Classic Poem

Inscribed to the Lord Falkland.

I.

Ofalkland! offspring of a gen'rous race,
Renown'd for arms and arts in war and peace:
My kinsman, and my friend! from whence this curse
Entail'd on man, still to grow worse and worse?

II.

Each age, industrious to invent new crimes,
Strives to outdo in guilt preceding times;
But now we're so improv'd in all that's bad,
We shall leave nothing for our sons to add.

III.

That idol, gold, possesses ev'ry heart;
To cheat, defraud, and undermine, is art:
Virtue is folly; conscience is a jest;
Religion gain, or priestcraft at the best,

IV.

Friendship's a cloak to hide some treach'rous end;
Your greatest foe is your professing friend;
The soul resign'd, unguarded, and secure,
The wound is deepest, and the stroke most sure.

V.

Justice is bought and sold; the bench, the bar,
Plead and decide, but gold's th' interpreter.
Pernicious metal! thrice accurs'd be he
Who found thee first; all evils spring from thee.

VI.

Sires sell their sons, and sons their fires betray;
And senates vote, as armies sight, for pay;
The wife no longer is restrain'd by shame,
But has the husband's leave to play the game.

VII.

Diseas'd, decrepit, from the mix'd embrace
Succeeds, of spurious mould, a puny race:
From such desenders what can Britain hope?
And where, O Liberty! is now thy prop?

VIII.

Not such the men who bent the stubborn bow,
And learnt in rugged sports to dare a foe:
Not such the men who fill'd with heaps of slain
Fam'd Agincourt and Cressy's bloody plain.

IX.

Haughty Britannia then, inur'd to toil,
Spread far and near the terrors of her isle;
True to herself, and to the public weal,
No Gallic gold could blunt the British steel.

X.

Not much unlike, when thou in arms wert seen,
Eager sor glory on th' embattled green,
When Stanhope led thee thro' the heats of Spain,
To die in purple Almanara's plain.

XI.

The rescu'd empire, and the Gaul subdu'd,
In Anna's reign, our ancient fame renew'd:
What Britons could, when justly rous'd to war,
Let Blenheim speak, and witness Gibraltar.