TO wake the soul by tender strokes of art, | |
| To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; | |
| To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, | |
| Live o’er each scene, and be what they behold: | |
| For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage, | 5 |
| Commanding tears to stream thro’ ev’ry age: | |
| Tyrants no more their savage nature kept, | |
| And foes to virtue wonder’d how they wept. | |
| Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move | |
| The Hero’s glory, or the Virgin’s love; | 10 |
| In pitying Love, we but our weakness show, | |
| And wild Ambition well deserves its woe. | |
| Here tears shall flow from a more gen’rous cause, | |
| Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws. | |
| He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise, | 15 |
| And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes: | |
| Virtue confess’d in human shape he draws, | |
| What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was: | |
| No common object to your sight displays, | |
| But what with pleasure Heav’n itself surveys, | 20 |
| A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, | |
| And greatly falling with a falling state. | |
| While Cato gives his little senate laws, | |
| What bosom beats not in his country’s cause? | |
| Who sees him act, but envies ev’ry deed? | 25 |
| Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed? | |
| Ev’n when proud Cæsar, midst triumphal cars, | |
| The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars, | |
| Ignobly vain, and impotently great, | |
| Show’d Rome her Cato’s figure drawn in state; | 30 |
| As her dead father’s rev’rend image past, | |
| The pomp was darken’d, and the day o’ercast; | |
| The triumph ceas’d, tears gush’d from ev’ry eye, | |
| The world’s great Victor pass’d unheeded by; | |
| Her last good man dejected Rome ador’d, | 35 |
| And honour’d Cæsar’s less than Cato’s sword. | |
| Britons, attend: be worth like this approv’d, | |
| And show you have the virtue to be mov’d. | |
| With honest scorn the first famed Cato view’d | |
| Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued; | 40 |
| Your scene precariously subsists too long | |
| On French translation and Italian song. | |
| Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage; | |
| Be justly warm’d with your own native rage: | |
| Such plays alone should win a British ear | 45 |
| As Cato’s self had not disdain’d to hear. | |
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