The song of Asaph shall for ever last!

With wonder late posterity shall dwell
On Absalom and false Achitophel:

Thy strains shall be our slumbering prophets' dream,
And, when our Sion virgins sing their theme,
Our jubilees shall with thy verse be graced;
The song of Asaph shall for ever last!
How fierce his satire loosed, restrained, how tame,
How tender of the offending young man's fame!
How well his worth and brave adventures styled;
Just to his virtues, to his error mild.

No page of thine that fears the strictest view,
But teems with just reproof or praise as due;
Not Eden could a fairer prospect yield,
All Paradise without one barren field:
Whose wit the censure of his foes has past,
The song of Asaph shall for ever last!
What praise for such rich strains shall we allow?
What just rewards the grateful crown bestow?
While bees in flowers rejoice, and flowers in dew,
While stars and fountains to their course are true,
While Judah's throne and Sion's rock stand fast,
The song of Asaph and the fame shall last.

Still Hebron's honoured happy soil retains
Our royal hero's beauteous dear remains:
Who now sails off, with winds nor wishes slack,
To bring his sufferings' bright companion back.
But ere such transport can our sense employ,
A bitter grief must poison half our joy;
Nor can our coasts restored those blessings see
Without a bribe to envious destiny!
Curst Sodom's doom for ever fix the tide,
Where, by inglorious chance, the valiant died.
Give not insulting Askalon to know,

Nor let Gath's daughters triumph in our woe!

1050

1060

1070

No sailor with the news swell Egypt's pride
By what inglorious fate our valiant died!
Weep, Arnon! Jordan, weep thy fountain's dry,
While Sion's rock dissolves for a supply.
Calm were the elements, night's silence deep,
The waves scarce murmuring, and the winds asleep ;
Yet fate for ruin takes so still an hour,

And treacherous sands the princely bark devour;
Then death unworthy seized a generous race,
To virtue's scandal and the stars' disgrace!
Oh! had the indulgent powers vouchsafed to yield,
Instead of faithless shelves, a listed field;
A listed field of Heaven's and David's foes,
Fierce as the troops that did his youth oppose,
Each life had on his slaughtered heap retired,
Not tamely, and unconquering thus expired.
But Destiny is now their only foe,

And dying, even o'er that they triumph too;
With loud last breaths their master's scape applaud,
Of whom kind force could scarce the fates defraud:
Who for such followers lost (0 matchless mind!)
At his own safety now almost repined!
Say, royal sir, by all your fame in arms,
Your praise in peace, and by Urania's charms,
If all your sufferings past so nearly prest,

Or pierced with half so painful grief your breast?
Thus some diviner Muse her hero forms,
Not soothed with soft delights, but tost in storms,
Nor stretched on roses in the myrtle grove,

Nor crowns his days with mirth, his nights with love;
But far removed in thundering camps is found,
His slumbers short, his bed the herbless ground;
In tasks of danger always seen the first,
Feeds from the hedge and slakes with ice his thirst.
Long must his patience strive with Fortune's rage,
And long opposing gods themselves engage;

E

1080

1090

1100

1110

Must see his country flame, his friends destroyed,
Before the promised empire be enjoyed:
Such toil of fate must build a man of fame,
And such to Israel's crown the godlike David came.

What sudden beams dispel the clouds so fast
Whose drenching rains laid all our vineyards waste?
The spring so far behind her course delayed
On the instant is in all her bloom arrayed;
The winds breathe low, the element serene,
Yet mark! what motion in the waves is seen
Thronging and busy as Hyblæan swarms
Or straggled soldiers summoned to their arms!
See where the princely bark in loosest pride,
With all her guardian fleet, adorns the tide!
High on her deck the royal lovers stand,
Our crimes to pardon ere they touched our land.
Welcome to Israel and to David's breast!
Here all your toils, here all your sufferings rest.

This year did Ziloah rule Jerusalem,
And boldly all sedition's surges stem,
Howe'er encumbered with a viler pair
Than Ziph or Shimei, to assist the chair;
Yet Ziloah's loyal labours so prevailed
That faction at the next election failed,
When even the common cry did justice sound,

1120

1130

And merit by the multitude was crowned:
With David then was Israel's peace restored,

Crowds mourned their error and obeyed their lord.

1140

No

་

KEY TO BOTH PARTS OF ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

(From Vol. II. of MISCELLANY POEMS, Edition of 1716.)

THE MEDAL.

A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION.

"Per Graium populos mediæque per Elidis urbem
Ibat ovans, Divumque sibi poscebat honorem."

VIRG. En. vi. 558.

EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS.

FOR to whom can I dedicate this poem with so much justice as to you? 'Tis the representation of your own hero: 'tis the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the Tower, nor the rising Sun, nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party : especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original. I hear the graver has made a good 10 market of it all his kings are bought up already; or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that many a poor Polander who would be glad to worship the image is not able to go to the cost of him, but must be content to see him here. I must confess I am no great artist; but sign-post painting will serve the turn to remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had. Yet for your comfort the lineaments are true; and though he sate not five times to me, as he did to B., yet I have consulted history, as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a