This is the scene of gay resort, Here vice and folly hold their court, Here all the martial band parade, To vanquish--some unguarded maid: Here ambles many a dauntless chief, Who can, O great beyond belief! Who can, as sage historians say, Defeat--whole bottles in array. Heavens! shall a servile dastard train The mansions of our dead prophane, A herd of undistinguished things, That shrink beneath the frown of kings! Sons of the brave and virtuous band, Who led fair freedom to this land, Say, shall a lawless race presume To violate the sacred tomb, And calmly you the insult bear? Even wildest rage were virtue here. Shades of our sires, indignant rise, Oh! arm, to vengeance arm the skies, Oh! rise, for no degenerate son Bids impious blood the guilt atone; By thunder from th’ etherial plains, Avenge your own dishonour’d manes; Bid guardian light’nings flash around, And vindicate the hallowed ground. MATILDA. * * * * * THE RECANTATION. Had I the muse of satire’s warmest rage, To brand the vices of an impious age, To snatch the villain from his happiest lot, In calm oblivion to remain forgot, Give modest merit to a nobler fate, And doom the guilty to eternal hate: How vain, how foolish, in these blameless times, Th’ unmeaning raving of satiric rhymes! Auspicious muses grant your happier art, With panegyric warm each grateful heart! And foremost let the lank Pomposo stand, To crush dissentions in a rising land, And scatter thousands,--what tho’ envy say He gave his thousands in the eye of day, He gains his just reward, applauses by’t, Nor in a scanty bushel hides his light. Tell how the fair are now so wond’rous kind, Their love is boundless, free and unconfin’d, To all their soft approving glances fly, To all that are unknown to poverty. Next sing the trim well-powder’d warriors course, Recount the gorgeous trappings of his horse; How the broad umbrage intercepts Sol’s rays, To shade his beauties from too fierce a blaze: Far from the field, he, foe to rest, can dare The direr dangers of intemp’rate fare, While day nor night his ardent labour close, And the full cellar interdicts repose: O’er hallowed ground no daring footsteps tread, But sacred hold the mansions of the dead; Its shades prophan’d no ruin’d temple mourns, Nor ghosts bewail their violated urns. Thus, while to praise my city numbers roll, And soft applauses sooth each raptured soul; How will my name to distant ages shine, And fame, though not unfashion’d truth, be mine, How will full bloom my opening honours crown, And give my deathless name to high renown. MATILDA. * * * * * TO MATILDA.