Or City feasts display their sumptuous fare;
No needy hangers-on retail each joke,
No parasites the flatt’ring smile prepare.
Some time they reap’d the harvest of the feats
Full many an act they plann’d, debated well;
Their chariots rattled thro’ Augusta’s streets,
And loud they laugh’d, whilst public credit fell.
Yet let not future statesmen mock their toil,
Their strange connection, and their means obscure;
Nor grandeur look with a disdainful smile,