The Result of changeful Seasons.
Lib'ral in all things else, yet nature here
With stern severity deals out the year..
Winter invades the spring, and often pours
A chilling flood on summer's drooping flow'rs;
Unwelcome vapours quench autumnal beams,
Ungenial blasts attending, curl the streams;
The peasants urge their harvest, ply the fork
With double toil, and shiver at their work;
Thus with a rigour, for his good design'd,
She rears her fav'rite man of all mankind.
His form robust and of elastic tone,
Proportion'd well, half muscle and half bone,
Supplies with warm activity and force
A mind well lodg'd and masculine of course.
Hence liberty, sweet liberty inspires,
And keeps alive, his fierce but noble fires,
Patient of constitutional controul, 50e
He bears it with meek manliness of soul; 20
But if authority grow wanton, woe
To him that treads upon the free-born toe;
And the Check of Prerogative.
One step beyond the bound'ry of the laws
Fires him at once in freedom's glorious cause,
Thus proud prerogative, not much rever'd,
Is seldom felt, though sometimes seen and heard
And in his cage, like parrot fine and gay,
Is kept, to strut, look big, and talk away.
Born in a climate softer far than our's,
Not form'd like us with such Herculean pow'rs,
The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk,
Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk,
Is always happy, reign whoever may,
And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away;
He drinks his simple bev'rage with a gust;
And, feasting on an onion and a crust
We never feel th' alacrity and joy.
With which he shouts and carols, Vive le Roy,
Fill'd with as much true merriment and glee,
As if he heard his king to say-Slave, be free.
Thus happiness depends, as nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Freedom has Charms unknown to Slaves.
Vigilant over all that he has made,
Kind Providence attends with gracious aid;
Bids equity throughout his works prevail,
And weighs the nations in an even scale;
He can encourage slav'ry to a smile,
And fill with discontent a British isle.
A. Freeman and slave, then, if the case be such, Stand on a level; and you prove too much :
If all men indiscriminately share
His fost'ring pow'r, and tutelary care,
As well be yok'd by despotism's hand,
As dwell at large in Britain's charter'd land.
B. No. Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know. !
The mind attains, beneath her happy reign,
The growth that nature meant she should attain;
The varied fields of science, ever new,
Op'ning and wider op'ning on her view,
She ventures onward with a prosp'rous force,
While no base fear impedes her in her course;
Religion congenial with Freedom.
Religion, richest favour of the skies,
Stands most reveal'd before the freeman's eyes; No shades of superstition blot the day,
Liberty chaces all that gloom away;
The soul emancipated, unoppress'd,
Free to prove all things and hold fast the best,
Learns much; and to a thousand list'ning minds,
Communicates with joy the good she finds :
Courage in arms, and ever prompt to show
His manly forehead to the fiercest foe;
Glorious in war, but for the sake of peace,
His spirits rising as his toils increase,
Guards well what arts and industry have won,
And freedom claims him for her first-born son
Slaves fight for what were better cast away—
The chain that binds them, and a tyrant's sway;
But they that fight for freedom, undertake
The noblest cause mankind can have at stake:
Religion, virtue, truth, whate'er we call
A blessing-freedom is the pledge of all,
Liberty the Parent of Genius and Nurse of Fancy.
Oh liberty! the pris'ner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion and his theme:
Genius is thine, and thou art fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee th' ennobling pow'rs of verse;
Heroic song from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires;
Place me where winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing, if liberty be there;
And I will sing at liberty's dear feet,
In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat.
A. Sing where you please, in such a cause, I grant
An English poet's privilege to rant;
But is not freedom-at least, is not our's
Too apt to play the wanton with her pow'rs,
Grow freakish, and o'erleaping every mound,
Spread anarchy and terror all around?
B. Agreed. But would you sell or slay your horse
For bounding and curvetting in his course;
Or if, when ridden with a careless rein,
He break away and seek the distant plain?
|