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Neglected Nature fails; in fordid want

Sunk, and debas'd, their beauty beams no more.

The Sun himself feems, angry, to regard,

Of light unworthy, the degenerate race,
And fires them oft' with peftilential rays;
While earth, blue poifon steaming on the skies,
Indignant shakes them from her troubled fides.
But as from man to man, Fate's firft decree,
Impartial Death the tide of riches rolls,
So States must die, and Liberty go round.

415

420

Fierce was the ftand ere Virtue, Valour, Arts,

And the Soul fir'd by Me (that often stung
With thoughts of better times and old renown,
From hydra-tyrants try'd to clear the land)
Lay quite extinct in Greece, their works effac'd,425
And grofs o'er all unfeeling Bondage spread.
Sooner I mov'd My much-reluctant flight,
Pois'd on thedoubtfulwing, whenGreece with Greece,
Embroil'd in foul contention, fought no more
For common glory and for common weal;
But, falfe to Freedom, fought to quell the Free,
Broke the firm band of peace, and facred love,
That lent the whole irrefragable force,

And, as around the partial trophy blush'd,

Prepar'd the way for total overthrow.

439

435

Then to the Perfian power, whofe pride they scorn'd,

When Xerxes pour'd his millions o'er the land,

Sparta by turns, and Athens, vilely fued,

Sued to be venal parricides, to fpill

Their country's braveft blood,and on themselves 440 To turn their matchless mercenary arms.

445

Peaceful in Sufa, then, fat the Great King*,
And by the trick of treaties, the still wafte
Of fly Corruption and Barbaric gold,
Effected what his steel could ne'er perform.
Profufe he gave them the luxurious draught,
Inflaming all the land; unbalanc'd wide
Their tottering ftates, their wild affemblies rul'd,
As the winds turn at every blast the feas,

And by their lifted orators, whose breath

450

Still with a factious form infefted Greece,
Rous'd them to Civil war, or dafh'd them down
To fordid peace +-Peace! that, when Sparta fhook
Aftonish'd Artaxerxes on his throne,

Gave up, fair-fpread o'er Afia's funny fhore,
Their kindred cities to perpetual chains.
What could fo bafe, fo infamous a thought
In Spartan hearts infpire? Jealous, they faw
Refpiring Athens ‡ rear again her walls,
And the pale fury fir'd them once again
To crush this rival city to the duft.

455

460

So the kings of Perfia were called by the Greeks. The peace inade by Antalcidas, the Lacedemonian admiral, with the Perfians; by which the Lacedemonians abandoned all the Greeks established in the Leffer Afia to the dominion of the King of Perfia.

Athens had been difmantled by the Lacedemonians, at the end of the firft Peloponnefian war, and was at this time restored by Conon to its former splendour.

For now no more the noble focial foul
Of Liberty My families combin'd,

465

But by fhort views and felfish paffions broke,
Dire as when friends are rankled into foes,
They mix'd fevere, and wag'd eternal war ;
Nor felt they, furious, their exhausted force;
Nor, with falfe glory, difcord, madness blind,
Saw how the blackening ftorm from Thracia came.
Long years roll'd on, by manya battle ftain'd*, 470
The blush and boast of Fame! where courage, art,
And military glory, fhone fupreme;

But let detefting ages, from the scene

Of Greece, felf-mangled, turn the fickening eye.
At last, when bleeding from a thousand wounds 475
She felt her spirits fail, and in the duft
Her latest heroes, Nicias, Conon, lay,
Agefilaus, and the Theban Friends +,
The Macedonian Vulture mark'd his time,
By the dire scent of Cheronæa ‡lur'd,
And, fierce defcending, feiz'd his hapless prey.
Thus tame fubmitted to the victor's yoke
Greece! once the gay, the turbulent, the bold,
For every Grace, and Mufe, and Science, born;
With arts of war, of government, elate;

To tyrants dreadful, dreadful to the best;

The Peloponnefian war.

+ Pelopidas and Epaminondas.

480

485

The battle of Cheronæa, in which Philip of Macedon utterly defeated the Greeks.

1

Whom I Myfelf could fcacely rule; and thus
The Perfian fetters, that inthrall'd the mind,
Were turn'd to formal and apparent chains.

490

Unless Corruption first deject the pride And guardian vigour of the Free-born foul, All crude attempts of Violence are vain ; For firm within, and while at heart untouch'd, Ne'er yet by Force was Freedom overcome. But foon as Independence ftoops the head, To vice enflav'd, and vice-created wants, Then to fome foul corrupting hand, whose waste Thefe heightened wants with fatal bounty feeds, From man to man the flackening ruin runs,

495

Till the whole State, unnerv'd, in slavery finks. 500

ROME.

LIBERTY

PART III.

The Contents.

AS this Part contains a defcription of the oftablishment of Liberty in Rome, ie begins with a view of the Grecian colonies fettled in the fouthern parts of Italy, which, with Sicily, couftituted the Great Greece of the Ancients. With thefe colonies the spirit of Liberty, and of Republics, fpreads over Italy, to ver. 32. Transition to Pythagoras and his philofophy, which he taught through those free flates and cities, to ver. 71. Amidst the many fmall republies in Italy, Rome the diftined fear of Liberty. Her eftablishment there dated from the expulfion of the Tarquins. How differing from that in Greece, to ver. 88. Reference to a view of the Roman Republic given in the First Part of this Poem to mark its rife and fall the peculiar purport of This. During its first ages, the greateft force of Liberty and Virtue exerted, to ver. 103. The fource whence derived the heroic virtues of the Romans. Enumeration of thefe virtues. Thence their fecurity at home; their glory, faccefs, and empire, abroad to ver. 226. Bounds of the Roman Empire geographically described, to ver. 257. The ftates of Greece reftored to liberty by Titus Quintus Flaminius, the highest inftance of public generofity and beneficence, to ver. 3a8. The lofs of Liberty in Rome. Its caufes, progrefs, and completion, in the death of Brutus, to ver. 485. Rome under the Emperors, to ver. 513. From Rome the Goddess of Liberty goes among the Northern nations, where, by infufing into them her spirit and general principles, the lays the ground-work of her future eftablishments; fends them in vengeance on the Roman Empire, now totally enslaved; and then, with Arts and Sciences in her train, quits earth during the dark ages; to ver. 550. The celeftial regions, to which Liberty retired, not proper to be opened to the view of mortals.

HERE melting mix'd with air th' ideal forms,
That painted ftill whate'er the goddess fung,

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