The common Tyrant’s frenzies, rancour, spites,
     He knew as little as men’s claim on rights. 
     A kindness for old servants, early friends,
     Was constant in him while they served his ends;
     And if irascible, ’twas the moment’s reek
     From fires diverted by some gusty freak. 
     His Policy the act which breeds the act
     Prevised, in issues accurately summed
     From reckonings of men’s tempers, terrors, needs:-
     That universal army, which he leads
     Who builds Imperial on Imperious Fact. 
     Within his hot brain’s hammering workshop hummed
     A thousand furious wheels at whirr, untired
     As Nature in her reproductive throes;
     And did they grate, he spake, and cannon fired: 
     The cause being aye the incendiary foes
     Proved by prostration culpable.  His dispense
     Of Justice made his active conscience;
     His passive was of ceaseless labour formed. 
     So found this Tyrant sanction and repose;
     Humanly just, inhumanly unwarmed. 
     Preventive fencings with the foul intent
     Occult, by him observed and foiled betimes,
     Let fool historians chronicle as crimes. 
     His blows were dealt to clear the way he went: 
     Too busy sword and mind for needless blows. 
     The mighty bird of sky minutest grains
     On ground perceived; in heaven but rays or rains;
     In humankind diversities of masks,
     For rule of men the choice of bait or goads. 
     The statesman steered the despot to large tasks;
     The despot drove the statesman on short roads. 
     For Order’s cause he laboured, as inclined
     A soldier’s training and his Euclid mind. 
     His army unto men he could present
     As model of the perfect instrument. 
     That creature, woman, was the sofa soft,
     When warriors their dusty armour doffed,
     And read their manuals for the making truce
     With rosy frailties framed to reproduce. 
     He farmed his land, distillingly alive
     For the utmost extract he might have and hive,
     Wherewith to marshal force; and in like scheme,
     Benign shone Hymen’s torch on young love’s dream. 
     Thus to be strong was he beneficent;
     A fount of earth, likewise a firmament.

     The disputant in words his eye dismayed: 
     Opinions blocked his passage.  Rent
     Were Councils with a gesture; brayed
     By hoarse camp-phrase what argument
     Dared interpose to waken spleen
     In him whose vision grasped the unseen,
     Whose counsellor was the ready blade,
     Whose argument the cannonade. 
     He loathed his land’s divergent parties, loth
     To grant them speech, they were such idle troops;
     The friable and the grumous, dizzards both. 
     Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops;
     Some serviceable, none