Crush'd by his falling master's hapless fate,
Awhile he struggled with th' opposing weight:
In vain; of every hope and power bereft,
Expell'd from Sweden, and by Denmark left,
The chief whose barks once hid the Baltic wave,
In Russian fetters pined a haughty slave.
From lord to lord by envious fortune toss'd,
He join'd at last imperial Charles's host.
An exile, doom'd to waste in joyless strife
The poor remainder of an ill-spent life,
There long he mourns--and adverse fates deny,
His last remaining wish, with fame to die;
Condemn'd amidst the vulgar dead to fall,
And sink obscure beneath a foreign wall.
So perish all, impell'd by thirst of fame
To seek in crimes the lustre of a name;
Who the bright path of genuine greatness seek,
But, having found it, take a course oblique,
Where glittering rainbows rise from far, to cheat
Their wondering eyes, and tempt their eager feet;
And lead them forward o'er forbidden ground, }
Where pleasures still decrease, and pains abound, }
Till in a miry lake, or whelming torrent, drown'd. }
Thus form'd by art, a fancied meteor flies
On glowing wings, and sails along the skies,
Shoots to the stars with imitative blaze
Of feeble splendor, rivalling their rays;
With many a glittering track indents its way,
Wastes as it shines, and sparkling fades away;
'Till having spent at length its noisy fires,