Such men are raised to station and command, When Providence means mercy to a land. He speaks, and they appear; to him they owe Skill to direct, and strength to strike the blow; To manage with address, to seize with power The crisis of a dark decisive hour. So Gideon earned a victory not his own; Subserviency his praise, and that alone. Poor England ! thou art a devoted deer, Beset with every ill but that of fear. The nations hunt; all mark thee for a prey; They swarm around thee, and thou stand’st at bay. Undaunted still, though wearied and perplexed, Once Chatham saved thee; but who saves thee next? Alas! the tide of pleasure sweeps along All, that should be the boast of British song. 'Tis not the wreath, that once adorned thy brow, The prize of happier times, will serve thee now, Our ancestry; a gallant christian race, Patterns of every virtue, every grace, Confessed a God; they kneeled before they fought, And praised him in the victories he wrought. Now from the dust of ancient days bring forth A. The inestimable estimate of Brown B. And yet his judgment was not framed amiss; Its error, if it erred, was merely this, He thought the dying hour already come, And a complete recovery struck him dumb. . But that effeminacy, folly, lust, Enervate and enfeeble, and needs must, And that a nation shamefully debased, Will be despised and trampled on at last, VOL. I. Unless sweet penitence her powers renew, But when a country (one that I could name), Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made, Not only vice disposed and prepares (A dire effect, by one of nature's laws Unchangeably connected with its cause); But Providence himself will intervene To throw his dark displeasure over the scene. All are his instruments; each form of war, What barns at home, or threatens from afar, Nature in arms, her elements at strife, The storms, that overset the joys of life,' Are but his rods to scourge a guilty land, And waste it at the bidding of his hand. He gives the word, and mutiny soon roars In all her gates, and shakes her distant shores; The standards of all nations are unfurled; She has one foe, and that one foe the world. · And, if he doom that people with a frown, And mark them with a seal of wrath pressed down, Obduracy takes place; callous and tough, The reprobated race grows judgment proof: Earth shakes beneath them, and heaven roars above; But nothing scares them from the course they love: To the lascivious pipe and wanton song, That charm down fear, they frolic it along, |