led ground,
Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand; 40
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a STUART reigns.
Not thus the land appeared in ages past,
A dreary desert and a gloomy waste,[17]
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,[18] 45
And kings more furious and severe than they;[19]
Who claimed the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods:[20]
Cities laid waste, they stormed the dens and caves,
(For wiser brutes were backward to be slaves.)[21] 50
What could be free, when lawless beasts obeyed,[22]
And ev'n the elements[23] a tyrant swayed?
In vain kind seasons swelled the teeming grain,
Soft show'rs distilled, and suns grew warm in vain;
The swain with tears his frustrate labour yields,[24] 55
And famished dies amidst his ripened fields.[25]
What wonder then, a beast or subject slain[26]
Were equal crimes in a despotic reign?
Both doomed alike, for sportive tyrants bled,
But while the subject starved, the beast was fed. 60
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chace began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man:
Our haughty Norman boasts that barb'rous name,
And makes his trembling slaves the royal game.
The fields are ravished from th' industrious swains, 65
From men their cities, and from gods their fanes:[27]
The levelled towns[28] with weeds lie covered o'er;[29]
The hollow winds through naked temples roar;[30]
Round broken columns clasping ivy twined;
O'er heaps of ruin stalked the stately hind;[31] 70
The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings[32] fill the sacred choirs.[33]
Awed by his nobles, by his commons curst,
Th' oppressor ruled tyrannic where he durst,[34]
Stretched o'er the poor and church his iron rod, 75
And served alike his vassals and his God.[35]
Whom ev'n the Saxon spared, and bloody Dane,
The wanton victims of his sport remain.
But see, the man, who spacious regions gave
A waste for beasts, himself denied a grave![36] 80
Stretched on the lawn[37] his second hope survey,[38]
At once the chaser, and at once th