Reflections on Seeing a Bull Slain in the Country

The sottish clown who never knew a charm
Beyond the powers of his nervous arm,
Proud of his might, with self-importance full,
Or climbs the spire, or fights the maddening bull;
The love of praise, impatient of control,
O'erflows the scanty limits of his soul;
In uncouth jargon, turbulently loud,
He bawls his triumphs to the wondering crowd:
"This well-strung arm dispensed the deadly blow,
Fell'd the proud bull and sunk his glories low:"
Not thoughts more towering fill'd Pelides' breast,
When thus to Greece his haughty vaunts express'd:
"I sack'd twelve ample cities on the main,
And six lay smoking on the Trojan plain;"
Thus full and fervid throbb'd the pulse of pride,
When "Vent, vidi, vici," Cjesar cried.
Each vain alike, and differing but in names;
These poets flatter — those the mob acclaims;
Impartial Death soon stops the proud career,
And bids Legendre rot with Dumotjrier.
The God whose sovereign care o'er all extends,
Sees whence their madness springs, and where it ends;
From his blest height, with just contempt, looks down
On thundering heroes and the swaggering clown:
But if our erring reason may presume
The future to divine, more mild his doom
Whose pride was wreck'd on vanquish'd brutes alone,
Than his whose conquests made whole nations groan.
Can Ganges' sacred wave, or Lethe's flood,
Wash clear the garments smear'd with civic blood '?
What hand from heaven's dread register shall tear
The page where, stamp'd in blood, the conqueror's crimes appear?