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Thy country greater thanks can only give
To Anne, to her who made those arms her choice.
Recording Schellenberg's1 and Blenheim's toils,
We dreaded lest thou shouldst those toils repeat;
We viewed the palace charged with Gallic spoils,
And in those spoils we thought thy praise complete.
For never Greek we deemed, nor Roman knight,
In characters like these did e'er his acts indite.

Yet, mindless still of ease, thy virtue flies
A pitch to old and modern times unknown;
Those goodly deeds which we so highly prize
Imperfect seem, great chief, to thee alone."
Those heights, where William's virtue might have staid,
And on the subject world looked safely down,
By Marlborough passed, the props and steps were
made,

Sublimer yet to raise his queen's renown;

Still gaining more, still slighting what he gained, Nought done the hero deemed, while aught undone remained.

When swift-winged rumour told the mighty Gaul,
How lessened from the field Bavar was fled;
He wept the swiftness of the champion's fall,
And thus the royal treaty-breaker said:
And lives he yet, the great, the lost Bavar,
Ruin to Gallia in the name of friend;
Tell me, how far has Fortune been severe;
Has the foe's glory, or our grief, an end!
Remains there of the fifty thousand lost,

To save our threatened realm, or guard our shattered
coast!

1 Where the Duke of Marlborough gained a complete victory over sixteen thousand Bavarians in July, 1704.

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To the close rock the frightened raven flies,
Soon as the rising eagle cuts the air;

The shaggy wolf unseen and trembling lies,
When the hoarse roar proclaims the lion near.
Ill-starred did we our forts and lines forsake,
To dare our British foes to open fight;
Our conquest we by stratagem should make;
Our triumph had been founded in our flight.
'Tis ours, by craft and by surprise to gain;
'Tis theirs, to meet in arms, and battle in the plain.

The ancient father of this hostile brood,
Their boasted Brute, undaunted snatched his gods
From burning Troy, and Xanthus red with blood,
And fixed on silver Thames his dire abodes:
And this be Troynovante, he said, the seat
By Heaven ordained, my sons, your lasting place:
Superior here to all the bolts of fate

Live, mindful of the author of your race,

Whom neither Greece, nor war, nor want, nor flame,
Nor great Pelides' arm, nor Juno's rage could

tame.

Their Tudors hence, and Stuart's offspring flow:
Hence Edward, dreadful with his sable shield,
Talbot, to Gallia's power eternal foe,

And Seymour, famed in council or in field:
Hence Nevil, great to settle or dethrone,
And Drake and Cavendish, terrors of the sea;
Hence Butler's sons, o'er land and ocean known,
Herbert's and Churchill's warring progeny:

Hence the long roll which Gallia should conceal:
For, oh! who, vanquished, loves the victor's fame to

tell!

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Envied Britannia, sturdy as the oak,
Which on her mountain-top she proudly bears,
Eludes the axe, and sprouts against the stroke;
Strong from her wounds, and greater by her wars.
And as those teeth, which Cadmus sowed in earth,
Produced new youth, and furnished fresh supplies:
So with young vigour, and succeeding birth,
Her losses more than recompensed arise;
And every age she with a race is crowned,
For letters more polite, in battles more renowned.

Obstinate power, whom nothing can repel;
Not the fierce Saxon, nor the cruel Dane,
Nor deep impression of the Norman steel,
Nor Europe's force amassed by envious Spain,
Nor France on universal sway intent,
Oft breaking leagues, and oft renewing wars;
Nor (frequent bane of weakened government)
Their own intestine feuds and mutual jars:
Those feuds and jars, in which I trusted more,
Than in my troops, and fleets, and all the Gallic
power.

To fruitful Rheims, or fair Lutetia's gate,
What tidings shall the messenger convey;
Shall the loud herald our success relate,
Or mitred priest appoint the solemn day!
Alas! my praises they no more must sing;
They to my statue now must bow no more:
Broken, repulsed is their immortal king:
Fall'n, fall'n for ever, is the Gallic power.
The woman chief is master of the war;
Earth, she has freed by arms, and vanquished
Heaven by prayer.

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While thus the ruined foe's despair commends
Thy council and thy deed, victorious queen,

What shall thy subjects say, and what thy friends;
How shall thy triumphs in our joy be seen!
Oh! deign to let the eldest of the nine
Recite Britannia great, and Gallia free:
Oh! with her sister sculpture let her join
To raise, great Anne, the monument to thee;
To thee, of all our good the sacred spring;

To thee, our dearest dread; to thee, our softer king.

Let Europe saved the column high erect,
Than Trajan's higher, or than Antonine's;
Where sembling art may carve the fair effect
And full achievement of thy great designs.
In a calm Heaven, and a serener air,

Sublime the queen shall on the summit stand,
From danger far, as far removed from fear,
And pointing down to earth her dread command.
All winds, all storms, that threaten human woe,
Shall sink beneath her feet, and spread their rage
below.

Their fleets shall strive, by winds and waters
tossed,

Till the young Austrian on Iberia's strand,
Great as Æneas on the Latian coast,

Shall fix his foot. And this, be this the land,
Great Jove, where I for ever will remain
(The empire's other hope shall say), and here
Vanquished, intombed I'll lie, or, crowned, I'll reign!
O virtue, to thy British mother dear!

Like the famed Trojan suffer and abide;

For Anne is thine, I ween, as Venus was his guide.

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There, in eternal characters engraved,
Vigo,' and Gibraltar, and Barcelone,
Their force destroyed, their privileges saved,
Shall Anna's terrors and her mercies own.
Spain, from the usurper Bourbon's arms retrieved,
Shall with new life and grateful joy appear,
Numbering the wonders which that youth achieved,
Whom Anna clad in arms and sent to war;
Whom Anna sent to claim Iberia's throne;
And made him more than king, in calling him her

son.

There Ister, pleased by Blenheim's glorious field,
Rolling shall bid his eastern waves declare
Germania saved by Britain's ample shield,
And bleeding Gaul, afflicted by her spear,
Shall bid them mention Marlborough on that shore,
Leading his islanders, renowned in arms,
Through climes, where never British chief before
Or pitched his camp, or sounded his alarms;
Shall bid them bless the queen, who made his

streams

Glorious as those of Boyne, and safe as those of
Thames.

Brabantia, clad with fields, and crowned with towers,

With decent joy shall her deliverer meet;

Shall own thy arms, great queen, and bless thy powers,

Laying the keys beneath thy subject's feet.

1 Vigo was surprised by the Duke of Ormond and Sir George Rooke, and the galleons taken and destroyed in the year 1702; Gibraltar by Sir George Rooke in 1704; and Barcelona by the Prince of Hesse and the Earl of Peterborough in 1705.

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