ODE XXIV.

THE

FEMALE REIGN.

BY THE REV. SAMUEL COBBE, M. A.

WHAT can the British senate give,
To make the name of ANNA live,
By future people to be sung,
The labor 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.

True virtue to her kindred stars aspires,

Does all our pomp of stone and verse surpass, And mingling with etherial fires,

No useless ornament requires

From speaking colors, or from breathing brass.

Greatest of princes! where the wand'ring sun Does 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 every valley rings.

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 favor 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;

And for contented realms of blissful light,

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.

Had guile, and pride, and envy grown

In 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 rouse the brave, and banish sloth;
And some are born to win the stars,
By sweat and blood, and worthy scars.
Heroic virtue is by action seen,

And vices serve to make it keen;
And as gigantic tyrants rise,

NASSAUS and CHURCHILLS leave the skies,
The earth-born monsters to chastise.

If, heavenly Muse, you burn with a desire
To praise the man whom all admire;
Come from thy learn'd Castalian springs,
And stretch aloft thy Pegasean wings,
Strike the loud Pindaric 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.

See, where at Audenard, with heaps of slain,
Th' heroic man, inspir'dly brave,

Mowing across, bestrews the plain,

And with new tenants crowds the wealthy grave.
His mind unshaken at the frightful scene,
His looks as cheerfully 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 Salmonius meets the Celtic thunderer. Ah, cursed pride! infernal dream!

Which drove him to this wild extreme,

That dust a deity should seem;

Be thought, as through the wond'ring 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 awful place :

The British Pallas! who, as Homer's did

For her lov'd Diomede,

Her hero's mind with wisdom fills,

And heav'nly courage in his heart instils.

Hence through 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 through 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.

Or as a dyke cut by malicious hands,

O'erflows the fertile Netherlands.