That hour elaps'd, th' incurable revolt
Is punifh'd, and down comes the thunder-bolt.
If mercy then put by the threat'ning blow,
Must she perform the fame kind office now?
May she and if offended heav'n be still
Accessible, and pray'r prevail, she will.
'Tis not however infolence and noise,
The tempest of tumultuary joys,
Nor is it yet defpondence and dismay,
Will win her visits, or engage her stay;
Pray'r only, and the penitential tear,
Can call her smiling down, and fix her here.
But when a country (one that I could name)
In prostitution finks the fense of shame;
When infamous venality grown bold,
Writes on his bofom, to be let or fold;
When perjury, that heav'n-defying vice,
Sells oaths by tale, and at the lowest price,
Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made,
To turn a penny in the way of trade;
When av'rice starves, and never hides his face,
Two or three millions of the human race,
And not a tongue enquires, how, where, or when, Though confcience will have twinges now and then; When profanation of the facred cause
In all its parts, times, ministry, and laws,
Befpeaks a land once chriftian, fall'n and loft
In all that wars against that title moft;
What follows next let cities of great name,
And regions, long fince defolate, proclaim,
Nineveh, Babylon, and ancient Rome,
Speak to the prefent times and times to come;
They cry aloud in ev'ry careless ear,
Stop, while ye may, fufpend your mad career;
O learn from our example and our fate;
Learn wisdom and repentance ere too late.
Not only vice disposes and prepares
The mind that flumbers fweetly in her fnares,
To stoop to tyranny's ufurp'd command,
And bend her polish'd neck beneath his hand,
(A dire effect, by one of nature's laws
Unchangeably connected with its caufe)
But Providence himself will intervene
To throw his dark displeasure o'er the scene.
All are his inftruments; each form of war,
What burns at home, or threatens from afar;
Nature in arms, her elements at ftrife,
The ftorms that overfet the joys of life,
Are but his rods to fcourge a guilty land,
And wafte it at the bidding of his hand.
He gives the word, and mutiny foon roars
In all her gates, and fhakes her diftant fhores;
The ftandards of all nations are unfurl'd,
She has one foe, and that one foe, the world.
And if he doom that people with a frown,
And mark them with the feal of wrath, prefs'd down, Obduracy takes place; callous and tough
The reprobated race grows judgment proof:
Earth shakes beneath them, and heav'n roars above,
But nothing scares them from the course they love;
To the lafcivious pipe and wanton song,
That charm down fear, they frolic it along,
With mad rapidity and unconcern,
Down to the gulph from which is no return.
They trust in navies, and their navies fail,
God's curfe can caft away ten thousand sail;
They truft in armies, and their courage dies,
In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;
But all they truft in, withers, as it must,
When he commands, in whom they place no truft.
Vengeance at laft pours down upon their coaft,
A long defpis'd but now victorious hoft;
Tyranny fends the chain that must abridge
The noble fweep of all their privilege,
Gives liberty the laft, the mortal shock,
Slips the flave's collar on, and snaps the lock.
A. Such lofty strains embellish what you teach,
Mean you to prophefy, or but to preach?
B. I know the mind that feels indeed the fire
The mufe imparts, and can command the lyre,
Acts with a force, and kindles with a zeal,
Whate'er the theme, that others never feel.
If human woes her foft attention claim,
A tender fympathy pervades the frame,
She pours a fenfibility divine
Along the nerve of ev'ry feeling line.
But if a deed, not tamely to be borne,
Fire indignation and a sense of scorn,
The ftrings are swept with such a pow'r, fo loud,
The ftorm of mufic shakes th' aftonish'd crowd.
So when remote futurity is brought
Before the keen enquiry of her thought,
A terrible fagacity informs
The poet's heart, he looks to distant storms,
He hears the thunder ere the tempeft low'rs,
And arm'd with strength furpaffing human pow'rs,
Seizes events as yet unknown to man,
And darts his foul into the dawning plan.
Hence, in a Roman mouth, the graceful name
Of prophet and of poet was the fame,
Hence British poets too the priesthood shar'd,
And ev'ry hallow'd druid was a bard.
But no prophetic fires to me belong,
I play with fyllables, and sport in song.
A. At Westminster, where little poets strive
To fet a distich upon fix and five,
Where discipline helps op'ning buds of sense,
And makes his pupils proud with filver-pence,
I was a poet too—but modern taste
Is fo refin'd, and delicate, and chafte,
That verfe, whatever fire the fancy warms,
Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.
Thus, all fuccefs depending on an ear,
And thinking I might purchase it too dear,
If fentiment were facrific'd to found,
And truth cut fhort to make a period round,
I judg’d a man of sense could scarce do worse,
Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.
B. Thus reputation is a spur to wit,
And fome wits flag through fear of losing it.
Give me the line, that ploughs its stately course
Like a proud swan, conqu'ring the stream by force.
That, like fome cottage beauty, ftrikes the heart,
Quite unindebted to the tricks of art.
When labour and when dullness, club in hand,
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan's ftand,
Beating alternately, in measur'd time,
The clock-work tintinnabulum of rhime,
Exact and regular the found will be,
But fuch mere quarter-ftrokes are not for me.
|