[v] VERSES Occafioned by Mr. ADD IS O N's Treatife ADDISO OF MEDAL S. EE the wild waste of all-devouring years! SEE How Rome her own fad fepulchre appears: With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very tombs now vanish'd like their dead; Some felt the filent stroke of mould'ring age; Some, hoftile fury; fome, religious rage: Barbarian blindness, Chriftian zeal confpire, And papal piety, and Gothic fire. Perhaps by its own ruins fav'd from flame, [vi] That name, the learn'd with fierce difputes purfue, And give to Titus old Vefpafian's due. Ambition figh'd. She found it vain to trust The faithlefs column, and the crumbling buft; Huge moles whofe fhadow ftretch'd from fhore to fhore, Their ruins perish'd, and their place no more! Now fcantier limits the proud arch confine, A fmall Euphrates thro' the piece is roll'd; The medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Thro' climes and ages bears each form and name: In one fhort view, fubjected to our eye, Gods, Emp'rors, Heroes, Sages, Beauties lie. Th' infcription value, but the ruft adore: This, the blue varnish, that, the green endears, To The facred ruft of twice ten hundred years. To gain Pefcennius one employs his schemes; Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devour'd, And Curio, restlels by the fair one's fide, Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine, Oh when fhall Britain, confcious of her claim, Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame? In living medals fee her wars enroll'd, And vanquish'd realms fupply recording gold? Or Or in fair feries laurel'd bards be shown, A Virgil there, and here an Addison. Then fhall thy Craggs (and let me call him mine) On the caft ore, another Pollio, fhine; With aspect open shall erect his head, And round the orb in lafting notes be read: "Statesman, yet friend to truth! in foul fincere, "In action faithful, and in honour clear; "Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, "Who gain'd no title, and who loft no friend, "Enobled by himself, by all approv'd, "And prais'd, unenvy'd, by the mufe he lov'd. |