Proud of the yoke, and pliant to the rod,
Why yet does Asia dread a monarch's nod,
While European freedom still withstands

Th' encroaching tide that drowns her lessening lands;

And sees far off, with an indignant groan,

Her native plains, and empires once her own?
Can opener skies and suns of fiercer flame
O'erpower the fire, that animates our frame;
As lamps, that shed at eve a cheerful ray,
Fade and expire beneath the eye of day?
Need we the influence of the northern star
To string our nerves and steel our hearts to war?
And, where the face of nature laughs around,
Must sick'ning virtue fly the tainted ground?
Unmanly thought! what seasons can control,
What fancied zone can circumscribe the soul,
Who, conscious of the source from whence she

springs,

By reason's light, on resolution's wings,

Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes

O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows?

She bids each slumb'ring energy awake,

Another touch, another temper take,

Suspends th' inferior laws that rule our clay :

The stubborn elements confess her sway;

Their little wants, their low desires, refine,
And raise the mortal to a height divine.

Not but the human fabric from the birth
Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth:
As various tracts enforce a various toil,
The manners speak the idiom of their soil.
An iron race the mountain-cliffs maintain,
Foes to the gentler genius of the plain :
For where unwearied sinews must be found
With side-long plough to quell the flinty ground,
To turn the torrent's swift-descending flood,
To brave the savage rushing from the wood,

What wonder if to patient valour train'd,

They guard with spirit, what by strength they gain'd?

And while their rocky ramparts round they see,

The rough abode of want and liberty,

(As lawless force from confidence will grow)

Insult the plenty of the vales below?

What wonder, in the sultry climes, that spread
Where Nile redundant o'er his summer-bed
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o'er Egypt with his wat'ry wings,
If with advent'rous oar and ready sail
The dusky people drive before the gale ;

Or on frail floats to neighb'ring cities ride,
That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide

*

*

93

[The following couplet, which was intended to have been introduced in the poem on the Alliance of Education and Government, is much too beautiful to be lost.-Mason.]

When love could teach a monarch to be wise,
And gospel-light first dawn'd from Bullen's eyes.

STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY.

A FRAGMENT.

IN

silent the tuneful choir among,

gaze

Half pleased, half blushing, let the Muse admire,

While Bentley leads her sister-art along,

And bids the pencil answer to the lyre.

See, in their course, each transitory thought
Fix'd by his touch a lasting essence take;
Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought,
To local symmetry and life awake!

The tardy rhymes that used to linger on,
To censure cold, and negligent of fame,
In swifter measures animated run,

And catch a lustre from his genuine flame.

Ah! could they catch his strength, his easy grace,

His quick creation, his unerring line;

The energy of Pope they might efface,

And Dryden's harmony submit to mine.

But not to one in this benighted age

Is that diviner inspiration giv'n,

That burns in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page, The pomp and prodigality of heav'n.

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems that singly charm the sight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,
And dazzle with a luxury of light.

Enough for me, if to some feeling breast
My lines a secret sympathy 'impart ;'
And as their pleasing influence 'flows confest,'
A sigh of soft reflection 'heaves the heart.'