Rivers, whose depth no sharp beholder sees,
Drunk at an army's dinner to the lees;
With a long legend of romantic things,
Which in his cups the bowsy poet sings,
But how did he return, this haughty brave,
Who whipt the winds, and made the sea his slave?
(Though Neptune took unkindly to be bound,
And Eurus never such hard usage found
In his Æolian prison under ground;)
What god so mean, even he who points the way,
So merciless a tyrant to obey!
But how returned he, let us ask again?
In a poor skiff he passed the bloody main,
Choked with the slaughtered bodies of his train.
For fame he prayed, but let the event declare
He had no mighty penn worth of his prayer.
Jove, grant me length of life, and years good
Heap on my bending back! I ask no more.-
Both sick and healthful, old and young, conspire
In this one silly mischievous desire.
Mistaken blessing, which old age they call,
'Tis a long, nasty, darksome hospital:
A ropy chain of rheums; a visage rough,
Deformed, unfeatured, and a skin of buff;
A stitch-fallen cheek, that hangs below the jaw;
Such wrinkles as a skilful hand would draw
For an old grandame ape, when, with a grace,
She sits at squat, and scrubs her leathern face.
* Mercury, who was a god of the lowest size, and employed always in errands between heaven and hell, and mortals used him accordingly; for his statues were anciently placed where roads met, with directions on the fingers of them, pointing out the several ways to travellers.
In youth, distinctions infinite abound;
No shape, or feature, just alike are found;
The fair, the black, the feeble, and the strong:
But the same foulness does to age belong,
The self-same palsy, both in limbs and tongue;
The skull and forehead one bald barren plain,
And gums unarmed to mumble meat in vain ;
Besides, the eternal drivel, that supplies
The dropping beard, from nostrils, mouth, and eyes.
His wife and children lothe him, and, what's worse,
Himself does his offensive carrion curse!
Flatterers forsake him too; for who would kill
Himself, to be remembered in a will?
His taste not only pall'd to wine and meat,
But to the relish of a nobler treat.
The limber nerve, in vain provoked to rise,
Inglorious from the field of battle flies;
Poor feeble dotard! how could he advance
With his blue head-piece, and his broken lance?
Add, that, endeavouring still, without effect,
A lust more sordid justly we suspect.
Those senses lost, behold a new defeat,
The soul dislodging from another seat.
What music, or enchanting voice, can cheer
A stupid, old, impenetrable ear?
No matter in what place, or what degree
Of the full theatre he sits to see;
Cornets and trumpets cannot reach his ear;
Under an actor's nose he's never near.
His boy must bawl, to make him understand
The hour o'the day, or such a lord's at hand;
The little blood that creeps within his veins,
Is but just warmed in a hot fever's pains.
In fine, he wears no limb about him sound,
With sores and sicknesses beleaguered round
Ask me their names, I sooner could relate
How many drudges on salt Hippia wait;
What crowds of patients the town doctor kills,
Or how, last fall, he raised the weekly bills;
What provinces by Basilus were spoiled;
What herds of heirs by guardians are beguiled;
How many bouts a-day that bitch has tried;
How many boys that pedagogue can ride;
What lands and lordships for their owner know
My quondam barber, but his worship now.
This dotard of his broken back complains;
One his legs fail, and one his shoulder pains:
Another is of both his eyes bereft,
And envies who has one for aiming left;
A fifth, with trembling lips expecting stands
As in his childhood, crammed by others hands;
One, who at sight of supper opened wide
His jaws before, and whetted grinders tried,
Now only yawns, and waits to be supplied;
Like a young swallow, when, with weary wings,
Expected food her fasting mother brings.
His loss of members is a heavy curse,
But all his faculties decayed, a worse.
His servants' names he has forgotten quite.;
Knows not his friend who supped with him last night:
Not even the children he begot and bred;
Or his will knows them not; for, in their stead,
In form of law, a common hackney jade,
Sole heir, for secret services, is made:
So lewd, and such a battered brothel whore,
That she defies all comers at her door.
Well, yet suppose his senses are his own,
He lives to be chief mourner for his son:
Before his face, his wife and brother burns;
He numbers all his kindred in their urns.
These are the fines he pays for living long,
And dragging tedious age in his own wrong;
Griefs always green, a household still in tears,
Sad pomps, a threshold thronged with daily biers,
And liveries of black for length of years.
Next to the raven's age, the Pylian king* Was longest lived of any two-legged thing. Blest, to defraud the grave so long, to mount His numbered years, and on his right hand count!† Three hundred seasons, guzzling must of wine!But hold a while, and hear himself repine At fate's unequal laws, and at the clue
Which, merciless in length, the midmost sister drew.‡ When his brave son upon the funeral pyre
He saw extended, and his beard on fire,
He turned, and, weeping, asked his friends, what
Had cursed his age to this unhappy time?
Thus mourned old Peleus for Achilles slain,
And thus Ulysses' father did complain.
How fortunate an end had Priam made,
Among his ancestors a mighty shade,
While Troy yet stood; when Hector, with the race
Of royal bastards, might his funeral grace;
Amidst the tears of Trojan dames inurned,
And by his loyal daughters truly mourned!
Had heaven so blest him, he had died before
The fatal fleet to Sparta Paris bore:
But mark what age produced, he lived to see
His town in flames, his falling monarchy.
In fine, the feeble sire, reduced by fate,
To change his sceptre for a sword, too late,
Nestor, king of Pylus; who was three hundred years old, according to Homer's account; at least as he is understood by his expositors.
The ancients counted by their fingers; their left hands served them till they came up to an hundred; after that they used their right, to express all greater numbers.
The Fates were three sisters, who had all some peculiar business assigned them by the poets, in relation to the lives of men. The first held the distaff, the second spun the thread, and the third cut it.
His last effort before Jove's altar tries,
A soldier half, and half a sacrifice:
Falls like an ox that waits the coming blow,
Old and unprofitable to the plough.*
At least he died a man; his queen survived,
To howl, and in a barking body lived. †
I hasten to our own; nor will relate
Great Mithridates, ‡ and rich Croesus' fate; §
Whom Solon wisely counselled to attend
The name of happy, till he knew his end.
That Marius was an exile, that he fled,
Was ta'en, in ruined Carthage begged his bread;
All these were owing to a life too long:
For whom had Rome beheld so happy, young?
High in his chariot, and with laurel crowned,
When he had led the Cimbrian captives round
The Roman streets, descending from his state,
In that blest hour he should have begged his fate;
Then, then, he might have died of all admired,
And his triumphant soul with shouts expired.
* Whilst Troy was sacking by the Greeks, old king Priam is said to have buckled on his armour to oppose them; which he had no sooner done, but he was met by Pyrrhus, and slain before the altar of Jupiter, in his own palace; as we have the story finely told in Virgil's second Æneid.
+ Hecuba, his queen, escaped the swords of the Grecians, and outlived him. It seems, she behaved herself so fiercely and uneasily to her husband's murderers, while she lived, that the poets thought fit to turn her into a bitch when she died.
Mithridates, after he had disputed the empire of the world for forty years together, with the Ronans, was at last deprived of life and empire by Pompey the Great.
§ Cræsus, in the midst of his prosperity, making his boast to Solon, how happy he was, received this answer from the wise man, that no one could pronounce himself happy, till he saw what his end should be. The truth of this Croesus found, when he was put in chains by Cyrus, and condemned to die.
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