* Elton quotes some lines from the third book, as the passage recited on the occasion; others incline towards a passage in the ninth book: but see Rowe’s Lucan, book iii. — 995, and book ix. — 1378.
513HERE the vain youth, who made the world his prize,
That prosperous robber, Alexander lies:
When pitying death, at length, had freed mankind,
To sacred rest his bones were here consign’d’;
His bones, that better had been toss’d and hurl’d,
With just contempt, around the injur’d world.
But fortune spar’d the dead; and partial fate,
For ages, fix’d his Pharian empire’s date.
*
If e’er our long-lost liberty return,
That carcass is reserv’d for public scorn:
Now, it remains a monument confest,
How one proud man could lord it o’er the rest.
To Macedon, a corner of the earth,
The vast ambitious spoiler ow’d his birth:
There, soon, he scorn’d his father’s humblest reign,
And view’d his vanquish’d Athens with disdain.
Driven headlong on, by fate’s resistless force,
Through Asia’s realms he took his dreadful course:
His ruthless sword laid human nature waste,
And desolation follow’d where he pass’d.
Red Ganges blush’d, and fam’d Euphrates’ flood,
With Persian this, and that with Indian blood.
Such is the bolt which angry Jove employs,
When, undistinguishing, his wrath destroys:
Such to mankind, portentous meteors rise,
When, undistinguishing his wrath destroys:
Such to mankind, portentous meteors rise,
Trouble the gazing earth, and blast the skies.
Nor flame, nor flood, his restless rage withstand,
Nor Syrts unfaithful, nor the Libyan sand:
O’er waves unknown he meditates his way,
And seeks the boundless empire of the sea;
E’en to the utmost west he would have gone,
Where Tethys’ lap receives the setting sun;
Around each pole his circuit would have made,
And drunk from secret Nile’s remotest head,
When Nature’s hand his wild ambition stay’d;
With him, that power his pride had lov’d so well,
His monstrous, universal empire, fell:
No heir, no just successor left behind,
Eternal wars he to his friends assign’d,
To tear the world, and scramble for mankind.
**