| |
| WHEN dark Oblivion in her sable cloak | |
| Shall wrap the names of heroes and of kings; | |
| And their high deeds, submitting to the stroke | |
| Of time, shall fall amongst forgotten things: | |
| |
| Then (for the Muse that distant day can see) | 5 |
| On Thames’s bank the stranger shall arrive, | |
| With curious wish thy sacred grott to see, | |
| Thy sacred grott shall with thy name survive. | |
| |
| Grateful posterity, from age to age, | |
| With pious hand the ruin shall repair: | 10 |
| Some good old man, to each inquiring sage | |
| Pointing the place, shall cry, “The bard lived there | |
| |
| “Whose song was music to the listening ear, | |
| Yet taught audacious vice and folly shame: | |
| Easy his manners, but his life severe; | 15 |
| His word alone gave infamy or fame. | |
| |
| “Sequestered from the fool and coxcomb-wit, | |
| Beneath this silent roof the Muse he found; | |
| ’T was here he slept inspired, or sat and writ; | |
| Here with his friends the social glass went round.” | 20 |
| |
| With awful veneration shall they trace | |
| The steps which thou so long before hast trod; | |
| With reverent wonder view the solemn place | |
| From whence thy genius soared to nature’s God. | |
| |
| Then, some small gem, or moss, or shining ore, | 25 |
| Departing, each shall pilfer, in fond hope | |
| To please their friends on every distant shore, | |
| Boasting a relic from the cave of Pope. | |
| |
