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النشر الإلكتروني

See where God's altar, nurfing murder, stands,
With the red touch of dark assassins stain'd.

But chief let Rome, the mighty city! fpeak
The full-exerted genius of thy reign.
Behold her rife amid the lifeless wafte,
Expiring nature all corrupted round;
While the lone Tyber, thro' the defert plain,
Winds his waste stores, and fullen sweeps along.
Patch'd from my fragments, in unfolid pomp,
Mark how the temple glares; and, artful drest,
Amufive, draws the fuperftitious train.
Mark how the palace lifts a lying front,
Concealing often, in magnific jail,
Proud want; a deep unanimated gloom!
And oft adjoining to the drear abode

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Of mifery, whose melancholy walls
Seem its voracious grandeur to reproach.
Within the city bounds, the defert fee.

See the rank vine o'er fubterranean roofs,
Indecent, spread; beneath whose fretted gold
It once, exulting, flow'd. The people mark,
Matchless, while fir'd by me; to public good

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Inexorably firm, just, gen'rous, brave,
Afraid of nothing but unworthy life,

Elate with glory, an heroic foul

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Known to the vulgar breast: behold them now

A thin despairing number, all-fubdu'd,
The flaves of flaves, by superstition fool'd,

By vice unman'd and a licentious rule,

In guile ingenious, and in murder brave.

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Such in one land, beneath the fame fair clime,
Thy fons, OPPRESSION, are; and fuch were MINE.

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Ev'n with thy labour'd Pomp, for whose vain show Deluded thousands starve; all age-begrim'd, Torn, robb'd and scatter'd in uanumber'd facks, 230 And by the tempest of two thousand years Continual shaken, let my Ruins vie. These roads that yet the Roman hand affert, Beyond the weak repair of modern toil; These fractur'd arches, that the chiding stream No more delighted hear; these rich remains Of marbles now unknown, where shines imbib'd Each parent ray; these massy columns, hew'd From Afric's farthest shore; one granite all, These obelisks high-tow'ring to the sky, Mysterious mark'd with dark Egyptian lore; These endless wonders that this facred way Illumine, still, and confecrate to fame; These fountains, vases, urns, and statues, charg'd With the fine stores of art-compleating Greece. Mine is, besides, thy ev'ry later boaft :

Thy † BUONAROTIS, thy PALLADIOS mine;

*

And mine the fair designs, which RAPHAEL'S foul
O'er the live canvass, emanating, breath'd.

What would you fay, ye conquerors of earth!

Ye Romans! could you raise the laurel'd head;

Via Sacra.

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+ M. ANGELO BUONAROTI, PALLADIO, and RAPHAEL D'URBINO; the three great modern mafters in sculpture, archi tecture, and painting..

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Could you the country fee, by feas of blood,
And the dread toil of ages, won fo dear;.
Your pride, your triumph, your fupreme delight!
For whose defence oft, in the doubtful hour,
You rush'd with rapture down the gulf of fate,
Of death ambitious! till by awful deeds,
Virtues, and courage, that amaze mankind,
The queen of nations rose; poffeft of all
Which nature, art, and glory could bestow:
What would you fay, deep in the last abyfs
Of flav'ry, vice, and unambitious want,
Thus to behold her funk? Your crouded plains,
Void of their cities; unadorn'd your hills;
Ungrac'd your lakes; your ports to ships unknown;
Your lawless floods, and your abandon'd streams :
These could you know? these could you love again?
Thy Tibur, HORACE, could it now infpire,
Content, poetic ease, and rural joy,

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Soon bursting into fong: while thro' the groves 270
Of headlong Anio, dashing to the vale,

In many a tortur'd stream, you mus'd along?
* Yon wild retreat, where superstition dreams,
Could, TULLY, you your Tufculum believe?
And could you deem yon naked hills, that form, 275
Fam'd in old fong, the thip-forfaken † bay,

* Tufculum is reckoned to have stood at a place now called Gretta Ferrata, a convent of monks.

† The bay of Mola (anciently Formic) into which HOMER Near Formie CICERO

brings ULYSSES, and his companions. had a villa.

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Your Formian shore? Once the delight of earth,
Where art and nature, ever-fmiling, join'd
On the gay land to lavish all their stores.
How chang'd, how vacant, VIRGIL, wide around,
Would now your Naples seem? Disaster'd less

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By black Vesuvius thund'ring o'er the coast,
His midnight earthquakes, and his mining fires,
Than by defpotic rage *: that inward gnaws,

A native foe; a foreign, tears without.
First from your flatter'd CÆSARS this began :
Till, doom'd to tyrants an eternal prey,
Thin-peopled fpreads, at last, the † syren plain,
That the dire foul of HANNIBAL difarm'd;
And wrapt in weeds the ‡ shore of Venus lies.
There Baia fees no more the joyous throng;
Her bank all beaming with the pride of Rome :
No gen'rous vines now bask along the hills,
Where sport the breezes of the Tyrrhene main :
With baths and temples mixt, no villas rise;
Nor, art fustain'd amid reluctant waves,
Draw the cool murmurs of the breathing deep:
No spreading ports their facred arms extend :
No mighty moles the big intrusive storm,
From the calm station, roll resounding back.

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Naples then under the Auftrian government.
+ Campagna felice, adjoining to Capua.

+ The coast of Baia, which was formerly adorned with the works mentioned in the following lines; and where amidst many magnificent ruins, those of a temple erected to Venus are still to be feen.

An almost total desolation fits,

A dreary stillness, sadd'ning o'er the coast;

*Where, when soft suns and tepid winters rose,
Rejoicing crouds inhal'd the balm of peace ;
Where city'd hill to hill reflected blaze;
And where with Geres, Bacchus wont to hold

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A genial strife. Her youthful form, robust,
Ev'n nature yields; by fire, and earthquake rent :

Whose stately cities in the dark abrupt

Swallow'd at once, or vile in rubbish laid,

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A nest for ferpents; from the red abyss
New hills, explofive, thrown; the Lucrine lake

A reedy pool; and all to Guma's point,

The fea recov'ring his ufurp'd domain,

And pour'd triumphant o'er the bury'd dome.

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Hence, BRITAIN, learn; my best-establish'd, last, And more than GREECE, OF ROME, iny steady reign; The land where, King and People equal bound

By guardian laws, my fullest blessings flow;
And where my jealous unfubmitting foul,
The dread of tyrants! burns in ev'ry breast:
Learn hence, if such the miferable fate
Of an heroic race, the masters once

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Of human-kind; what, when depriv'd of ME,
How grievous must be thine? In spite of climes, 325

Whose fun-enliven'd ether wakes the foul

To higher pow'rs; in spite of happy foils,

All along this coast, the ancient Romans had their winter re

Treats; and several populous cities tood.

VoL. II.

D

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