Or covet more than freemen choose to grant :
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.

LOYALTY AND SERVILITY CONTRASTED.

Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love
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 of 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,
Where love is mere attachment to the throne,
Not to the man who fills it as he ought.

TRUE FREEDOM.-STRUGGLES FOR LIBERTY.

Whose freedom is by sufferance, 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 sought,
Deserves at least applause for her attempt,
And pity for her loss. But that's a cause
Not often unsuccessful: power usurped

Is weakness when opposed: conscious of wrong,
'Tis pusillanimous and prone to flight.

But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess

All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,
The scorn of danger, and united hearts :
The surest presage of the good they seek.1

THE BASTILE THE SHAME OF FRANCE. THE CAUSE OF
LIBERTY THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY.

Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more To France than all her losses and defeats, Old or of later date, by sea or land, Her house of bondage, worse than that of old Which God avenged on Pharaoh — the Bastile. Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts; Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age to age With music, such as suits their sovereign ears, The sighs and groans of miserable men! There's not an English heart that would not leap To hear that ye were fallen at last; to know

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.

That even our enemies, so oft employed
In forging chains for us, themselves were free.
For he who values liberty confines
His zeal for her predominance within
No narrow bounds; her cause engages him
Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man.

THE PRISONER OF THE BASTILE.

There dwell the most forlorn of human kind, Immured though unaccused, condemned untried, Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. There, like the visionary emblem seen By him of Babylon, life stands a stump, And, filleted about with hoops of brass, Still lives, though all his pleasant boughs are gone, To count the hour-bell, and expect no change; And ever, as the sullen sound is heard, Still to reflect, that though a joyless note To him, whose moments all have one dull pace, Ten thousand rovers in the world at large Account it music; that it summons some To theatre, or jocund feast, or ball: The wearied hireling finds it a release From labor; and the lover, who has chid Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke Upon his heart-strings, trembling with delight; To fly for refuge from distracting thought To such amusements as ingenious woe Contrives hard-shifting, and without her tools; — 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 over-gorged And bloated spider, till the pampered pest Is made familiar, watches his 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 Some relish; till, the sum exactly found In all directions, he begins again.

CAPTIVITY; ITS HORRORS.

O comfortless existence! hemmed around With woes, which who that suffers would not kneel And beg for exile, or the pangs of death? That man should thus encroach on fellow-man, 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, Moves indignation; makes the name of king (Of king whom such prerogative can please) As dreadful as the Manichean god,1 Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

1 The Manichean sect, named for their founder Manes, in the third century, adored a dual deity, made up of the principle of good and the principle of evil.

LIFE WITHOUT LIBERTY A BURTHEN. USE OF FREEDOM.

"Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil: hurts the faculties, impedes

Their progress in the road of science; blinds
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
Among the nations, seeing thou art free;
My native nook of earth!

THE CLIMATE AND MANNERS OF BRITAIN.FRENCH POLITE-
NESS.

Thy clime is rude,

Replete with vapors, 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 address
And sweetness, without which no pleasure is
In converse, either starved by cold reserve,
Or flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl.
Yet being free I love thee: for the sake
Of that one feature can be well content,
Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art,
To seek no sublunary rest beside.

BRITAIN ENSLAVED NO FITTING HOME.

But once enslaved, farewell! I could endure
Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home,
Where I am free by birthright, not at all.
Then what were left of roughness in the grain
Of British natures, wanting its excuse
That it belongs to freemen, would disgust
And shock me. I should then with double pain
Feel all the rigor of thy fickle clime;
And, if I must bewail the blessing lost

For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys bled,
I would at least bewail it under skies
Milder, among a people less austere ;
In scenes, which having never known me free,
Would not reproach me with the loss I felt.

Do I forebode impossible events,

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;
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?

"T is therefore sober and good men are sad
For England's glory, seeing it wax pale
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.

PATRIOTS OF THE OLDEN TIME.

Such were not they of old, whose tempered blades Dispersed the shackles of usurped control, And hewed them link from link; then Albion's sons Were sons indeed; they felt a filial heart Beat high within them at a mother's wrongs; And, shining each in his domestic sphere, Shone brighter still once called to public view.

FOREBODINGS OF THE BRITISH PATRIOT. ALL THINGS HAVE
THEIR DATE.

"T is therefore many, whose sequestered lot
Forbids their interference, looking on,
Anticipate perforce some dire event;
And, seeing the old castle of the state,
That promised once more firmness, so assailed
That all its tempest-beaten turrets shake,
Stand motionless expectants of its fall.
All has its date below; the fatal hour
Was registered in heaven ere time began.
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
Die too the deep foundations that we lay,
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.
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 undiscoverable secret sleeps.

LIBERTY OF THE CHRISTIAN. A GIFT OF GOD.

But there is yet a liberty, unsung

By poets, and by senators unpraised;
Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers
Of earth and hell confederate take away :

A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppressions, prisons, have no power to bind ;
Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more.
'Tis liberty of heart derived from heaven,

But the age of virtuous politics is past,

And we are deep in that of cold pretence.

NO VIRTUE WITHOUT PATRIOTISM. NO PATRIOTISM WITHOUT

VIRTUE.

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

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.

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY OF HEART THE CHIEFEST GIFT OF GOD.

His other gifts

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 before.
But these are not his glory. Man, 't is true,
Smit with the beauty of so fair a scene,
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,
Whose lying heart disputes against a God;
That office served, they must be swept away.

THE LABORS OF GOD'S LOVE ARE IMMORTAL.— FREEDOM
FROM SIN.

Not so the labors 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.

MAN'S BODY A DISCIPLINARY DUNGEON.

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 Resistless from the centre he should seek, That he at last forgets it. All his hopes Tend downward; 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.

THE DISQUIET AND FEARS OF THE WICKED.

Infect his happiest moments, he forebodes
Ages of hopeless misery. Future death,
And death still future. Not a hasty stroke,
Like that which sends him to the dusty grave;
But unrepealable, enduring death.
Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears:
What none can prove a forgery may be true;
What none but bad men wish exploded, must.
That scruple checks him.

REFORM THAT IS BUT SELF-RELIANT IS FLEETING.

Riot is not loud, Nor drunk enough, to drown it. In the midst Of laughter his compunctions are sincere ; And he abhors the jest by which he shines. Remorse begets reform. His master-lust Falls first before his resolute rebuke,

And seems dethroned and vanquished. Peace ensues,
But spurious and short-lived; the puny child
Of self-congratulating pride, begot

On fancied innocence. Again he falls,

And fights again; but finds his best essay

A presage ominous, portending still
Its own dishonor by a worse relapse;
Till nature, unavailing nature, foiled
So oft, and wearied in the vain attempt,
Scoffs at her own performance.

THE REASONINGS OF PRIDE; FALSE AND RUINOUS GUIDES TO
TRUE PEACE.

Reason now

Takes part with appetite, and pleads the cause
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
So strict, that less than perfect must despair?
Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth
Dishonors 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
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
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.

CONSCIENCE AT LENGTH HARDENED BY PERVERTED

REASONINGS.

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. Nothing moves,
Or nothing much, his constancy in ill;
Vain tampering has but fostered his disease;
"T is desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of death.

PHILOSOPHY VAINLY ESSAYS TO FREE FROM SPIRITUAL DEATH. ITS ABORTIVE EFFORTS SATIRIZED.

Haste now, philosopher, and set him free.
Charm the deaf serpent wisely. Make him hear
Of rectitude and fitness, moral truth
How lovely, and the moral sense how sure,
Consulted and obeyed, to guide his steps
Directly to the first and only fair.

Spare not in such a cause. Spend all the powers
Of rant and rhapsody in virtue's praise;
Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand,
And with poetic trappings grace thy prose,
Till it out-mantle all the pride of verse.
Ah, tinkling cymbal, and high-sounding brass,
Smitten in vain! such music cannot charm
Th' eclipse, that intercepts truth's heavenly beam,
And chills and darkens a wide-wandering soul.

ONLY THE CREATOR OF THE SOUL CAN REDEEM IT. — HIS
GRACE.

The still small voice is wanted. He must speak,
Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;
Who calls for things that are not, and they come.
Grace makes the slave a freeman. "T is a change,
That turns to ridicule the turgid speech
And stately tone of moralists, who boast,
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
In the lost kind, extracting from the lips
Of asps their venom, overpowering strength
By weakness, and hostility by love.

PATRIOTS GLORIOUS; MARTYRS MORE So.

Patriots have toiled, and in their country's cause Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, 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
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 insure to his loved land,
The sweets of liberty and equal laws;
But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize,
And win it with more pain.

MARTYRDOM IS TRUE GLORY.

Their blood is shed

In confirmation of the noblest claim,
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free,
To soar, and to anticipate the skies.
Yet few remember them. They lived unknown,
Till persecution dragged them into fame,
And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew
No marble tells us whither. With their names
No bard embalms and sanctifies his song:
And history, so warm on meaner themes,
Is cold on this. She execrates indeed
The tyranny that doomed them to the fire,
But gives the glorious sufferers little praise.

TRUTH ALONE MAKES FREE. JOYS OF THIS FREEDOM.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside. There 's not a chain, That hellish foes, confederate for his harm, Can wind around him, but he casts it off With as much ease as Samson his green withes. He looks abroad into the varied field

Of nature, and though poor, perhaps, compared With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Calls the delightful scenery all his own.

THE CHILD OF GOD ENJOYS HIS FATHER'S REALMS.

His are the mountains, and the valleys his, And the resplendent rivers: his t' 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, Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love, That planned, and built, and still upholds, a world So clothed with beauty for rebellious man?

THE GOOD MAN THE HEIR OF GOD'S UNIVERSE. HIS TITLE
PERFECT; HIS FREEDOM UNLIMITED.

Yes- ye may fill your garners, ye that reap
The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good
In senseless riot; but ye will not find
In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance,

A liberty like his, who, unimpeached

Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong,
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;
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.

LOVE TO GOD GIVES DELIGHT IN AND INSIGHT INTO HIS

WORKS.

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste His works. Admitted once to His embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart, Made pure, shall relish, with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

HOW NATURE IS VIEWED BY BRUTES; BY THE NATURAL MAN; BY THE SPIRITUAL MAN.

Brutes graze the mountain top, with faces prone,
And eyes intent upon the scanty herb
It yields them; or, recumbent on its brow,
Ruminate heedless of the scene outspread
Beneath, beyond, and stretching far away
From inland regions to the distant main.
Man views it, and admires; but rests content
With what he views. The landscape has his praise,
But not its Author. Unconcerned who formed
The paradise he sees, he finds it such;
And, such well-pleased to find it, asks no more.
Not so the mind that has been touched from
heaven,

And in the school of sacred wisdom taught,
To read His wonders, in whose thought the world,
Fair as it is, existed ere it was.

Not for its own sake merely, but for His
Much more, who fashioned it, he gives it praise;
Praise that from earth resulting, as it ought,
To earth's acknowledged sovereign, finds at once
Its only just proprietor in Him.

THE CHRISTIAN SEES GOD IN ALL THINGS.

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, 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.

THE REDEEMED SOUL HOLDS CONVERSE WITH THE STARS.ITS APOSTROPHE TO THOSE WORLDS OF LIGHT.

Inquires what strains were they With which heaven rang, when every star, in haste To gratulate the new-created earth,

Sent forth a voice, and all the sons of God
Shouted for joy. Tell me, ye shining hosts,
That navigate a sea that knows no storms,
Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,
If from your elevation, whence ye view
Distinctly scenes invisible to man,
And systems of whose birth no tidings yet
Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race
Favored as ours; transgressors from the womb,
And hasting to a grave, yet doomed to rise,
And to possess a brighter heaven than yours?
As one, who, long detained on foreign shores,
Pants to return, and when he sees afar
His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks,
From the green wave emerging, darts an eye
Radiant with joy towards the happy land;
So I with animated hopes behold,
And many an aching wish, your beamy fires,
That show like beacons in the blue abyss,
Ordained to guide th' embodied spirit home
From toilsome life to never-ending rest.
Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires,
That give assurance of their own success,
And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend.'

THE LAMP OF THE WORD, the guide TO NATURE. So reads he Nature, whom the lamp of truth Illuminates. Thy lamp, mysterious Word! Which whoso sees no longer wanders lost, With intellects bemazed in endless doubt, But runs the road of wisdom. Thou hast built, With means that were not till by Thee employed, Worlds, that had never been hadst Thou in strength Been less, or less benevolent than strong. They are thy witnesses, who speak thy power And goodness infinite, but speak in ears That hear not, or receive not their report. In vain thy creatures testify of Thee, Till Thou proclaim Thyself. Theirs is indeed A teaching voice; but 't is the praise of thine, That whom it teaches it makes prompt to learn, And with the boon gives talents for its use.

THE BOOK OF GRACE REVEALS THE BOOK OF NATURE.

Till Thou art heard, imaginations vain Possess the heart, and fables false as hell; Yet, deemed oracular, lure down to death