While their great monarch chills with equal fears,
No less a slave than they. Each rumour shakes
The haughty purple, dark and cloudy cares
Involve the aweful throne, that stands erect,
Balanc'd on the wild people's temper'd rage,
And fortify'd with dangerous arts of power.
But death fhall fhift those scenes of mifery;
Then doubtful titles kindle up new wars,
And urge on ling'ring fate; the enfigns blaze
About the camp, and drums and trumpets found,
Prepare a folemn way to griezly war;
Javelins and bearded spears in ghaftly ranks
Erect their fhining heads, and round the filed
A harvest's scene of formidable death;
Then joins the horrid fhock, whose bellowing burst
Torments the fhatter'd air, and drowns the groans
Of men below that roll in certain death.
These are the mortal fports, the tragic plays
By man himself embroil'd; the dire debate
Makes the wafte defart seem ferene and mild,
Where favage nature in one common lies,
By homely cots poffefs'd; all squalid, wild,
And despicably poor, they range the field,
And feel their share of hunger, care, and pain,
Cheated by flying prey; and now they tear
Their panting flesh; and now with nails unclean
They tug their fhaggy beards; and deeply quaff
Of human woe, even when they rudely fip
The flowing stream, or chew the favory pulp
Of nature's freshest viands; fragrant fruits
Enjoy'd with trembling, and in danger fought.
But where th' appointed limits of a law
Fences the general fafety of the world,
No greater quiet reigns; for wanton man,
In giddy frolic, eafily leaps o'er
His own invented bounds; hence rapine, fraud,
Revenge, and luft, and all the hideous train
Of nameless ills, diftort the meagre mind
To endless shapes of woe.
Here mifers mourn
Departed gold, and their defrauded heirs
Dire perjuries complain; the blended loads
Of punishment and crime deform the world,
And give no reft to man; with pangs and throes
He enters on the ftage; prophetic tears
And infant cries prelude his future woes;
And all is one continu'd scene of grief,
'Till the fad fable curtain falls in death..
But that last act fhall in one moment close
Of doubt and darkness; pain fhall crack the strings
Of life decay'd; no less the foul convuls'd,
Trembles in anxious cares, and fhuddering stands,
Afraid to leap into the opening gulph
Of future fate, 'till all the banks of clay
Fall from beneath his feet: in vain he grasps
The shatter'd reeds that cheat his easy wish.
Reason is now no more; that narrow lamp
(Which with its fickly fires would fhoot its beams
To distances unknown, and stretch its rays,
Askance my paths, in deepest darkness veiľ❜d)
Is funk into his focket; inly there
It burns a dismal light; th' expiring flame
Is choak'd in fumes, and parts in various doubt.
Then the gay glories of the living world
Shall caft their empty varnish, and retire
Out of his feeble view; and rifing fhade
Sit hov'ring o'er all nature's various face.
Mufic fhall cease, and inftruments of joy
Shall fail that fullen hour; nor can the mind
Attend their founds, when fancies fwim in death,
Confus'd and crush'd with cares: for long fhall feem
The dreary road, and melancholy dark,
That leads he knows not where. Here empty space Gapes horrible, and threatens to absorb
All being: yonder footy demons glare,
And dolorous spectres grin; the fhapeless rout
Of wild imagination dance and play
Before his eyes obfcure; 'till all in death
Shall vanish, and the prisoner, now enlarg❜d,
Regains the flaming borders of the sky.
He ended. Peals of thunder rend the heavens,
And Chaos, from the bottom turn'd, resounds
The mighty clangor: All the heavenly host
Approve the high decree, and loud they fing
Eternal justice; while the guilty troops,
Sad with their doom, but fad without despair,
Fall fluttering down to Lethe's lake, and there
For penance, and the deftin'd body, wait.
By HILDEBRAND JACOB, Efq;
LD CHIRON to his pupil thus began,
When he beheld him rip'ning into man.
Accomplish'd youth! well worthy of my pains, "You now are free, and guide yourself the reins: "Yet hear, Achilles, hear, before we part, "A few short precepts from a faithful heart. "What though the gods a Neftor's age deny! "Let management a longer life supply, "And learn, at leaft, to live, before you die. "A little tract, well till'd, more profit yields "Than realms of wild, uncultivated fields.
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