421

To read engraven on the mouldy walls,
In staggering types, his predecessor's tale,
A sad memorial, and subjoin his own —
To turn purveyor to an overgorged
And bloated spider, till the pampered pest
Is made familiar, watches its approach,
Comes at his call, and serves him for a
friend -

To wear out time in numbering to and fro
The studs that thick emboss his iron door,
Then downward, and then upward, then
aslant,

And then alternate, with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task

And beg for exile, or the pangs of death? That man should thus encroach on fellowman,

Abridge him of his just and native rights, Eradicate him, tear him from his hold Upon the endearments of domestic life And social, nip his fruitfulness and use, And doom him for perhaps a heedless word To barrenness, and solitude, and tears, 441 Moves indignation, makes the name of king

(Of king whom such prerogative can please)

As dreadful as the Manichean God, Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All con

The eyesight of discovery, and begets,
In those that suffer it, a sordid mind
Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit

To be the tenant of man's noble form. Thee therefore still, blame worthy as thou art,

With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed

By public exigence till annual food
Fails for the craving hunger of the State,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief 460
Among the nations, seeing thou art free,
My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapours, and disposes much
All hearts to sadness, and none more than
mine;

Thine unadulterate manners are less soft
And plausible than social life requires,
And thou hast need of discipline and art
To give thee what politer France receives
From nature's bounty-that humane ad-
dress

And sweetness, without which no pleasure is

470

Brt the age of virtuous politics is past,
And we are deep in that of cold pretence.
Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere,
And we too wise to trust them. He that
takes

Deep in his soft credulity the stamp
Designed by loud declaimers on the part
Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust,
Incurs derision for his easy faith
And lack of knowledge, and with cause
enough:

500

For when was public virtue to be found Where private was not? Can he love the whole

Who loves no part? He be a nation's friend Who is, in truth, the friend of no man there?

Can he be strenuous in his country's cause Who slights the charities for whose dear sake

That country, if at all, must be beloved? 'Tis therefore sober and good men are sad

For England's glory, seeing it wax pale 510 And sickly, while her champions wear their hearts

So loose to private duty, that no brain, Healthful and undisturbed by factious fumes,

Can dream them trusty to the general weal. Such were not they of old, whose tempered

We build with what we deem eternal rock; A distant age asks where the fabric stood; And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, The indiscoverable secret sleeps.

But there is yet a liberty unsung By poets, and by senators unpraised, Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers

540

Of earth and hell confederate take away;
A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind;
Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more.
"Tis liberty of heart, derived from Heaven,
Bought with His blood who gave it to man-
kind,

And sealed with the same token. It is held
By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure
By the unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts 550
All bear the royal stamp that speaks them
His,

And are august, but this transcends them all.
His other works, the visible display
Of all-creating energy and might,
Are grand, no doubt, and worthy of the
Word

That, finding an interminable space
Unoccupied, has filled the void so well,
And made so sparkling what was dark be-
fore.

But these are not his glory. Man, 'tis true,
Smit with the beauty of so fair a scene, 560
Might well suppose the artificer divine
Meant it eternal, had He not Himself
Pronounced it transient, glorious as it is,
And still designing a more glorious far,
Doomed it as insufficient for His praise.
These therefore are occasional, and pass;
Formed for the confutation of the fool, 567
Whose lying heart disputes against a God;
That office served, they must be swept away.
Not so the labours of His love: they shine
In other heavens than these that we behold,
And fade not. There is paradise that fears
No forfeiture, and of its fruits He sends
Large prelibation oft to saints below.
Of these the first in order, and the pledge
And confident assurance of the rest,
Is liberty; a flight into His arms,
Ere yet mortality's fine threads give way,
A clear escape from tyrannizing lust,
And full immunity from penal woe.

580

Chains are the portion of revolted man, Stripes, and a dungeon; and his body serves The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul,

Opprobrious residence he finds them all.
Propense his heart to idols, he is held
In silly dotage on created things,
Careless of their Creator. And that low
And sordid gravitation of his powers
To a vile clod so draws him, with such
force
589
Resistless, from the centre he should seek,
That he at last forgets it. All his hopes
Tend downwards; his ambition is to sink,
To reach a depth profounder still, and still
Profounder, in the fathomless abyss
Of folly, plunging in pursuit of death.
But ere he gain the comfortless repose
He seeks, and acquiescence of his soul
In heaven-renouncing exile, he endures
What does he not? from lusts opposed in
vain,

And self-reproaching conscience. He fore

Perversely, which of late she so condemned; With shallow shifts and old devices, worn And tattered in the service of debauch, Covering his shame from his offended sight. "Hath God indeed given appetites to man, And stored the earth so plenteously with

means

To gratify the hunger of his wish,

And doth He reprobate, and will He damn, The use of His own bounty? making first So frail a kind, and then enacting laws 640 So strict, that less than perfect must despair?

Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth

Dishonours God, and makes a slave of man.
Do they themselves, who undertake for hire
The teacher's office, and dispense at large
Their weekly dole of edifying strains,
Attend to their own music? Have they faith
In what, with such solemnity of tone
And gesture, they propound to our belief?
Nay, - conduct hath the loudest tongue.
The voice

650

Is but an instrument on which the priest May play what tune he pleases. In the deed, The unequivocal authentic deed,

We find sound argument, we read the heart." Such reasonings (if that name must needs belong

660

To excuses in which reason has no part)
Serve to compose a spirit well inclined
To live on terms of amity with vice,
And sin without disturbance. Often urged,
(As often as, libidinous discourse
Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes
Of theological and grave import,)
They gain at last his unreserved assent;
Till hardened his heart's temper in the forge
Of lust, and on the anvil of despair,
He slights the strokes of conscience. Noth-
ing moves,

Or nothing much, his constancy in ill;
Vain tampering has but fostered his disease;
'Tis desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of

Grace makes the slave a freeman. 'Tis a change

That turns to ridicule the turgid speech
And stately tone of moralists, who boast, 690
As if, like him of fabulous renown,
They had indeed ability to smooth
The shag of savage nature, and were each
An Orpheus, and omnipotent in song.
But transformation of apostate man
From fool to wise, from earthly to divine,
Is work for Him that made him. He alone,
And He by means in philosophic eyes
Trivial and worthy of disdain, achieves
The wonder; humanizing what is brute 700
In the lost kind, extracting from the lips
Of asps their venom, overpowering strength
By weakness, and hostility by love.

Patriots have toiled, and in their country's cause

Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they de

serve,

Receive proud recompense. We give in charge

Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic Muse,

Proud of the treasure, marches with it down
To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn,
Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass 710
To guard them, and to immortalize her trust.
But fairer wreaths are due, though never
paid,

To those who, posted at the shrine of truth,
Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood,
Well spent in such a strife, may earn indeed,
And for a time ensure to his loved land,
The sweets of liberty and equal laws;
But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize,
And win it with more pain. Their blood is
shed

Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel,
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say "My Father made them
all!"

Are they not his by a peculiar right,
And by an emphasis of interest his,
Whose eye they fill with tears of holy

joy,

750

In feast or in the chase, in song or dance,
A liberty like his, who unimpeached
Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong, 760
Appropriates nature as his Father's work,
And has a richer use of yours than you.
He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth
Of no mean city, planned or ere the hills
Were built, the fountains opened, or the

sea

With all his roaring multitude of waves.
His freedom is the same in every State,
And no condition of this changeful life,
So manifold in cares, whose every day
Brings its own evil with it, makes it less: 770
For he has wings that neither sickness, pain,
Nor penury, can cripple or confine.

No nook so narrow but he spreads them there

With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds

His body bound, but knows not what a range

His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain, And that to bind him is a vain attempt Whom God delights in, and in whom He dwells.

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste

His works. Admitted once to His embrace, 780

Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before;

Thine eye shall be instructed, and thine

heart,

Its only just proprietor in Him.

The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed

New faculties, or learns at least to employ More worthily the powers she owned before, Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze Of ignorance, till then she overlooked, 809 A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute, The unambiguous footsteps of the God Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds.

Much conversant with Heaven, she often holds

With those fair ministers of light to man That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp, Sweet conference; enquires what strains were they

With which heaven rang, when every star, in haste