Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
  Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
  Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain,
  And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
  Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
  Nor claim the triumph of a letter’d heart;
  Should no disease thy torpid veins invade,
  Nor Melancholy’s phantoms haunt thy shade;
  Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
  Nor think the doom of man revers’d for thee: 
  Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
  And pause awhile from Letters, to be wise;
  There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,
  Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. 
  See nations, slowly wise, and meanly just,
  To buried merit raise the tardy bust. 
  If dreams yet flatter, once again attend,
  Hear Lydiat’s life, and Galileo’s end. 
    Nor deem, when Learning her last prize bestows,
  The glitt’ring eminence exempt from woes;
  See, when the vulgar ’scape, despis’d or aw’d,
  Rebellion’s vengeful talons seize on Laud. 
  From meaner minds though smaller fines content,
  The plunder’d palace, or sequester’d rent;
  Mark’d out by dang’rous parts, he meets the shock,
  And fatal Learning leads him to the block: 
  Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep,
  But hear his death, ye blockheads, hear and sleep. 
    The festal blazes, the triumphal show,
  The ravish’d standard, and the captive foe,
  The senate’s thanks, the Gazette’s pompous tale,
  With force resistless o’er the brave prevail. 
  Such bribes the rapid Greek o’er Asia whirl’d,
  For such the steady Romans shook the world;
  For such in distant lands the Britons shine,
  And stain with blood the Danube or the Rhine;
  This pow’r has praise that virtue scarce can warm,
  Till fame supplies the universal charm. 
  Yet Reason frowns on War’s unequal game,
  Where wasted nations raise a single name;
  And mortgag’d states their grandsires’ wreaths regret,
  From age to age in everlasting debt;
  Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey,
  To rust on medals, or on stones decay. 
    On what foundation stands the warrior’s pride,
  How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide;
  A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
  No dangers fright him, and no labours tire;
  O’er love, o’er fear, extends his wide domain,
  Unconquer’d lord of pleasure and of pain;
  No joys to him pacific sceptres yield,
  War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field;
  Behold surrounding kings their pow’r combine,
  And one capitulate, and one resign;
  Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain;
  “Think nothing gain’d,” he cries, “till nought remain,
  On Moscow’s walls till Gothic standards fly,
  And all be mine beneath the polar sky”. 
  The march begins in military state,
  And nations on his eye suspended wait;