So many would be great, so few be good: For who would Virtue for herself regard, Or wed, without the portion of reward? Yet this mad chace of fame, by few pursued, Has drawn destruction on the multitude; This avarice of praise in times to come, Those long inscriptions crowded on the tomb; Should some wild fig-tree take her native bent, And heave below the gaudy monument, Would crack the marble titles, and disperse The characters of all the lying verse. For sepulchres themselves must crumbling fall In time's abyss, the common grave of all. Great Hannibal within the balance lay, And tell how many pounds his ashes weigh; Whom Afric was not able to contain, Whose length runs level with the Atlantic main, And wearies fruitful Nilus, to convey His sun-beat waters by so long a way; Which Ethiopia's double clime divides, And elephants in other mountains hides. Spain first he won, the Pyreneans past, And steepy Alps, the mounds that nature cast; And with corroding juices, as he went, A passage through the living rocks he rent: Then, like a torrent rolling from on high, He pours his headlong rage on Italy, In three victorious battles over-run; Yet, still uneasy, cries,--There's nothing done, Till level with the ground their gates are laid, And Punic flags on Roman towers displayed. Ask what a face belonged to this high fame, His picture scarcely would deserve a frame: A sign-post dauber would disdain to paint The one-eyed hero on his elephant. Now, what's his end, O charming Glory! say, What rare fifth act to crown this huffing play? In one deciding battle overcome, He flies, is banished from his native home; Begs refuge in a foreign court, and there Attends, his mean petition to prefer; Repulsed by surly grooms, who wait before The sleeping tyrant's interdicted door. What wonderous sort of death has heaven designed, } Distinguished from the herd of human kind, } For so untamed, so turbulent a mind? } Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar, Are doomed to avenge the tedious bloody war; But poison, drawn through a ring's hollow plate, Must finish him--a sucking infant's fate. Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool, To please the boys, and be a theme at school. One world sufficed not Alexander's mind; Cooped up, he seemed in earth and seas confined, And, struggling, stretched his restless limbs about The narrow globe, to find a passage out: Yet entered in the brick-built town,[150] he tried The tomb, and found the strait dimensions wide. Death only this mysterious truth unfolds, The mighty soul how small a body holds. Old Greece a tale of Athos would make out,[151] Cut from the continent, and sailed about;