heavenly name,'
To grief for ever sacred, as to fame,
Oh! read it to thyself; in silence weep,
And thy convulsive sorrows inward keep;
Lest Britain's grief should waken at the sound;
And blood gush fresh from her eternal wound.
Whither wouldst thou further look?
Read William's acts, and close the ample book,
Peruse the wonders of his dawning life;
How, like Alcides, he began;
With infant patience calmed seditious strife,
And quelled the snakes which round his cradle ran.
Describe his youth, attentive to alarms,
By dangers formed, and perfected in arms;
When conquering, mild, when conquered, not disgraced, By wrongs not lessened, nor by triumphs raised.
Superior to the blind events
Of little human accidents; And constant to his first decree,
To curb the proud, to set the injured free;
To bow the haughty neck, and raise the suppliant knee.
His opening years to riper manhood bring,
And see the hero perfect in the king:
Imperious arms by manly reason swayed,
And power supreme by free consent obeyed;
With how much haste his mercy meets his foes,
And how unbounded his forgiveness flows;
With what desire he makes his subjects blessed,
His favours granted ere his throne addressed;
What trophies o'er our captived hearts he rears,
By arts of peace more potent, than by wars;
How, o'er himself, as o'er the world, he reigns,
His morals strengthening what his law ordains.
Through all his thread of life already spun,
Becoming grace and proper action run;
The piece by Virtue's equal hand is wrought,
Mixed with no crime, and shaded with no fault.
No footsteps of the victor's rage
Left in the camp where William did engage;
No tincture of the monarch's pride
Upon the royal purple spied;
His fame, like gold, the more 'tis tried,
The more shall its intrinsic worth proclaim;
Shall pass the combat of the searching flame,
And triumph o'er the vanquished heat,
For ever coming out the same,
And losing not its lustre nor its weight.
Janus, be to William just;
To faithful history his actions trust.
Command her, with peculiar care
To trace each toil, and comment every war;
His saving wonders bid her write
In characters distinctly bright;
That each revolving age may read
The Patriot's piety, the Hero's deed;
And still the sire inculcate to his son
Transmissive lessons of the king's renown.
That William's glory still may live,
When all that present art can give,
The pillared marble, and the tablet brass,
Mouldering, drop the victor's praise;
When the great monuments of his power
Shall now be visible no more;
When Sambre shall have changed her winding flood;
And children ask, where Namur stood.
Namur, proud city, how her towers were armed!
How she contemned the approaching foe;
Till she by William's trumpets was alarmed,
And shook, and sunk, and fell beneath his blow. Jove and Pallas, mighty powers,
Guided the hero to the hostile towers.
Perseus seemed less swift in war,
When, winged with speed, he flew through air.
Embattled nations strive in vain
The hero's glory to restrain;
Streams armed with rocks, and mountains red with fire
In vain against his force conspire.
Behold him from the dreadful height appear,
And lo! Britannia's lions waving there!
Europe freed, and France repelled,
The hero from the height beheld:
He spake the word, that war and rage should cease; He bid the Maese and Rhine in safety flow;
And dictated a lasting peace
To the rejoicing world below.
To rescued states, and vindicated crowns,
His equal hand prescribed their ancient bounds;
Ordained, whom every province should obey;
How far each monarch should extend his sway;
Taught 'em how clemency made power revered;
And that the prince beloved was truly feared.
Firm by his side unspotted Honour stood,
Pleased to confess him not so great as good;
His head with brighter beams fair Virtue decked,
Than those which all his numerous crowns reflect:
Established Freedom clapped her joyful wings,
Proclaimed the first of men, and best of kings.
Whither would the Muse aspire
With Pindar's rage, without his fire?
|