A mighty poet them, and every line Thy grand conception traces is sublime: No language doth thy god-like works confine; Thy voice is earth's grand polyglot, O Time! Known of all tongues, and read in every clime, Changes of language make no change in thee: Thy works have worsted centuries of their prime, Yet new editions every day we see-- Ruin thy moral theme, its end eternity. A satirist, too, thy pen is deadly keen; Thou turnest things that once did wonder claim To jests ridiculous and memories mean;-- The Egyptian pyramids, without a name, Stand monuments to chaos, not to fame-- Stone jests of kings which thou in sport did'st save, As towering satires of pride's living shame-- Beacons to prove thy overbearing wave Will make all fame at last become its owner's grave. Mighty survivors! Thou shalt see the hour When all the grandeur that the earth contains-- Its pomp, its splendour, and its hollow power-- Shall waste like water from its weakened veins, And not a shadow or a myth remain-- When names and fames of which the earth is full, And books, with all their knowledge urged in vain-- When dead and living shall be void and null, And Nature's pillow be at last a human skull. E'en temples raised to worship and to prayer, Sacred from ruin in all eyes but thine, Are laid as level, and are left as bare, As spots with no pretensions to resign; Nor lives one relic that was deemed divine. By thee, great sacrilegious Shade, all, all Are swept away, and common weeds enshrine That place of tombs and memories prodigal-- Itself a tomb at last, the record of its fall. All then shall mingle fellowship with one, And earth be strewn with wrecks of human things, When tombs are broken up and memory's gone Of proud aspiring mortals, crowned as kings, Mere insects, sporting upon waxen wings That melt at thy all-mastering energy; And, when there's nought to govern, thy fame springs To new existence, conquered, yet to be An uncrowned partner still of dread eternity. 'T is done, o'erpowering Vision! And no more My simple numbers chronicle thy fame; 'T is gone: the spirit of my voice is o'er, Adventuring praises to thy mighty name. To thee an atom am I, and in shame I shrink from these aspirings to my doom; For all the world contains to praise or blame Is but a garden hastening out of bloom To fill up Nature's wreck-mere rubbish for the tomb. Imperial Moralist! Thy every page, Like grand prophetic visions, doth instal Truth for all creeds. The savage, saint, and sage In unison may answer to thy call. Thy voice as universal, speaks to all; It tells us what all were and are to be; That evil deeds will evil hearts enthral, And God the just maintain the grand decree, That whoso righteous lives shall win eternity. TO JOHN MILTON "From his honoured Friend, William Davenant."