Where Stilico and virtue not avail, Where royal favours ftand expos'd to fale, But thofe impeaches who their prince commend, An haughty minion, mad with empire grown, A thousand difemboguing rivers pay Their everlasting homage to the sea ; 210 215 220 224 The Nile, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Thames, Pour conftant down their tributary streams; But yet the fea confeffes no increase, For all is swallow'd in the deep abyss. In craving ftill Rufinus' foul remains, 229 Tho' fed with fhow'rs of gold and floods of gains; Oh! whither wouldíl thou rove, mistaken Man? Vain are thy hopes, thy acquifitions vain; Volume II. For now fuppofe thy avarice poffeft 240 Difdain'd a monarch's bribe, defpis'd his ftate; 245 So could he guide the plough's laborious share; 250 255 Where Nature's freshest bloom and beauties reign, Where the warm zephir's genial balmy wing Playing diffufes an eternal fpring: Tho' there thy lewd lafcivious limbs are laid 260 More free from care my guiltless hours I pass; 265 Tho' there thy fycophants, a fervile race! 270 ́ Nature on all the pow'r of blifs beftows, Which from her bounteous fource perpetual flows, But he alone with happiness is blest Who knows to use it rightly when poffeft; 275 A doctrine if well poiz'd in Reason's scale But oh! Rufinus is to reafon blind; A ftrange hydropick thirst inflames his mind: No fenfe of fhame, no modefty, restrains Where avarice or where ambition reigns. 280 When with strict oaths his profer'd faith he binds Fell as a lionefs in Libya's plain When tortur'd with the jav'lin's pointed pain, Or a spurn'd ferpent as fhe fhoots along, 290 With lightning in her eyes and poison in her tongue. Nor will those families eras'd fuffice, But provinces and cities he destroys; 295 Urg'd on with blind revenge and settled hate He labours the confufion of the state, Subverts the nation's old establish'd frame, 300 305 If e'er in mercy he pretends to fave A man purfu'd by faction from the grave, Then he invents new punishments, new pains, Condemns to filence, and from truth restrains *; Then racks and pillories, and bonds and bars, Then ruin and impeachments, he prepares. O dreadful mercy! more than death severe ! That doubly tortures whom it seems to spare! All feem enflav'd, all bow to him alone, Nor dare their hate their juft refentments own, But inward grieve, their fighs and pangs confin'd, Which with convulfive forrow tear the mind. Envy is mute-it is treafon to difclofe 'The baneful fource of their eternal woes. But Stilico's fuperiour foul appears Unfhock'd, unmov'd, by base ignoble fears. He is the polar ftar directs the ftate When parties rage and publick tempefts beat; 311 315 * Alluding to the fentence then recently paffed on Dr. Sa cheverell, for whom our Author was a profeffed advocate. He is the folid, firm, unfhaken, force That only knows to ftem th' invader's course. But as it rolling meets a mighty rock 320' 325) The rock unmov'd reverberates the found. 329 THE STUMBLINGBLOCK, FROM CLAUDIAN'S RUFINUS *. TWENTY Conundrums have of late If earthly things are rul'd by Heav'n, The coach without a coachman driv'n? Or the ship left to wind and tide? A great First Caufe to be ador'd, So just a fymmetry of features From fern to ftern in all her creatures, See a serious translation above. |