Page:Poetical Works of the Right Hon. Geo. Granville.djvu/94

82 Friendſhip ’s a cloak to hide ſome treach’rous end; Your greateſt foe is your profeſſing friend; The ſoul reſign’d, unguarded, and ſecure, The wound is deepeſt, and the ſtroke most ſure.

Juſtice is bought and ſold; the bench, the bar, Plead and decide, but gold ’s th’ interpreter. Pernicious metal! thrice accurs’d be he Who found thee firſt; all evils ſpring from thee.

Sires ſell their ſons, and ſons their ſires betray; And ſenates vote, as armies fight, for pay; The wife no longer is reſtrain’d by ſhame, But has the huſband’s leave to play the game.

Diſeas’d, decrepit, from the mix’d embrace Succeeds, of ſpurious mould, a puny race: From ſuch defenders what can Britain hope? And where, O Liberty! is now thy prop?

Not ſuch the men who bent the ſtubborn bow, And learnt in rugged ſports to dare a foe: Not ſuch the men who fill‘’d with heaps of ſlain Fam’d Agincourt and Creſſy’s bloody plain.

Haughty Britannia then, inur’d to toil, Spread far and near the terrors of her iſle;