Classic Poem

Throughout the lands which wide-extended lie
From Ganges and the golden Eastern sky
To Gades and the West, how few can see
Their real good, from clouds of error free!
What hope, what fear, untinged by Passion's hue,
Through Reason's lucid medium dost thou view?
What unrepented project hast thou framed?
What vow preferred, nor wisht the gift reclaimed?
Too oft the indulgent rulers of the skies
Accept the fatal incense of our sighs,
And, in requital of their pious care,
Have smote whole houses with accepted prayer.
Girded in courts, or belted in the field
We blindly seek the hurtful, unrevealed!
He that holds senates mute may curse the hour
That saw him rise in all the pride of power;
And strength itself, involved in Milo's fate
May rue the struggle and be wise too late!
More captives still within thy fatal spell
Dost thou, insatiate power of gold, compel!
Sworn at the altars, must the votary pine;
Pause is there none for votary of thine,
Though his possessions o'er the rest prevail
As o'er the dolphin breed the British whale.
Yet see those gates the cohort closing round.
Too rich for Nero is Longinus found.
See Lateranus in his halls constrained,
And midst his marble busts of wealth arraigned.
And far, oh! far too rich for tyrant's time —
Thy gardens, Seneca, were all thy crime!
No missioned soldier bursts the hovel door,
Or treads the sordid dwellings of the poor!
Takest thou the road beneath the lamp of night?
Small prize there needs the poniard to invite!
The reed's frail shadow darkling in her beam
Shall to thy startled sense the robber seem,
While he of staff and scrip shall chant his lay,
Nor turn one instant from the caitiff's way.
Yet still with ceaseless prayer the fanes resound
That, come what will, possessions may abound;
That the kind gods may still enlarge our lands,
And bags grow wider in our banker's hands.
Yet the frail vessels of the potter's wheel
No treacherous draughts of aconite conceal!
Fear the gemmed goblet, and suspicious hold
The ruby juice that glows in cups of gold!