previous next

[99] They can affirm his praises best,
     And have, though overcome, confest
How good he is, how just,
     And fit for highest trust.

Nor yet grown stiffer by command,
     But still in the Republic's hand,
How fit he is to sway
     That can so well obey.

He to the Commons' feet presents
     A kingdom for his first year's rents,
And, what he may, forbears
     His fame to make it theirs.

And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
     To lay them at the public's skirt;
So when the falcon high
     Falls heavy from the sky,

She, having killed, no more does search,
     But on the next green bough to perch,
Where, when he first does lure,
     The falconer has her sure.

What may not, then, our isle presume,
     While Victory his crest does plume?
What may not others fear,
     If thus he crowns each year?

As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul;
     To Italy as Hannibal,
And to all states not free
     Shall climacteric be.

The Pict no shelter now shall find
     Within his parti-contoured mind;
But from his valor sad
     Shrink underneath the plaid,

Happy if in the tufted brake
     The English hunter him mistake,
Nor lay his hands a near
     The Caledonian deer.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Hannibal (1)
Gaul (1)
Caesar (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: