His prudence alone[256] has preserv'd your dominions, This bravest and boldest of all the Virginians! And when he is gone--I pronounce it with pain-- We scarcely shall meet with his equal again.[257] Old Plato asserted that life is a dream And man but a shadow (whate'er he may seem)[258] By which it is plain he intended to say That man, like a shadow, must vanish away: If this be the fact, in relation to man, And if each one is striving to get what he can, I hope, while I live, you will all think it best, To allow me to bustle along with the rest. A view of my life, though some parts might be solemn, Would make, on the whole, a ridiculous volume: In the life that's hereafter (to speak with submission) I hope I shall publish a better edition: Even swine you permit to subsist in the street;-- You pity a dog that lies down to be beat-- Then forget what is past--for the year's at a close-- And men of my age have some need of repose. PART II But as to the Tories that yet may remain, They scarcely need give you a moment of pain: What dare they attempt when their masters are fled;-- When the soul is departed who wars with the dead? Poor souls! for the love of the king and his nation They have had their full quota of mortification; Wherever they fought, or whatever they won The dream's at an end--the delusion is done. The Temple you rais'd was so wonderful large Not one of them thought you could answer the charge, It seem'd a mere castle constructed of vapour, Surrounded with gibbets and founded on Paper. On the basis of freedom you built it too strong! And Clinton[259] confess'd, when you held it so long, That if any thing human the fabric could shatter The _Royal Gazette_ must accomplish the matter.[A] [A] "Si Pergama dextra Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent."--_Virg._ --_Freneau's note._ An engine like that, in such hands as my own Had shaken king Codjoe[B] himself from his throne, In another rebellion had ruin'd the Scot, While the Pope and Pretender had both gone to pot. [B] The Negro king in Jamaica, whom the English declared independent in 1739. See our _Freeman's Journal_, No. 37, for the treaty.--_Freneau's note in 1783._ If you stood my attacks, I have nothing to say-- I fought, like the Swiss, for the sake of my pay; But while I was proving your fabric unsound Our vessel miss'd stay, and we all went aground. Thus ended in ruin what madness begun, And thus was our nation disgrac'd and undone, Renown'd as we were, and the lords of the deep, If our outset was folly, our exit was sleep. A dominion like this, that some millions had cost!-- The king might have wept when he saw it was lost;-- This jewel--whose value I cannot describe; This pearl--that was richer than all his Dutch tribe.