While crowds of princes your deserts proclaim, Proud in their number to enrol your name; While emperors to you commit their cause, And Anna's praises crown the vast applause; Accept, great leader, what the Muse recites, That in ambitious verse attempts your fights. Fired and transported with a theme so new, Ten thousand wonders opening to my view Shine forth at once; sieges and storms appear, And wars and conquests fill the important year, _10 Rivers of blood I see, and hills of slain, An Iliad rising out of one campaign. The haughty Gaul beheld, with towering pride, His ancient bounds enlarged on every side, Pirene's lofty barriers were subdued, And in the midst of his wide empire stood; Ausonia's states, the victor to restrain, Opposed their Alps and Apennines in vain, Nor found themselves, with strength of rocks immured, Behind their everlasting hills secured; _20 The rising Danube its long race began, And half its course through the new conquests ran; Amazed and anxious for her sovereign's fates, Germania trembled through a hundred states; Great Leopold himself was seized with fear; He gazed around, but saw no succour near; He gazed, and half abandoned to despair His hopes on Heaven, and confidence in prayer. To Britain's queen the nations turn their eyes, On her resolves the Western world relies, _30 Confiding still, amidst its dire alarms, In Anna's councils and in Churchill's arms. Thrice happy Britain, from the kingdoms rent, To sit the guardian of the continent! That sees her bravest son advanced so high, And flourishing so near her prince's eye; Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's sport, Or from the crimes or follies of a court; On the firm basis of desert they rise, From long-tried, faith, and friendship's holy ties: _40 Their sovereign's well-distinguished smiles they share, Her ornaments in peace, her strength in war; The nation thanks them with a public voice, By showers of blessings Heaven approves their choice; Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, And factions strive who shall applaud them most. Soon as soft vernal breezes warm the sky, Britannia's colours in the zephyrs fly; Her chief already has his march begun, Crossing the provinces himself had won, _50 Till the Moselle, appearing from afar, Retards the progress of the moving war. Delightful stream, had Nature bid her fall In distant climes, far from the perjured Gaul; But now a purchase to the sword she lies, Her harvests for uncertain owners rise, Each vineyard doubtful of its master grows, And to the victor's bowl each vintage flows. The discontented shades of slaughtered hosts, That wandered on her banks, her heroes' ghosts, _60 Hoped, when they saw Britannia's arms appear, The vengeance due to their great deaths was near. Our godlike leader, ere the stream he passed, The mighty scheme of all his labours cast,