Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/182

Not statutes cast in solid brass,
Nor those, which art in breathing marble does express,
Can boast an equal life, or lastingness,
With their well-polished images, which claim
A niche in thy majestic monuments of fame.
Here their embalmed, incorruptible memories
Can proudest Louvres and Escurials despise,
And all the needless helps of Egypt's costly vanities.
No blasts of Heaven, or ruin of the spheres,
Not all the washing tides of rolling years,
Nor the whole race of battering time shall e'er wear out
The great inscriptions which thy hand has wrought;
Here thou and they shall live, and bear an endless date,
Firm as enrolled in the eternal register of fate.
For ever cursed be that mad emperor,
(And cursed enough he is, be sure)
May future poets on his hated name
Shed all their gall and foulest infamy,
And may it here stand branded with eternal shame,
Who thought thy works could mortal be,
And sought the glorious fabric to destroy.
In this (could fate permit it to be done)
His damned successor he had outgone,
Who Rome and all its palaces in ashes laid,
And the great ruins with a savage joy surveyed:
He burned but what might be rebuilt, and richer made;
But had the impious wish succeeded here,
'T had razed what age nor art could e'er repair.
Not that vast universal flame,
Which, at the final doom,
This beauteous work of nature must consume,
And Heaven, and all its glories, in one urn entomb,
Will burn a nobler or more lasting frame;
As firm and strong as that, it shall endure,
Through all the injuries of time secure,
Nor die, till the whole world its funeral pile become.