That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slant-
ing ray

Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense, I
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportioned limb
Transformed to a lean shank. The shape-
less pair,

As they designed to mock me, at my side Take step for step; and as I near approach

The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight! the legs without the

To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared

As oft return, a pert voracious kind.

Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, 71
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut, and wading at their head
With well-considered steps, seems to resent
His altered gait and stateliness retrenched.
How find the myriads that in summer cheer
The hills and valleys with their ceaseless

blank,

O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood,
Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight
Lies undissolved; while silently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away. 100
Not so, where scornful of a check it leaps
The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel,
And wantons in the pebbly gulf below:
No frost can bind it there; its utmost force
Can but arrest the light and smoky mist
That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.
And see where it has hung the embroidered
banks

With forms so various, that no powers of art,

The pencil or the pen, may trace the scene! Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high (Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees

And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops That trickle down the branches, fast con

gealed,

Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,
And prop the pile they but adorned before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies

The sunbeam; there embossed and fretted wild,

The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes

Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain 120

The likeness of some object seen before.
Thus Nature works as if to mock at Art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By these fortuitous and random strokes
Performing such inimitable feats,

As she with all her rules can never reach. Less worthy of applause, though more admired,

Because a novelty, the work of man, Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ! Thy most magnificent and mighty freak, 130 The wonder of the North. No forest fell When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores

To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,

And make thy marble of the glassy wave.
In such a palace Aristæus found
Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his lost bees to her maternal ear:
In such a palace poetry might place
The armoury of Winter; where his troops,
The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy
sleet,

140

Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail, And snow that often blinds the traveller's

Sofa and couch and high-built throne august.

The same lubricity was found in all,
And all was moist to the warm touch; a

scene

170

Of evanescent glory, once a stream,
And soon to slide into a stream again.
Alas! 'twas but a mortifying stroke
Of undesigned severity, that glanced
(Made by a monarch) on her own estate,
On human grandeur and the courts of kings.
'Twas transient in its nature, as in show
'Twas durable; as worthless as it seemed
Intrinsically precious; to the foot
Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was
cold.

Great princes have great playthings.
Some have played

At hewing mountains into men, and some
At building human wonders mountain high.
Some have amused the dull sad years of
life,

180

Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad, With schemes of monumental fame; and sought

By pyramids and mausolean pomp, Short-lived themselves, to immortalize their bones.

Some seek diversion in the tented field, And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.

But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at. Nations would do well

To extort their truncheons from the puny hands

Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds 190 Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil, Because men suffer it, their toy the world. When Babel was confounded, and the

230

And those in self-defence. Savage at first
The onset, and irregular. At length
One eminent above the rest, for strength,
For stratagem, or courage, or for all,
Was chosen leader; him they served in war,
And him in peace, for sake of warlike
deeds

Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare?

Or who so worthy to control themselves
As he whose prowess had subdued their
foes?

Thus war affording field for the display
Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of

Was sure to intoxicate the brows it bound.
It is the abject property of most,
That being parcel of the common mass,
And destitute of means to raise themselves,
They sink and settle lower than they need.
They know not what it is to feel within 250
A comprehensive faculty that grasps
Great purposes with ease, that turns and
wields,

Almost without an effort, plans too vast
For their conception, which they cannot

move.

Conscious of impotence, they soon grow drunk

With gazing, when they see an able man Step forth to notice; and besotted thus, Build him a pedestal, and say, "Stand there, And be our admiration and our praise." They roll themselves before him in the dust,

260

Then most deserving in their own account
When most extravagant in his applause,
As if exalting him they raised themselves.
Thus by degrees, self-cheated of their sound
And sober judgment, that he is but man,
They demi-deify and fume him so,
That in due season he forgets it too.
Inflated and astrut with self-conceit,
He gulps the windy diet, and ere long, 269
Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks
The world was made in vain, if not for him.
Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges
born

To bear his burdens; drawing in his gears
And sweating in his service; his caprice
Becomes the soul that animates them all.
He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives,
Spent in the purchase of renown for him,
An easy reckoning, and they think the

Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear

And quake before the gods themselves had made!

But above measure strange, that neither proof

Of sad experience, nor examples set
By some whose patriot virtue has prevailed,
Can even now, when they are grown ma-
ture

In wisdom, and with philosophic deeds
Familiar, serve to emancipate the rest!
Such dupes are men to custom, and so
prone

To reverence what is ancient, and can plead

300

A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet
As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules, 310
Should be a despot absolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he
will,

Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation given or wrong sustained,
And force the beggarly last doit, by means
That his own humour dictates, from the
clutch

320

Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A splendid opportunity to die?
Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old
Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees
In politic convention) put your trust
In the shadow of a bramble, and reclined
In fancied peace beneath his dangerous
branch,

Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway, Where find ye passive fortitude? Whence springs

Your self-denying zeal that holds it good To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang

His thorns with streamers of continual

Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours, To administer, to guard, to adorn the State, But not to warp or change it. We are his, To serve him nobly in the common cause, True to the death, but not to be his slaves. Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love

350

Of kings, between your loyalty and ours:
We love the man, the paltry pageant you;
We the chief patron of the commonwealth,
You the regardless author of its woes;
We, for the sake of liberty, a king,
You chains and bondage for a tyrant's sake.
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason, is judicious, manly, free;
Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot that treads it in the
dust.

Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish,
I would not be a king to be beloved
Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning
praise,

360

Where love is mere attachment to the throne,

Not to the man who fills it as he ought. Whose freedom is by suffrance, and at will

Of a superior, he is never free.
Who lives, and is not weary of a life
Exposed to manacles, deserves them well.
The State that strives for liberty, though
foiled,

And forced to abandon what she bravely

pace,

1 The author hopes that he shall not be censured for unnecessary warmth upon so interesting a subject. He is aware that it is become almost fashionable to stigmatize such sentiments as no better than empty declamation; but it is an ill symptom, and peculiar to modern times.