“Daughter of Jove! inBritain's injured name, A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim! Frown not on England-England owns him not Athene, no! the plunderer was a Scot! Ask'st thou the difference? From fair Phyle's towers Survey Baotia-Caledonia's ours; Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth. Dilutes with drivel every drizzling brain, Till burst at length each watery head o'erflows, Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows: In quest of lawless gain they issue forth; race!" "Mortal," the blue-eyed maid resumed, "once more, Bear back my mandate to thy native shore; Though fallen, alas! this vengeance still is mine, To turn my counsels far from lands like thine. Hear then in silence Pallas' stern behest; Without one spark of intellectual fire, The state receiver of his pilfer'd prey! | Europe's worst dauber and poorBritain's best, With palsied hand shall turn each model o'er, And own himself an infant of fourscore: Be all the bruisers call'd from all St. Giles, That art and nature may compare their styles; While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare, And marvel at his lordship's stone-shop there. Round the throng'd gate shall sauntering coxcombs creep, To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep: While many a languid maid, with longing sigh, On giant-statues casts the curious eye; The room with transient glance appears to skim, Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb; Mourns o'er the difference of now and then; Exclaims, “these Greeks indeed were proper men;" Draws slight comparisons of these with those, And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux: When shall a modern maid have swains like these? Alas! Sir Harry is no Hercules! May hate pursue his sacrilegious lust! Link'd with the fool who fired th' Ephesian dome, Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb; But fits thy country for her coming fate: Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son To do what oft Britannia's self had done. Look to the Baltic blazing from afar— Your old ally yet mourns perfidious war: Not to such deeds did Pallas lend her aid, Or break the compact which herself had made; Far from such councils, from the faithless field She fled --- but left behind her Gorgon-shield; A fatal gift, that turn'd your friends to stone, And, left lost Albion hated and alone. Look to the east, where Ganges' swarthy race Shall shake your usurpation to its base; Lo! there rebellion rears her ghastly head, And glares the Nemesis of native dead, Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood, | And claims his long arrear of northern blood. So may ye perish! Pallas, when she gave | Then in the senate of your sinking state, Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave. Show me the man whose counsels may have Look on your Spain, she clasps the hand weight. she hates, But coldly clasps, and thrusts you from While Lusitania, kind and dear ally, Vain is each voice whose tones could once E'en factions cease to charm a factious land; “"Tis done, 'tis past, since Pallas warns in vain, The Furies seize her abdicated reign; And wring her vitals with their fiery hands. chains. The banner'd pomp of war, the glittering files, smiles; See all alike of more or less bereft- Him senates hear whom never yet they Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd: "Now fare ye well, enjoy your little hour; Go, grasp the shadow of your vanish'd power; Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme, Gone is that gold, the marvel of mankind, Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war; Or, back returning, sees rejected stores And desperate mans him 'gainst the common The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum, And bid it antedate the joys of arms. His deeper deeds ye yet know but by name,- The rifled mansion and the foe-reap'd field, Ill suit with souls at home untaught to yield. Say with what eye, along the distant down, How view the column of ascending flames Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine: The law of heaven and earth is life for life; London, 1812. THE AGE OF BRONZE; OR, CARMEN SECULARE ET ANNUS HAUD MIRABILIS. "Impar Congressus Achilli." TRB Are gone; the present might be, if they er still I know not if the angels weep, but men All is exploded-be it good or bad. Of “dust to dust;" but half its tale untold. who ne'er Conceived the globe he panted not to spare! With even the busy Northern Isle unknown, Which holds his urn, and never knew his throne. But where is he, the modern, mightier far, Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car; The new Sesostris, whose unharness'd kings, And spurn the dust o'er which they crawl'd Yes! where is he, the Champion and the Of all that's great or little, wise or wild? Behold the grand result in yon lone isle, Behold the scales in which his fortune A surgeon's statement and an earl's harangues! Varied above, but still alike below; unknown How vain, how worse than vain at length Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been How low, how little was this middle state, How few could feel for what he had to bear! Vain his complaint,-my Lord presents his bill, His food and wine were doled out duly still: Vain was his sickness,-never was a clime So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime; And the stiff Surgeon, who maintain'd his cause, Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's applause. But smile-though all the pangs of brain and heart Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art; Though, save the few fond friends, and imaged face Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace, None stand by his low bed-though even the mind Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind; Smile-for the fetter'd Eagle breaks his chain, And higher worlds than this are his again. How, if that soaring Spirit still retain A conscious twilight of his blazing reign, Now must he smile, on looking down, to see The little that he was and sought to be! What though his name a wider empire found Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound; Though first in glory, deepest in reverse, He tasted empire's blessings and its curse; Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's ape; How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave, The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave! What though his jailor, duteous to the last, Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him fast, Refusing one poor line along the lid To date the birth and death of all it hid, mast: When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise, He wants not this; but France shall feel the want Of this last consolation, though so scant; Her honour, fame, and faith, demand his bones, To rear above a pyramid of thrones; Oh, Heaven! of which he was in power a feature ; Oh, Earth! of which he was a noble creature; Thou Isle! to be remember'd long and well, That sawst the unfledged eaglet chip his shell! Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights Hover, the victor of an hundred fights! Thou Rome, who sawst thy Cæsar's deeds outdone! Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon ? To re-manure the uncultivated land! Poland! o'er which the avenging angel pass'd, But left thee as he found thee, still a waste; Forgetting all thy still enduring claim, Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name; Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear, That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear; Kosciusko! on-on-on-the thirst of war Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their Czar; The half-barbaric Moscow's minarets Gleam in the sun, but 'tis a sun that sets! Moscow! thou limit of his long career, For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear To see in vain-he saw thee-how? with spire Which proves how fools may have their fortune too, And palace fuel to one common fire. To this the soldier lent his kindling match, To this the peasant gave his cottage-thatch, Won, half by blunder, half by treachery; To this the merchant flung his hoarded store, | Oh, dull Saint-Helen! with thy jailor nigh— The prince his hall-and, Moscow was no Hear! hear! Prometheus from his rock more! appeal Sublimest of volcanoes! Etna's flame tame; Vesuvius shows his blaze, an usual sight For gaping tourists, from his hackney'd height: Thou standst alone unrivall'd till the fire In vain shall Seine look up along his banks Or stagnant in their human ice remains Of all the trophies gather'd from the war, What shall return? The conqueror's broken car! The conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again The horn of Roland sounds, and not in vain. Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory, Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die: Dresden surveys three despots fly once more Before their sovereign,-sovereign,as before; But there exhausted Fortune quits the field, And Leipsic's treason bids the unvanquish'd yield; The Saxon Jackal leaves the Lion's side To turn the Bear's, and Wolf's, and Fox's guide; And backward to the den of his despair The forest-monarch shrinks, but finds no lair! Oh ye! and each, and all! Oh, France! who found Thy long fair fields plough'd up as hostile ground, Disputed foot by foot, till treason, still His only victor, from Montmartre's hill Look'd down o'er trampled Paris; and thou, isle, Which seest Etruria from thy ramparts smile, Thou momentary shelter of his pride, bride; Oh, France! retaken by a single march, Whose path was through one long triumphal arch! Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo, To earth, air, ocean, all that felt or feel A single step into the wrong has given heaven. Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven, Or drawing from the no less kindled earth as ne'er Shall sink while there's an echo left to air: While even the Spaniard's thirst of gold and war Forgets Pizarro to shout Bolivar! The king of kings, anu yet of slaves the slave, Who burst the chains of millions to renew The very fetters which his arm broke through, And crush'd the rights of Europe and his own To flit between a dungeon and a throne? But 'twill not be, the spark's awaken'd, lo! Through eight long ages of alternate gore Where Cortes' and Pizarro's banner flew; 'Tis the old aspiration breathed afresh, once more. |