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Nor durst it in Philippi's field appear,

But unseen attack'd thee there:

Had it presumed in any shape thee to oppose, Thou shouldst have forced it back upon thy foes: Or slain 't, like Cæsar, though it be

A conqueror and a monarch mightier far than he.

What joy can human things to us afford,
When we see perish thus, by odd events,
Ill men, and wretched accidents,

The best cause and best man that ever drew a sword?
When we see

The false Octavius and wild Antony,
God-like Brutus! conquer thee?

What can we say, but thine own tragic word-
That Virtue, which had worshipp'd been by thee
As the most solid Good, and greatest Deity,
By this fatal proof became
An idol only, and a name?
Hold, noble Brutus! and restrain
The bold voice of thy generous disdain :
These mighty gulphs are yet

Too deep for all thy judgment and thy wit.
The time's set forth already which shall quell
Stiff Reason, when it offers to rebel;

Which these great secrets shall unseal,
And new philosophies reveal:

A few years more, so soon hadst thou not died,
Would have confounded human Virtue's pride,
And shew'd thee a God crucify'd.

TO DR. SCARBOROUGH.

How long, alas! has our mad nation been
Of epidemic war the tragic scene,
When Slaughter all the while

Seem'd like its sea, embracing round the isle,
With tempests, and red waves, noise, and affright!
Albion no more, nor to be nam'd from white!
What province or what city did it spare?
It, like a plague, infected all the air.
Sure the unpeopled land

Would now untill'd, desert, and naked stand,
Had God's all-mighty hand

At the same time let loose Diseases' rage
Their civil wars in man to wage.

But thou by Heaven wert sent
This desolation to prevent,

A medicine, and a counter-poison, to the age.
Scarce could the sword dispatch more to the grave
Than thou didst save;.

By wondrous art, and by successful care,
The ruins of a civil war thou dost alone repair!

The inundations of all liquid Pain,

And deluge Dropsy, thou dost drain.
Fevers, so hot that one would say
Thou mightst as soon hell-fires allay
(The damn'd scarce more incurable than they)
Thou dost so temper, that we find,
Like gold, the body but refined,
No unhealthful dross behind.

The subtle Ague, that for sureness' sake

Takes its own times the' assault to make,

And at each battery the whole fort does shake,

When thy strong guards, and works, it spies,
Trembles for itself, and flies.

The cruel Stone, that restless pain,

That's sometimes roll'd away in vain,

But still, like Sysiphus's stone, returns again, Thou break'st and meltest by learn'd juices' force (A greater work, though short the way appear, Than Hannibal's by vinegar!)

Oppressed Nature's necessary course

It stops in vain; like Moses, thou [flow. Strikest but the rock, and straight the waters freely The Indian son of Lust (that foul disease Which did on this his new-found world but lately Yet since a tyranny has planted here, As wide and cruel as the Spaniard there) Is so quite rooted-out by thee, That thy patients seem to be

[seize,

Restored not to health only, but virginity.
The Plague itself, that proud imperial ill,
Which destroys towns, and does whole armies kill,
If thou but succour the besieged heart,
Calls all its poisons forth, and does depart,
As if it fear'd no less thy art,

Than Aaron's incense, or than Phineas' dart.
What need there here repeated be by me
The vast and barbarous lexicon

Of man's infirmity?

At thy strong charms it must be gone [Legion. Though a disease, as well as devil, were called

From creeping moss to soaring cedar thou Dost all the powers and several portions know, Which father-Sun, and mother-Earth below, On their green infants here bestow:

Canst all those magic virtues from them draw,

That keep Disease and Death in awe;
Who, whilst thy wondrous skill in plants they see
Fear lest the tree of life should be found out by thee.
And thy well-travell'd knowledge, too, does give
No less account of the' empire sensitive;
Chiefly of man, whose body is
That active soul's metropolis.

As the great artist in his sphere of glass
Saw the whole scene of heavenly motions pass;
So thou know'st all so well that's done within,
As if some living crystal man thou❜dst seen.

Nor does this science make thy crown alone,
But whole Apollo is thine own;
His gentler arts, beloved in vain by me,
Are wedded and enjoy'd by thee.
Thou'rt by this noble mixture free
From the physicians' frequent malady,
Fantastic incivility:

There are who all their patients' chagrin have,
As if they took each morn worse potions than

they gave.

And this great race of learning thou hast run,
Ere that of life be half yet done;

Thou see'st thyself still fresh and strong,
And like to' enjoy thy conquests long.

The first famed aphorism thy great master spoke,
Did he live now he would revoke,

And better things of man report;

For thou dost make Life long, and Art but short.

Ah, learned friend! it grieves me, when I think That thou with all thy art must die,

As certainly as I;

And all thy noble reparations sink

Into the sure-wrought mine of treacherous mor

tality.

Like Archimedes, honourably in vain,

Thou hold'st out towns that must at last be ta'en,
And thou thyself, their great defender, slain.
Let's e'en compound, and for the present live,
"Tis all the ready-money Fate can give;
Unbend sometimes thy restless care,
And let thy friends so happy be

To' enjoy at once their health and thee: Some hours, at least, to thine own pleasures spare: Since the whole stock may soon exhausted be, Bestow 't not all in charity.

Let Nature and let Art do what they please,
When all's done, Life is an incurable disease.

LIFE AND FAME.

OH, Life! thou Nothing's younger brother!
So like, that one might take one for the other!
What's somebody, or nobody?

In all the cobwebs of the schoolmen's trade,
We no such nice distinction woven see,

As 'tis "to be," or "not to be."
Dream of a shadow! a reflection made

From the false glories of the gay

reflected bow

Is a more solid thing than thou.

Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up betwixt two eternities!

Yet canst nor wave nor wind sustain,

But, broken and o'erwhelm'd, the endless oceans

meet again.

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