Why should'st thou here look for perpetual good, With gilded tops, and silver turrets shining; There now the hart fearless of greyhound feeds, There shrieking satyrs fill the people's empty steads. Where is th' Assyrian lion's golden hide*, Or he which 'twixt a lion and a pard, Through all the world with nimble pinions far'd, And to his greedy whelps his conquer'd kingdoms shar'd? Hardly the place of such antiquity, Or note of these great monarchies, we find: And empty name in writ, is left behind: But when this second life and glory fades, And sinks at length in time's obscurer shades, A second fall succeeds, and double death invades. That monstrous beast, which, nurs'd in Tiber's fen, * Where is th' Assyrian lion's golden hide, &c.] Thus, Spenser, in The Ruines of Time: What now is of th' Assyrian lioness, Of whom no footing now on earth appears? That overran the East with greedy power, Hughes's Edit. p. 9. That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping den, His batt'ring horns, pull'd out by civil hands, And that black vulture, which with deathful wing Who then shall hope for happiness beneath; Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death, And life itself's as flit as is the air we breathe? Purple Island, by P. Fletcher, *And that black vulture, which with deathful wing O'ershadows half the earth.] Mr. Hayley, in his Essay on History, has a very bold and magnificent image of this kind. He is about to describe Livy: Of mightier spirit, of majestic frame; With powers proportion'd to the Roman fame, Ep. I. VOL. II. FAITH. THE proudest pitch of that victorious spirit Would'st thou by conquest win more fame than he, But would'st thou conquer, have thy conquest crown'd By hands of Seraphims, triumph'd with the sound Of heaven's loud trumpet, warbled by the shrill Pluck'd from the pinion of an angel's wing, Hath heaven despoil'd what his full hand hath given thee? Of thy dear latest hope, thy bosom friend? Make keen thy faith, and with thy force let flee, And when Grief strikes, 'twill strike the striker dead. And bravely win thyself, heaven holds not out Whets on the morning to return more bright; In mortals' ruin, that he leaves man so May not a potter, that, from out the ground, Job Militant, by F. Quarles, Med. iii. * Two lines are here omitted. + Two lines are here omitted. Brave minds, opprest, should in despite of fate Look greatest, like the sun, in lowest state.] Blair has the same thought in his fine poem, The Grave, speaking of the death of the just man: By unperceiv'd degrees he wears away, Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting. TO THE HONOURABLE MR. W. E— E who is good is happy; let the loud In welcoming the approach of death, than vice Time mocks our youth, and (while we number past Ensuing) brings us to unflatter'd age*, Of threat'ning Death: pomp, beauty, wealth, and all The thought of this begets that brave disdain With which thou view'st the world, and makes those vain Treasures of fancy, serious fools so court, And sweat to purchase, thy contempt or sport. A cloud 'twixt us and heaven? kind nature chose Man's soul th' Exchequer where she'd hoard her wealth, unflatter'd age.] A very original epithet. |