Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollett

Stanzas

Suggested by a View of the Seat and Ruins at Kingsgate, in Kent, 1766

1 Old, and abandon’d by each venal friend,
      Here Holland took the pious resolution,
    To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend
      A broken character and constitution.

2 On this congenial spot he fix’d his choice;
      Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand;
    Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice,
      And mariners, though shipwreck’d, fear to land.

3 Here reign the blustering North, and blasting East,
      No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;
    Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast,
      Art he invokes new terrors still to bring.

4 Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
      Turrets and arches nodding to their fall,
    Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes,
      And mimic desolation covers all.

5 ‘Ah!’ said the sighing peer, ‘had Bute been true,
      Nor C—’s, nor B—d’s promises been vain,
    Far other scenes than this had graced our view,
      And realised the horrors which we feign.

6 ‘Purged by the sword, and purified by fire,
      Then had we seen proud London’s hated walls:
    Owls should have hooted in St Peter’s choir,
      And foxes stunk and litter’d in St Paul’s.’