Page:Grave.pdf/9

The mystic cone with hieroglyphics crusted,
At once gives way. Oh! lamentable sight:
The labour of whole ages, lumbers down,
A hideous and mishapen length of ruins.
⟨Sepulchral⟩ columns wrestle but in vain
With all-subduing Time: her cank'ring hand
With calm deliberate malice wasteth them:
Worn on the edge of days the brass consumes,
The busto moulders, and the deep-cut marble
Unsteady to the steel, gives up its charge.
Ambiton half convicted of her folly,
Hangs down the head, and reddens at the tale.

Here all the mighty Troublers of the earth,
Who swam to sov'reign rule thro' seas of blood;
Th' oppressive, sturdy, man-destroying Villains,
Who ravag'd kingdoms and laid empires waste,
And in a cruel wantonness of power
Thinn'd states of half their people, and gave up
To want, the rest: now, like a storm that's spent,
Lie hush'd, and meanly sneak behind the covert.
Vain thought! to hide them from the general scorn,
That haunts, and dogs them like an injur'd ghost
Implacable—Here too the petty Tyrant,
Whose scant domains Geographer ne'er notic'd,
And well for neighbouring grounds, of arm as short;
Who fix'd his iron talons on the poor,
And grip'd them like some lordly beast of prey;
Deaf to the forceful cries of gnawing Hunger,
And piteous plaintive voice of Misery:
(As if a Slave was not a shred of nature,
Of the same common nature with his Lord):
Now tame and humble, like a child that's whipp'd,
Shakes hands with dust, & calls the worm his kinsman;
Nor pleads his rank and birth-right.—Under groud
Precedency's a jest; Vassal and Lord
Grossly familiar, side by side consume.