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Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,
Yet to their lord owe more than to the soil;
Whose ample lawns are not asham❜d to feed
The milky heifer, and deserving steed;
Whose rising forests, not for pride or show,
But future buildings, future navies, grow:
Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
First shade a country, and then raise a town.
You too proceed! make falling arts your care,
Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,
And be whate'er Vitruvius was before:
Till kings call forth th' ideas of your mind,
(Proud to accomplish what such hands design'd)
Bid harbours open, public ways extend,
Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend;
Bid the broad arch the dang'rous flood contain,
The mole projected break the roaring main;
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers thro' the land:

These honours, peace to happy BRITAIN brings,
These are imperial works, and worthy kings.

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EPISTLE V.

TO MR. ADDISON.

OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS.

VOL. II.

[This Epistle was originally written in the year 1715, when Mr. Addison intended to publish his book of Medals; it was some time before he was Secretary of State; but not published till Mr. Tickel's edition of his works: at which time the verses on Mr. Craggs, which conclude the poem, were added, viz. in 1720.]

EPISTLE V.

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SEE the wild waste of all-devouring years!
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears!
With nodding arches, broken temples spread;
The very tombs now vanish'd like their dead!
Imperial wonders rais'd on nations spoil'd,
Where, mix'd with slaves, the groaning martyr toil'd:
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
Now drain'd a distant country of her floods:
Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey,
Statues of men, scarce less alive than they !
Some felt the silent stroke of mould'ring age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage.
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.

Perhaps, by its own ruins sav'd from flame,
Some bury'd marble half preserves a name ;
That name the learn'd with fierce disputes pursue,
And give to Titus old Vespasian's due.

Ambition sigh'd: She found it vain to trust
The faithless column, and the crumbling bust:

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Huge moles, whose shadow stretch'd from shore to

shore,

Their ruins perish'd, and their place no more!

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