Now Iphitus with me, and Pelias
Slowly retire; the one retarded was
By feeble age, the other by a wound.
To court the cry directs us, where we found
Th' assault so hot, as if 'twere only there,
And all the rest secure from foes or fear :
The Greeks the gates approach'd, their targets

cast

Over their heads; some scaling ladders plac'd
Against the walls, the rest the steps ascend,
And with their shields on their left arms defend
Arrows and darts, and with their right hold fast
The battlement; on them the Trojans cast
Stones, rafters, pillars, beams; such arms as
these,

Now hopeless, for their last defence they seize.
The gilded roofs, the marks of ancient state,
They tumble down; and now against the gate
Of th' inner court their growing force they
bring:

Now was our last effort to save the king,
Relieve the fainting, and succeed the dead.
A private gallery 'twixt th' apartments led,
Not to the foe yet known, or not observ'd,
(The way for Hector's hapless wife reserv'd,
When to the aged king, her little son [run
She would present) through this we pass, and
Up to the highest battlement, from whence
The Trojans threw their darts without offence,
A tower so high, it seem'd to reach the sky,
Stood on the roof, from whence we could descry
All Ilium-both the camps, the Grecian fleet;
This, where the beams upon the columns meet,
We loosen, which like thunder from the cloud
Breaks on their heads, as sudden and as loud.
But others still succeed: meantime, nor stones
Nor any kind of weapons cease.

Before the gate in gilded armour shone [grown,
Young Pyrrhus, like a snake, his skin new
Who fed on poisonous herbs, all winter lay
Under the ground, and now revicws the day
Fresh in his new apparel, proud and young,
Rolls up his back, and brandishes his tongue,
And lifts his scaly breast against the Sun;
With him his father's squire, Automedon,
And Peripas, who drove his winged steeds,
Enter the court; whom all the youth succeeds
Of Seyros' isle, who flaming firebrands flung
Up to the roof; Pyrrhus himself among
The foremost with an axe an entrance hews'
Through beams of solid oak, then freely views
The chambers, galleries, and rooms of state,
Where Priam and the ancient monarchs sat.
At the first gate an armed guard appears;
But th' inner court with horrour,noise, and tears,
Confus'dly fill'd, the women's shrieks and cries
The arch'd vaults re-echo to the skies;
Sad matrons wandering through the spacions

And now between two sad extremes I stood, Here Pyrrhus and th' Atridæ drunk with blood, There th' hapless queen amongst an hundred dames,

And Priam quenching from his wounds those flames

Which his own hands had on the altar laid; Then they the secret cabinets invade, Where stood the fifty nuptial beds, the hopes Of that great race; the golden posts, whose tops Old hostile spoils adorn'd, demolish'd lay, Or to the foe, or to the fire a prey. Now Priam's fate perhaps you may inquire: Seeing his empire lost, his Troy on fire, And his own palace by the Greeks possest, Arms long disus'd his trembling limbs invest; Thus on his foes he throws himself alone, Not for their fate, but to provoke his own : There stood an altar open to the view Of Heaven, near which an aged laurel grew, Whose shady arms the household gods embrac'd; Before whose feet the queen herself had cast With all her daughters, and the Trojan wives, As doves whom an approaching tempest drives And frights into one flock; but having spy'd Old Priam clad in youthful arm, she cried, "Alas, my wretched husband, what pretence To bear those arms, and in them what defence? Such aid such times require not, when again If Hector were alive, he liv'd in vain ; Or here we shall a sanctuary find, Or as in life we shall in death be join'd." Then weeping, with kind force held and embrac'd, And on the secret seat the king she plac'd. Meantime Polites, one of Priam's sons, Flying the rage of bloody Pyrrhus, runs Through foes and swords, and ranges all the court, And empty galleries, amaz'd and hurt; Pyrrhus pursues him, now o'ertakes, now kills, And his last blood in Priam's presence spills. The king (though him so many deaths enclose) Nor fear, nor grief, but indignation shows; "The gods requite thee, (if within the care Of those above th' affairs of mortals are) Whose fury on the son but lost had been, Had not his parents' eyes his murder seen: Not that Achilles (whom thou feign'st to be Thy father) so inhuman was to me; He blusht, when I the rights of arms implor'd ; To me my Hector, me to Troy restor❜d:" This said, his feeble arm a javelin flung, Which on the sounding shield, scarce entering,

rung.

Then Pyrrhus; "Gó a messenger to Hell
Of my black deeds, and to my father tell
The acts of his degenerate race." So through
His son's warm blood the trembling king he
drew

To th' altar; in his hair one hand he wreaths;
His sword the other in his bosom sheaths.
Thus fell the king, who yet surviv'd the state,
With such a signal and peculiar fate,
Under so vast a ruin, not a grave,
Nor in such flames a funeral fire to have:
He whom such titles swell'd, such power made
proud,

To whom the sceptres of all Asia bow'd,
On the cold earth lies th' unregarded king,
A headless carcase, and a nameless thing.

ON THE EARL OF STRAFFORD'S

TRIAL AND DEATH.

GREAT Strafford! worthy of that name, though all

Of thee could be forgotten, but thy fall,
Crush'd by imaginary treason's weight,
Which too much merit did accumulate:
As chymists gold from brass by fire would draw,
Pretexts are into treason forg'd by law.
His wisdom such, at once it did appear
Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms?
fear;

While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
Each had an army, as an equal foe.
Such was his force of eloquence, to make

The hearers more concern'd than he that spake;
Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than he;
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate:
Now they could him, if he could them forgive;
He's not too guilty, but too wise to live;

Less seem those facts which Treason's nick-name bore,

Than such a fear'd ability for more.
They after death their fears of him express,
His innocence and their own guilt confess.
Their legislative frenzy they repent:
Enacting it should make no precedent. [lose
This fate he could have 'scap'd, but would not
Honour for life, but rather nobly chose
Death from their fears, than safety from his

ON HIS INCOMPARABLE POEM7.

WHAT mighty gale hath rais'd a flight so strong?
So high above all vulgar eyes! so long?
One single rapture scarce itself confines
Within the limits of four thousand lines:
And yet I hope to see this noble heat
Continue, till it makes the piece complete,
That to the latter age it may descend,
And to the end of time its beams extend.
When Poesy joins profit with delight,
Her images should be most exquisite,

1 The honourable Edward Howard, by his poem called The British Princes, engaged the attention of by far the most eminent of his contemporaries; who played upon his vanity, as the wits of half a century before had done on that of Thomas Coryat, by writing extravagant compliments on his works. See Butler's, Waller's, Sprat's, and Dorset's verses,in their respective volumes; and in the Select Collection of Miscellaneous Poems, 1780, vol. III. p. 105, are other verses on the same subject, by Marton Clifford, and the lord Vaughan. N.

cross;

Such as derides thy passions' best relief,
And scorns the succours of thy easy grief.
Yet, lest thy ignorance betray thy name
Of man and pious, read and mourn: the shame
Of an exemption, from just sense, doth show
Irrational, beyond excess of woe.

Since reason, then, can privilege a tear,
Manhood, uncensur'd, pay that tribute here,
Upon this noble urn. Here, here, remains
Dust far more precious than in India's veins :
Within these cold embraces, ravish'd, lies
That which compleats the age's tyrannics :
Who weak to such another ill appear,
For what destroys our hope, secures our fear.
What sin unexpiated, in this land

Of groans, hath guided so severe a hand ?
The late great victim 2 that your altars knew,
Ye angry gods, might have excus'd this new
Oblation, and have spar'd one lofty light
Of virtue, to inform our steps aright;
By whose example good, condemned, we
Might have run on to kinder destiny.
But as the leader of the herd fell first
A sacrifice, to quench the raging thirst
Of inflam'd vengeance for past crimes; so none
But this white-fatted youngling cou'd atone,
By his untimely fate; that impious smoke,
That sullied Earth, and did Heaven's pity choke.

2 King Charles the First.

Let it suffice for us, that we have lost
In him more than the widow'd world can boast
In any lump of her remaining clay.
Fair as the grey ey'd Morn he was; the day,
Youthful, and climbing upwards still, imparts
No haste like that of his increasing parts;
Like the meridian beam, his virtue's light
Was seen, as full of comfort and as bright.
Had his noon been as fix'd as clear—but he,
That only wanted immortality

To make him perfect, now submits to night,
In the black bosom of whose sable spite,
He leaves a cloud of flesh behind, and flies,
Refin'd, all ray and glory, to the skies.

Great saint! shine there in an eternal sphere, And tell those powers to whom thou now draw'st

near,

[dead,

That by our trembling sense, in HASTINGS
Their anger and our ugly faults are read;
The short lines of whose life did to our eyes
Their love and majesty epitomize:

Tell them, whose stern degrees impose our laws,
The feasted Grave may close her hollow jaws:
Though Sin search Nature, to provide her here
A second entertainment half so dear,
She'll never meet a plenty like this hearse,
Till Time present her with the universe.

Thus the constitution
Condemns them every one,
From the father to the son.

But John
(Our friend) Molleson
Thought us to have out-gone
With a quaint invention.
Like the prophets of yore,
He complain'd long before,
Of the mischiefs in store,
Ay, and thrice as much more.

And with that wicked lye,
A letter they came by
From our king's majesty.

But Fate
Brought the letter too late,
'Twas of too old a date
To relieve their damn'd state.

The letter's to be seen,

With seal of wax so green,
At Dantzige where 't has been
Turn'd into good Latin.

But he that gave the hint
This letter for to print,
Must also pay his stint.

These statesmen, you believe,
Send straight for the shrieve,
For he is one too, or would be;
But he drinks no wine,
Which is a shrewd sign

That all 's not so well as it should be.

These three, when they drink,
How little do they think
Of banishment, debts, or dying:
Not old with their years,
Nor cold with their fears;
But their angry stars still defying.

Mirth makes them not mad,
Nor sobriety sad;

But of that they are seldom in danger;
At Paris, at Rome,

At the Hague, they 're at home; The good fellow is no where a stranger,

TO SIR JOHN MENNIS,

BEING INVITED FROM CALAIS TO BOLOGNE TO

EAT A PIG.

ALL on a weeping Monday,
With a fat Bulgarian sloven,
Little admiral John

To Bologne is gone.

Whom I think they call Old Loven.
Hadst thou not thy fill of carting,
Will Aubrey, count of Oxon,

When nose lay in breech,
And breech made a speech,
So often cry'd A pox on?
A knight by land and water
Esteem'd at such a high rate,

When 'tis told in Kent,
In a cart that he went,
They'll say now, Hang him pirate.

Thou might'st have ta'en example,
From what thou read'st in story;
Being as worthy to sit
On an ambling tit
As thy predecessor Dory.
But oh! the roof of linen,

Intended for a shelter !

But the rain made an ass

Of tilt and canvass;

And the snow, which you know is a melter.

But with thee to inveigle
That tender stripling Astcot,

Who was soak'd to the skin,
Through drugget so thin,
Having neither coat nor waistcoat.

He being proudly mounted,
Clad in cloak of Plymouth,

Defy'd cart so base,

For thief without grace, That goes to make a wry mouth,

Nor did he like the omen,
For fear it might be his doom
One day for to sing,
With a gullet in string,
-A hymn of Robert Wisdom.

But what was all this business?
For sure it was important:
For who rides i' th' wet

When affairs are not great,

The neighbours make but a sport on't.

To a goodly fat sow's baby,
O John, thou hadst a malice,
The old driver of swine
That day sure was thine,
Or thou hadst not quitted Calais.