When freedom, wounded almost to despair,
Though discontent alone can find out where;
When themes like these employ the poet's tongue,
I hear as mute as if a syren sung.
Or tell me, if you can, what power maintains
A Briton's scorn of arbitrary chains?
That were a theme might animate the dead,
And move the lips of poets cast in lead.
B. The cause, though worth the search, may yet elude
Conjecture and remark, however shrewd.
They take perhaps a well directed aim,
Who seek it in his climate and his frame.
Liberal 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 flowers;
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 designed,
She rears her favourite man of all mankind.
His form robust and of elastic tone,
Proportioned well, half muscle and half bone,
Supplies with warm activity and force
A mind well-lodged, and masculine of course.
Hence liberty, sweet liberty inspires,
And keeps alive his fierce but noble fires.
Patient of constitutional controu},
He bears it with meek manliness of soul;
But, if authority grow wanton, woe
To him that treads upon his free born toe;
One step beyond the boundary of the laws
Fires him at once in freedom's glorious cause.
Thus proud prerogative, not much revered,
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 formed like us, with such Herculean powers,
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 misery far way;
He drinks his simple beverage with a gust;
And, feasting on an onion and a crust,
We never feel the alacrity and joy,
With which he shouts and carols Vive le Roy,
Filled with as much true merriment and glee,
As if he heard his king say-Slave, be free.
Thus happiness depends, as nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
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 slavery 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 fostering power, and tutelary care,
As well be yoked by despotism's hand,
As well at large in Britain's chartered land.
B. No. Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, however 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,
Opening and wider opening on her view,
She ventures onward with a prosperous force,
While no base fear impedes her in her course.
Religion, richest favour of the skies,
Stands most revealed before the freeman's eyes;
No shades of superstition blot the day,
Liberty chases all that gloom away;
The soul, emancipated, unoppressed,
Free to prove all things and hold fast the best,
Learns much; and to a thousand listening 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, whatever we call
A blessing freedom is the pledge of all.
Oh liberty! the prisoner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion and his theme;
Genius is thine, and thou art fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee the ennobling power 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.
4. 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 powers,
Grow freakish, and overleaping 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?
No. His high mettle, under good controul,
Gives him Olympicspeed, and shoots him to the goal.
Let discipline employ her wholesome arts;
Let magistrates alert perform their parts,
Not skulk or put on a prudential mask,
As if their duty were a desperate task;
Let active laws apply the needful curb
To guard the peace,that riot would disturb;
And liberty, preserved from wild excess,
Shall raise no feuds for armies to suppress.
When tumult lately burst his prison door,
And set plebeian thousands in roar;
When he usurped authority's just place,
And dared to look his master in the face;
When the rude rabble's watch-word was-destroy,
And blazing London seemed a second Troy;"
Liberty blushed, and hung her drooping head,
Beheld their progress with the deepest dread;
Blushed, that effects like these she should produce,
Worse than the deeds of galley-slaves broke loose.
She loses in such storms her very name,
And fierce licentiousness should bear the blame.
Incomparable gem! thy worth untold;
Cheap, though blood-bought; and thrown away when sold;
May no foes ravish thee, and no false friend
Betray thee, while professing to defend ;
ministers; ye monarchs spare; Ye patriots, guard it with a miser's care.
A. Patriots, alas! the few that have been found, Where most they flourish, upon English ground, The country's need have scantily supplied, a And the last left the scene when Chatham died.
B. Not so the virtue still adorns our age,
Though the chief actor died upon the stage.
In him Demosthenes was heard again;
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain;
She clothed him with authority and awe,
Spoke from his lips, and in his looks gave law.
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