Sidebilder
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Bale, sorrow, trouble, misfortune.
Benempt, named.

Blazon, painting, displaying.
Breme, cold, raw.

Carol, to sing songs of joy.
Caucus, the north-east wind.
Certes, certainly.

Dan, a word prefixed to names.
Deftly, skilfully.

Through these extremes a ceaseless round they Depainted, painted.

steer'd,

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Lea, a piece of land, or meadow,
Libbard, leopard.
Lig, to lie.

Losel, a loose idle fellow.
Louting, bowing, bending.
Lithe, loose, lax.
Mell, mingle.
Moe, more.
Moil, to labour.
Mote, might.

The other was a fell despightful fiend;
Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below:
By pride, and wit, and rage, and rancour, keen'd;
Of man alike, if good or bad, the foe:
With nose upturn'd, he always made a show
As if he smelt some nauseous scent; his eye
Was cold, and keen, like blast from boreal snow;
And taunts he casten forth most bitterly.
Such were the twain that off drove this ungodly fry. Nathless, nevertheless.

LXXIX.

E'en so through Brentford town, a town of mud,
A herd of bristly swine is prick'd along;
The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud,
Still grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous
song,

And oft they plunge themselves the mire among:
But aye the ruthless driver goads them on,
And aye of barking dogs the bitter throng
Makes them renew their unmelodious moan;
Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone.

Muchel, or Mochel, much, great.

Ne, nor.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

AS on the sea-beat shore Britannia sat,
Of her degenerate sons the faded fame,
Deep in her anxious heart, revolving sad:
Bare was her throbbing bosom to the gale,
That, hoarse and hollow, from the bleak surge blew;
Loose flowed her tresses; rent her azure robe.
Hung o'er the deep from her majestic brow
She tore the laurel, and she tore the bay.
Nor ceased the copious grief to bathe her cheek;
Nor ceased her sobs to murmur to the main.
Peace discontented nigh, departing, stretch'd
Her dove-like wings: and War, tho' greatly roused,
Yet mourns his fetter'd hands. While thus the

queen

Of nations spoke; and what she said the muse Recorded, faithful, in unbidden verse.

⚫ E'en not yon sail, that from the sky-mixt wave, Dawns on the sight, and wafts the Royal Youth,* A freight of future glory to my shore; E'en not the flattering view of golden days, And rising periods yet of bright renown, Beneath the parents, and their endless line Through late revolving time, can sooth my rage; While, unchastised, the insulting Spaniard dares Infest the trading flood, full of vain war Despise my navies, and my merchants seize; As, trusting to false peace, they fearless roam The world of waters wild; made, by the toil, And liberal blood of glorious ages, mine: Nor bursts my sleeping thunder on their head.

• Frederick Prince of Wales, then lately arrived.

Virgil

Whence this unwonted patience? this weak doubt?
This táme beseeching of rejected peace?
This meek forbearance? this unnative fear?
To generous Britons never known before?
And sail'd my fleets for this; on Indian tides
To float, inactive, with the veering winds?
The mockery of war! while hot disease,
And sloth distemper'd, swept off burning crowds,
For action ardent; and amid the deep,
Inglorious, sunk them in a watery grave.
There now they lie beneath the rolling flood,
Far from their friends, and country, unavenged;
And back the drooping war ship comes again,
Dispirited and thin; her sons ashamed
Thus idly to review their native shore;
With not one glory sparkling in their eye,
One triumph on their tongue. A passenger,
The violated merchant comes along;
That far sought wealth, for which the noxious gale
He drew, and sweat beneath equator suns,
By lawless force detain'd; a force that soon
Would melt away, and every spoil resign,
Were once the British lion heard to roar.
Whence is it that the proud Iberian thus
In their own well asserted element,

Dares rouse to wrath the masters of the main?
Who told him, that the big incumbent war
Would not, ere this, have roll'd his trembling ports
In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
Won by the ravage of a butcher'd world,
Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?

'There was a time (Oh let my languid sons Resume their spirit at the rousing thought!) When all the pride of Spain, in one dread fleet, Swell'd o'er the labouring surge; like a whole heaven

When only shining shares, the crooked knife,
And hooks imprint the vegetable wound;
When the land blushes with the rose alone,
The falling fruitage and the bleeding vine.
Oh, Peace! thou source and soul of social life;

Of clouds, wide roll'd before the boundless breeze. Beneath whose calm inspiring influence,
Gaily the splendid armament along

Exultant plough'd, reflecting a red gleam,
As sunk the sun, o'er all the flaming Vast;
Tall, gorgeous, and elate; drunk with the dream
Of easy conquest; while their bloated war,
Stretch'd out from sky to sky, the gather'd force
Of ages held in its capacious womb.
But soon, regardless of the cumbrous pomp,
My dauntless Britons came, a gloomy few,
With tempests black, the goodly scene deform'd,
And laid their glory waste. The bolts of fate
Resistless thunder'd through their yielding sides;
Fierce o'er their beauty blazed the lurid flame;
And seized in horrid grasp, or shatter'd wide,
Amid the mighty waters, deep they sunk.
Then too from every promontory chill,
Rank fen, and cavern where the wild wave works,
I swept confederate winds, and swell'd a storm.
Round the glad isle, snatch'd by the vengeful blast,
The scatter'd remnants drove; on the blind shelve,
And pointed rock, that marks the indented shore,
Relentless dash'd, where loud the northern main
Howls through the fractured Caledonian isles.

'Such were the dawnings of my watery reign;
But since how vast it grew, how absolute,
E'en in those troubled times, when dreadful Blake
Awed angry nations with the British name,
Let every humbled state, let Europe say,
Sustain'd, and balanced, by my naval arm.
Ah, what must those immortal spirits think

Of your poor shifts? Those, for their country's
good,

Who faced the blackest danger, knew no fear,
No mean submission, but commanded peace.
Ah, how with indignation must they burn?
(If aught, but joy, can touch ethereal breasts)
With shame? with grief? to see their feeble sons
Shrink from that empire o'er the conquer'd seas,
For which their wisdom plann'd, their councils
glow'd,

[ocr errors]

And their veins bled through many a toiling age.
Oh, first of human blessings! and supreme!
Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou!
By whose wide tie the kindred sons of men
Like brothers live, in amity combined
And unsuspicious faith; while honest toil
Gives every joy, and to those joys a right,
Which idle, barbarous rapine but usurps.
Pure is thy reign; when, unaccursed by blood,
Nought, save the sweetness of indulgent showers,
Trickling distils into the vernant glebe;
Instead of mangled carcasses, sad-seen,

Science his views enlarges, Art refines,
And swelling Commerce opens all her ports;
Bless'd be the man divine who gives us thee!
Who bids the trumpet hush his horrid clang,
Nor blow the giddy nations into rage;
Who sheaths the murderous blade; the deadly gun
Into the well piled armory returns;

And every vigour, from the work of death,
To grateful industry converting, makes
The country flourish, and the city smile.
Unviolated, him the virgin sings;

And him the smiling mother to her train.
Of him the shepherd, in the peaceful dale,
Chants; and, the treasures of his labour sure,
The husbandman of him, as at the plough,
Or team, he toils. With him the sailor sooths.
Beneath the trembling moon, the midnight wave;
And the full city, warm, from street to street,
And shop to shop, responsive, rings of him.

Nor joys one land alone: his praise extends
Far as the sun rolls the diffusive day;
Far as the breeze can bear the gifts of peace,
Till all the happy nations catch the song..

'What would not, Peace! the patriot bear for

thee?

What painful patience. What incessant care?
What mix'd anxiety? What sleepless toil?
E'en from the rash protected what reproach?
For he thy value knows; thy friendship he
To human nature: but the better thou,
The richer of delight, sometimes the more
Inevitable war; when ruffian force
Awakes the fury of an injured state.
E'en the good patient man, whom reason rules,
Roused by bold insult, and injurious rage,
With sharp and sudden check the astonish'd sons
Of violence confounds; firm as his cause,
His bolder heart; in awful justice clad;
His eyes effulging a peculiar fire:
And, as he charges through the prostrate war,
His keen arm teaches faithless men, no more
To dare the sacred vengeance of the just.

And what, my thoughtless sons, should fire
you more

Than when your well earn'd empire of the deep
The least beginning injury receives?

What better cause can call your lightning forth?
Your thunder wake? your dearest life demand?
What better cause, than when your country sees
The sly destruction at her vitals aim'd?
For oh! it much imports you, 'tis your all,
To keep your trade entire, entire the force

When the blithe sheaves lie scatter'd o'er the field; And honour of your fleets; o'er that to watch,

E'en with a hand severe, and jealous eye.
In intercourse be gentle, generous, just,
By wisdom polished, and of manners fair;
But on the sea be terrible, untamed,
Unconquerable still: let none escape,
Who shall but aim to touch your glory there.
Is there the man into the lion's den

Who dares intrude, to snatch his young away?
And is a Briton seized? and seized beneath
The slumbering terrors of a British fleet?
Then ardent rise! Oh, great in vengeance rise!
O'erturn the proud, teach rapine to restore:
And as you ride sublimely round the world,
Make every vessel stoop, make every state
At once their welfare and their duty know.
This is your glory: this your wisdom; this
The native power for which you were design'd
By fate, when fate designed the firmest state
That e'er was seated on the subject sca;
A state, alone, where Liberty should live,
In these late times, this evening of mankind,
When Athens, Rome, and Carthage are no more,

The world almost in slavish sloth dissolved.
For this, these rocks around your coast were
thrown;

For this, your oaks, peculiar harden'd, shoot
Strong into sturdy growth; for this, your hearts
Swell with a sullen courage, growing still
As danger grows; and strength, and toil for this
Are liberal pour'd o'er all the fervent land.
Then cherish this, this unexpensive power,
Undangerous to the public, ever prompt,
By lavish nature thrust into your hand:
And, unencumber'd with the bulk immense
Of conquest, whence huge empires rose, and fell
Self-crush'd, extend your reign from shore to shore,
Where'er the wind your high behests can blow;
And fix it deep on this eternal base.

For should the sliding fabric once give way,
Soon slacken'd quite, and past recovery broke,
It gathers ruin as it rolls along,

Steep rushing down to that devouring gulf,
Where many a mighty empire buried lies.
And should the big redundant flood of trade,
In which ten thousand thousand labours join
Their several currents, till the boundless tide
Rolls in a radiant deluge o'er the land;
Should this bright stream, the least inflicted, point
Its course another way, o'er other lands
The various treasure would resistless pour,
Ne'er to be won again; its ancient tract
Left a vile channel, desolate, and dead,
With all around a miserable waste.

Not Egypt, were her better heaven, the Nile,
Turn'd in the pride of flow; when o'er his rocks,
And roaring cataracts, beyond the reach
Of dizzy vision piled, in one wide flash
An Ethiopian deluge foams amain;

E'en not that prime of earth, where harvests crowd
On untill'd harvests, all the teeming year,
If of the fat o'erflowing culture robb'd,
Were then a more uncomfortable wild,
Steril, and void; than of her trade deprived,
Britons, your boasted isle: her princes sunk;
Her high built honour moulder'd to the dust;
Unnerved her force; her spirit vanish'd quite;
With rapid wing her riches fled away;
Her unfrequented ports alone the sign
Of what she was; her merchants scatter'd wide;
Her hollow shops shut up; and in her streets,
Her fields, woods, markets, villages, and roads,
The cheerful voice of labour heard no more.

'Oh, let not then waste luxury impair
That manly soul of toil which strings your nerves,
And your own proper happiness creates !
Oh, let not the soft, penetrating plague
Creep on the freeborn mind! and working there,
With the sharp tooth of many a new-form'd want,
Endless, and idle all, eat out the heart
Of liberty; the high conception blast;
The noble sentiment, the impatient scorn
Of base subjection, and the swelling wish
For general good, erasing from the mind:
While nought save narrow selfishness succeeds,
And low design, the sneaking passions all
Induced at last, by scarce perceived degrees,
Let loose, and reigning in the rankled breast.
Sapping the very frame of government,
And life, a total dissolution comes;
Sloth, ignorance, dejection, flattery, fear.
Oppression raging o'er the waste he makes;
The human being almost quite extinct;
And the whole state in broad corruption sinks.
Oh, shun that gulf: that gaping ruin shun!
And countless ages roll it far away
From you, ye heaven-beloved! May liberty,
The light of life! the sun of humankind!
Whence heroes, bards, and patriots borrow flame,
E'en where the keen depressive north descends,
Still spread, exalt, and actuate your powers!
While slavish southern climates beam in vain.
And may a public spirit from the throne,
Where every virtue sits, go copious forth,
Live o'er the land! the finer arts inspire;
Make thoughtful Science raise his pensive head,
Blow the fresh bay, bid Industry rejoice,
And the rough sons of lowest labour smile.
As when, profuse of Spring, the loosen'd West.
Lifts up the pining year, and balmy breathes
Youth, life, and love, and beauty, o'er the world.

'But haste we from these melancholy shores, Nor to deaf winds, and waves, our fruitless plaint Pour weak; the country claims our active aid; That let us roam; and where we find a spark Of public virtue, blow it into flame.

(Whence wondering fable traced him from the sky) Lo! now, my sons, the sons of freedom! meet

« ForrigeFortsett »