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VERSES

Occafioned b

Mr. ADDISON's Treatise

OF

MEDALS.

S

EE the wild waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own fad fepulchre appears: With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very tombs now vanish'd like their dead! Some felt the filent stroke of mould'ring age; Some, hoftile fury; fome, religious rage: Barbarian blindness, Christian zealc onspire, And Papal piety, and Gothic fire. Perhaps by its own ruins fav'd from flame, Some bury'd marble half preferves a Name; That name, the learn'dwith fierce disputes pursue, And give to Titus old Vefpafian's due.

Ambition sigh'd. She found it vain to truft

The faithless Column, and the crumbling Buft;

A 3

Huge

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Huge Moles whose shadow stretch'd from shore

to shore,

Their ruins perifh'd, and their place no more!
Convinc'd, she now contracts her vast defign;
And all her triumphs shrink into a Coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps:
Beneath her Palm here sad Judea weeps,
Now scantier limits the proud Arch confine,
And scarce are seen the proftrate Nile and Rhine:
A fmall Euphrates thro' the piece is roll'd;
And little Eagles wave their wings in Gold.

The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame,
Thro' climes and ages bears each form and name:
In one short view, subjected to our eye,
Gods, Emp'rors, Heroes, Sages, Beauties lie.
With sharpen'd fight pale Antiquaries pore,
Th' Inscription value, but the Rust adore :
This, the Blue varnish, that, the Green endears,
The facred Ruft of twice ten hundred years.
To gain Pefcennius one employs his schemes;
One grafps a Cecrops in extatic dreams:
Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devour'd,
Can taste no pleasure fince his Shield was scour'd;
And Curio, restless by the fair one's fide,
Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his Bride.

Theirs is the Vanity, the Learning thine, Touch'd by thy hand, again Rome's glories shine : Her Gods, and godlike Heroes rise to view, And all her faded Garlands bloom anew. Nor blush, those studies thy regard engage: 'These pleas'd the Fathers of poetic rage; The Verse and Sculpture bore an equal part, And Art reflected images to Art.

Oh when shall Britain, confcious of her claim, Stand mulous of Greek and Roman far. e?

In

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In living Medals see her wars enroll'd, And vanquish'd realms supply recording Gold ? Here, rifing bold, the Patriot's honest face; There, Warriors frowning in hiftoric brass. Then future ages with delight shall fee, How Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's looks agree : Or in fair Series laurel'd Bards be shown, A Virgil there, and here an Addison. Then shall Thy Craggs (and let me call him Mine) On the caft Ore, another Pollio, shine; With aspect open shall erect his head, And round the Orb in lasting notes be read : "Statefman, yet friend to Truth! in soul fincere, " In action faithful, and in honour clear; " Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, " Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend, " Ennobled by Himself, by all approv'd, " And prais'd, unenvy'd, by the Muse he lov'd."