 | A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes |  |
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THE FEMALE REIGN: AN ODE.
By Mr. COBB.
I.
What can the British senate give,To make the name of Anna live,
By future people to be sung,
The labour of each grateful tongue?
Can faithful registers, or rhyme,
In charming eloquence, or sprightly wit,
The wonders of her reign transmit
To th'unborn children of succeeding time?
Can painters' oil, or statuaries' art,
Eternity to her impart?
No! titled statues are but empty things,
Inscrib'd to royal vanity,
The sacrifice of flattery
To lawless Neros, or Bourbonian kings.
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Does all our pomp of stone and verse surpass,
And mingling with etherial fires,
No useless ornament requires
From speaking colours, or from breathing brass.
II.
Greatest of princes! where the wand'ring sunDoes o'er earth's habitable regions roll,
From th'eastern barriers to the western goal,
And sees thy race of glory run
With swiftness equal to his own:
Thee on the banks of Flandrian Scaldis sings
The jocund swain releas'd from Gallic fear:
The English voice unus'd to hear,
Thee the repeating banks, thee ev'ry valley rings.
III.
The sword of heav'n how pious Anna wields,And heav'nly vengeance on the guilty deals,
Let the twice fugitive Bavarian tell;
Who, from his airy hope of better state,
By lust of sway irregularly great,
Like an apostate angel fell:
Who, by imperial favour rais'd,
I'th' highest rank of glory blaz'd:
And had till now unrivall'd shone,
More than a king contented with his own;
But Lucifer's bold steps he trod,
Who durst assault the throne of God;
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Gain'd the sad privilege to be
The first in solid misery,
Monarch of hell, and woes, and everlasting night.
Corruption of the best is always worst;
And foul ambition like an evil wind,
Blights the fair blossoms of a noble mind;
And if a seraph fall, he's doubly curst.
IV.
Had guile, and pride, and envy grownIn the black groves of Styx alone,
Nor ever had on earth the baleful crop been sown:
The swain without amaze, had till'd
The Flandrian glebe, a guiltless field:
Nor had he wonder'd, when he found
The bones of heroes in the ground:
No crimson streams had lately swell'd
The Dyle, the Danube, and the Scheld.
But evils are of necessary growth,
To rouze the brave, and banish sloth;
And some are born to win the stars,
By sweat and blood, and worthy scars.
Heroick virtue is by action seen,
And vices serve to make it keen;
And as gigantick tyrants rise,
Nassaus and Churchills leave the skies,
The earth-born monsters to chastise.
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V.
If, heav'nly Muse, you burn with a desireTo praise the man whom all admire;
Come from thy learn'd Castalian springs,
And stretch aloft thy Pegasean wings:
Strike the loud Pindarick strings,
Like the lark who soars and sings;
And as you sail the liquid skies,
Cast on Menapian fields your weeping eyes:
For weep they surely must,
To see the bloody annual sacrifice;
To think how the neglected dust,
Which with contempt is basely trod,
Was once the limbs of captains, brave and just,
The mortal part of some great demi-god;
Who for thrice fifty years of stubborn war,
With slaught'ring arms, the gun and sword,
Have dug the mighty sepulchre,
And fell as martyrs on record,
Of tyranny aveng'd, and liberty restor'd.
VI.
See, where at Audenard, with heaps of slain,Th'heroick man inspir'dly brave,
Mowing across, bestrews the plain,
And with new tenants crowds the wealthy grave.
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His looks as chearfully serene,
The routed battle to pursue,
As once adorn'd the Paphian queen,
When to her Thracian paramour she flew.
The gath'ring troops he kens from far,
And with a bridegroom's passion and delight,
Courting the war, and glowing for the fight,
The new Salmoneus meets the Celtic thunderer.
Ah, cursed pride! infernal dream!
Which drove him to this wild extream,
That dust a deity should seem;
Be thought, as through the wondering streets he rode,
A man immortal, or a god:
With rattling brass, and trampling horse,
Should counterfeit th'inimitable force
Of divine thunder: horrid crime!
But vengeance is the child of time,
And will too surely be repaid
On his profane devoted head,
Who durst affront the powers above,
And their eternal flames disgrace,
Too fatal, brandish'd by the real Jove,
Or Pallas, who assumes and fills his aweful place:
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VII.
The British Pallas! who, as Homer's didFor her lov'd Diomede,
Her hero's mind with wisdom fills,
And heav'nly courage in his heart instils.
Hence thro' the thickest squadrons does he ride,
With Anna's angels by his side.
With what uncommon speed
He spurs his foaming, fiery steed,
And pushes on thro' midmost fires,
Where France's fortune, with her sons, retires!
Now here, now there, the sweeping ruin flies;
As when the Pleiades arise,
The southern wind afflicts the skies,
Then, mutt'ring o'er the deep, buffets th'unruly brine,
'Till clouds and water seem to join.
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O'erflows the fertile Netherlands;
Thro' the wide yawn, th'impetuous sea,
Lavish of his new liberty,
Bestrides the vale, and, with tumultuous noise,
Bellows along the delug'd plain
Pernicious to the rip'ning grain;
Far as th'horizon he destroys:
The weeping shepherd from an hill bewails the wat'ry reign.
VIII.
So rapid flows the unimprison'd stream!So strong the force of Mindelheim!
In vain the woods of Audenard
Would shield the Gaul, a senceless guard.
As soon may whirl-winds be with-held,
As Marlb'rough's footsteps o'er the foaming Scheld.
In vain the torrent would oppose,
In vain arm'd banks, and hosts of foes:
The foes with coward-haste retire,
Fly faster than the river flows,
And swifter than our fire.
Vendosme from far upbraids their shame,
And pleads his royal master's fame.
“By Condè's mighty ghost,” he cries,
“By Turenne, Luxemburgh, and all
“Those noble souls, who fell a sacrifice
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“Stop, I conjure, your ignominious flight.”
But Fear is deaf to Honour's call.
Each frowning threat and soothing pray'r
Is lost in the regardless air:
As well he may
The billows of the ocean stay;
While Churchill like a driving wind,
Or high spring-tide, pursues behind,
And with redoubled speed urges their forward way.
IX.
Nor less, Eugenius, thy important care,Thou second thunder-bolt of war!
Partner in danger and in fame,
The wind, with Marlborough's, shall bear
To distant colonies thy conqu'ring name.
Nor shall my Muse forget to sing
From harmony what blessings spring:
To tell how Death did enviously repine,
To see a friendship so divine;
When in a ball's destroying form she past,
And mark'd thy threaten'd brow at last,
But durst not touch that sacred brain,
Where Europe's mightiest counsels reign;
For strait she bow'd her ghastly head,
She saw the mark of heav'n, and fled,
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When he, at Allia's fatal flood,
Had fill'd the plains with Roman blood,
With conscious awe forsook the capitol,
Where Jove, revenger of profaneness, stood.
X.
But where the good and brave command,What capitol, what bulwark can withstand?
Virtue, approv'd of heav'n, can pass
Thro' walls, thro' tow'rs, and gates of brass.
Lisle, like a mistress, had been courted long,
By all the valiant and the young,
The fairest progeny of Vauban's art;
'Till Savoy's warlike prince withstood
Her frowning terrors, and thro' seas of blood
Tore the bright darling from th'old tyrant's heart.
Such Buda saw him, when proud Apti fell,
Unhappy, valiant infidel!
Who, vanquish'd by superior strength,
Surrender'd up his haughty breath,
Upon the breach measuring his manly length,
And shun'd the bow-string by a nobler death.
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XI.
Such Harscam's field beheld him in his bloom,When Victory bespoke him for her own.
Her favourite, immortal son,
And told of better years revolving on the loom:
How he should make the Turkish crescent wane,
And choak Tibiscus with the slain;
While Viziers lay beneath the lofty pile
Of slaughter'd Bassaus, who o'er Bassaus roll'd;
And all his num'rous acts she told,
From Latian Carpi down to Flandrian Lisle.
XII.
Honour, with open arms, receives at lastThe heroes who thro' Virtue's temple past;
And show'rs down laurels from above,
On those whom heav'n and Anna love.
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For the young eagles, who could try
The faith and judgment of the sky,
And dare the sun with steady eye;
For Hanover's and Prussia's brows,
Eugenes in bloom, and future Marlboroughs:
To Hanover, to Brunswick's second grace,
Descendent from a long imperial race,
The Muse directs her honourable flight,
And prophesies, from so serene a morn,
To what clear glories he is born,
When blazing with a full meridian light,
He shall the British hemisphere adorn;
When Mars shall lay his batter'd target down,
And he, (since Death will never spare
The good, the pious, and the fair)
In his ripe harvest of renown,
Shall after his great father sit,
(If heav'n so long a life permit)
And having swell'd the flowing tide
Of fame, which he in arms shall get,
The purchase of an honest sweat,
Shall safe in stormy seas Britannia's vessel guide.
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XIII.
Britannia's vessel, which in Anna's reign,And prudent pilotry, enjoys
The tempest which the world destroys,
And rides triumphant o'er the subject main.
O may she soon a quiet harbour gain!
And sure the promis'd hour is come,
When in soft notes the peaceful lyre
Shall still the trumpet and the drum,
Shall play what gods and men desire,
And strike Bellona's musick dumb:
When War, by parents curs'd, shall quit the field,
Unbuckle his bright helmet, and, to rest
His weary'd limbs, sit on his idle shield,
With scars of honour plow'd upon his breast.
But if the Gallic Pharaoh's stubborn heart
Grows fresh for punishment, and hardens still;
Prepar'd for th'irrecoverable ill,
And forc'd th'unwilling skies to act the last ungrateful part:
Thy forces, Anna, like a flood, shall whelm
(If heav'n does scepter'd innocence maintain)
His famish'd desolated realm;
And all the sons of Pharamond in vain
(Who with dishonest envy see
The sweet forbidden fruits of distant liberty)
Shall curse their Salic law, and wish a female reign.
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XIV.
A female reign like thine,O Anna, British heroine!
To thee afflicted empires fly for aid,
Where'er tyrannick standards are display'd,
From the wrong'd Iber to the threaten'd Rhine.
Thee, where the golden-sanded Tagus flows
Beneath fair Ulyssippo's walls,
The frighted Lusitanian calls;
Thee they who drink the Seine, with those
Who plow Iberian fields, implore,
To give the lab'ring world repose,
And universal peace restore:
Thee, Gallia; mournful to survive the fate
Of her fall'n grandeur and departed state;
By sad experience taught to own,
That virtue is a noble way to rise,
A surer passage to the skies,
Than Pelion upon Ossa thrown:
For they, who impiously presume
To grasp at heav'n, by Jove's eternal doom,
A prey to thunder shall become;
Or, sent in Ætna's fiery caves to groan,
Gain but an higher fall, a mountain for their tomb.
Homer, in his fifth Iliad, because his hero is to do wonders beyond the power of man, premises, in the beginning, that Pallas had peculiarly fitted him for that day's exploits.
Indomitas prope qualis undas
Exercit auster, pleiadum choro
Scindente nubes, impiger hostium
Vexare turmas, & frementem
Mittere equum medios per ignes.
Sic tauriformis volvitur Aufidus,
Qui regna Dauni præfluit Appuli,
Cum sævit, horrendam quo cultis
Diluviem meditatur agris.
Exercit auster, pleiadum choro
Scindente nubes, impiger hostium
Vexare turmas, & frementem
Mittere equum medios per ignes.
Sic tauriformis volvitur Aufidus,
Qui regna Dauni præfluit Appuli,
Cum sævit, horrendam quo cultis
Diluviem meditatur agris.
This was the fatal battle to the Turks in the year 1687. Prince Eugene, with the regiments of his brigade, was the first that entered the trenches; and for that reason had the honour to be the first messenger of this happy news to the emperor.
This battle was fought on the 10th of October, 1697, where Prince Eugene commanded in chief; like which there never happened so great and so terrible a destruction to the Ottoman army, which fell upon the principal commanders more than the common soldiers; for no less than fifteen Bassaus (five of which had been Viziers of the bench) were killed, besides the supreme Vizier.
| A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes | |