Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/301

Yawn all ye horrors of the flood;
And curl your ſwelling ſurges higher.
Survey the road!
Where deſolating ſtorms, and vengeful fates,
The gawdy ſcene deface;
Ambition in its wideſt havock trace
Thro’ widow’d cities, and unpeopled ſtates.
And is this all!
Are theſe the threatened terrors of your reign?
O dream of fancy’d power!
Quit, quit, th’ affected ſhew,
This pageantry of grief, and labour’d pomp of woe.
Draw the pleaſing ſcene,
Where dreadful thunders never rowl, nor giddy tempeſs low’r.
Scenes delighting!
Peace inviting,
Paſſions ſooth’d, and tumult dying;
Æra’s rowling,
Fears controuling,
Always new, and always flying.
We dread we know not what, we fear we know not why,
Our cheated fancy ſhrinks, nor ſees to die
Is but to ſlumber into immortality.
All reconciling name!
In ſpace unbounded as in power;
Where fancy limits cannot frame;
Nor reaſon launch beyond the ſhore:
An equal ſtate from all diſtinction free,
Spread like the wide expanſe of vaſt immenſity.
Seditious tumults there obey,
And feuds their zeal forget:
Debated empires own one common ſway,
There learn’d diſputes unite;
Nor crowded volumes the long war maintain:
There rival chiefs combine
To fill the gen’ral chorus of her reign.

So