At Timon's villa let us pass a day, Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away!"So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air, Soft and agreeable come never there.
Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought.
To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down:
Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze!
Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
The whole, a laboured quarry above ground;Two Cupids squirt before; a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern wind.
His gardens next your admiration call, On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene;Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees With here a fountain, never to be played;And there a summer-house, that knows no shade;Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers;There gladiators fight or die in flowers;Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn, And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.
My lord advances with majestic mien, Smit with the mighty pleasure to be seen:
But soft--by regular approach--not yet--
First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;And when up ten steep slopes you've dragged your thighs, Just at his study door he'll bless your eyes.
His study! with what authors is it stored?
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To all their dated backs he turns you round:
These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound, Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good For all his lordship knows, but they are wood.
For Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look;These shelves admit not any modern book.
And now the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer;Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye.
To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite.
But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call;A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall:
The rich buffet well-coloured serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.
Is this a dinner? this a genial room?
No, 'tis a temple, and a hecatomb.
A solemn sacrifice, performed in state, You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there.
Between each act the trembling salvers ring, From soup to sweet-wine, and God bless the King.
In plenty starving, tantalised in state, And complaisantly helped to all I hate, Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave, Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve;I curse such lavish cost and little skill, And swear no day was ever past so ill.
Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;Health to himself, and to his infants bread The labourer bears; what his hard heart denies His charitable vanity supplies.
Another age shall see the golden ear Embrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned, And laughing Ceres re-assume the land.
Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?
Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle.
'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.
His father's acres who enjoys in peace, Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase:
Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil, Yet to their lord owe more than to the soil;Whose ample lawns are not ashamed 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 the ideas of your mind (Proud to accomplish what such hands denied)Bid harbours open, public ways extend, Bid temples, worthier of the god, ascend;Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main;Back to his bounds their subject sea command, And roll obedient rivers through the land:
These honours peace to happy Britain brings, These are imperial works, and worthy kings.
EPISTLE V.
TO MR. ADDISON.
OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS.
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 vanished like their dead!
Imperial wonders raised on nations spoiled, Where mixed with slaves the groaning martyr toiled:
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods, Now drained 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 mouldering age, Some hostile fury, some religious rage.
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame, Some buried marble half preserves a name;That name the learned with fierce disputes pursue, And give to Titus old Vespasian's due.
Ambition sighed: she found it vain to trust The faithless column and the crumbling bust:
Huge moles, whose shadow stretched from shore to shore, Their ruins perished, and their place no more;Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps;Beneath her palm here sad Judea weeps;
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
The medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Through climes and ages bears each form and name:
