repose;
Let nations, anxious for thy life, abate
This scorn of danger and contempt of fate: 
Thou liv’st not for thyself; thy queen demands
Conquest and peace from thy victorious hands;
Kingdoms and empires in thy fortune join,
And Europe’s destiny depends on thine.
180
At length the long-disputed pass they gain,
By crowded armies fortified in vain;
The war breaks in, the fierce Bavarians yield,
And see their camp with British legions filled. 
So Belgian mounds bear on their shattered sides
The sea’s whole weight, increased with swelling tides;
But if the rushing wave a passage finds,
Enraged by watery moons, and warring winds,
The trembling peasant sees his country round
Covered with tempests, and in oceans drowned.
190
The few surviving foes dispersed in flight,
(Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight,)
In every rustling wind the victor hear,
And Marlborough’s form in every shadow fear,
Till the dark cope of night with kind embrace
Befriends the rout, and covers their disgrace. 
To Donawert, with unresisted force,
The gay, victorious army bends its course. 
The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields,
Whatever spoils Bavaria’s summer yields,
200
(The Danube’s great increase,) Britannia shares,
The food of armies, and support of wars: 
With magazines of death, destructive balls,
And cannons doomed to batter Landau’s walls,
The victor finds each hidden cavern stored,
And turns their fury on their guilty lord. 
Deluded prince! how is thy greatness crossed,
And all the gaudy dream of empire lost,
That proudly set thee on a fancied throne,
And made imaginary realms thy own!
210
Thy troops that now behind the Danube join,
Shall shortly seek for shelter from the Rhine,
Nor find it there:  surrounded with alarms,
Thou hopest the assistance of the Gallic arms;
The Gallic arms in safety shall advance,
And crowd thy standards with the power of France,
While to exalt thy doom, the aspiring Gaul
Shares thy destruction, and adorns thy fall. 
Unbounded courage and compassion joined,
Tempering each other in the victor’s mind,
220
Alternately proclaim him good and great,
And make the hero and the man complete. 
Long did he strive the obdurate foe to gain
By proffered grace, but long he strove in vain;
Till fired at length, he thinks it vain to spare
His rising wrath, and gives a loose to war. 
In vengeance roused, the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land,
A thousand villages to ashes turns,
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burns.
230
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat,
And mixed with bellowing herds confus’dly bleat;
Their trembling lords the common shade partake,
And cries of infants sound in every brake: 
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands,