| |
| OF Marlborough’s captains, and Eugenio’s friends, | |
| The last, Cadogan, to the grave descends: | |
| Low lies each hand, whence Blenheim’s glory sprung, | |
| The chiefs who conquer’d, and the bards who sung, | |
| From his cold corse though every friend be fled, | 5 |
| Lo! Envy waits, that lover of the dead: | |
| Thus did she feign o’er Nassau’s hearse to mourn; | |
| Thus wept insidious, Churchill, o’er thy urn; | |
| To blast the living, gave the dead their due, | |
| And wreaths, herself had tainted, trimmed anew; | 10 |
| Thou, yet unnamed to fill his empty place, | |
| And lead to war thy country’s growing race, | |
| Take every wish a British heart can frame, | |
| Add palm to palm, and rise from fame to fame. | |
| An hour must come, when thou shalt hear with rage | 15 |
| Thyself traduced, and curse a thankless age: | |
| Nor yet for this decline the generous strife. | |
| These ills, brave man, shall quit thee with thy life, | |
| Alive though stained by every abject slave, | |
| Secure of fame and justice in the grave. | 20 |
| Ah! no——when once the mortal yields to Fate, | |
| The blast of Fame’s sweet trumpet sounds too late, | |
| Too late to stay the spirit on its flight, | |
| Or soothe the new inhabitant of light; | |
| Who hears regardless, while fond man, distress’d, | 25 |
| Hangs on the absent, and laments the blest. | |
| Farewell then Fame, ill sought thro’ fields and blood, | |
| Farewell unfaithful promiser of good: | |
| Thou music, warbling to the deafen’d ear! | |
| Thou incense wasted on the funeral bier! | 30 |
| Through life pursued in vain, by death obtained, | |
| When asked deny’d us, and when given disdained. | |
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