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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 cumberous pomp,
My dauntless Britons came, a gloomy few,
With tempest 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 blaz'd the lurid flame;
And seiz'd 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 th' indented shore,
Relentless dash'd, where loud the northern main
Howls through the fractur'd Caledonian isles.

"Such were the dawnings of my watery reign;
But since how vast it grew, how absolute,
Ev'n in those troubled times, when dreadful Blake
Aw'd angry nations with the British name,
Let every humbled state, let Europe say,
Sustain'd, and balanc'd, by my naval arm.
Ah, what must those immortal spirits think
Of your poor shifts? Those, for their country's good
Who fac'd 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,

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 tide, the kindred sons of men
Like brothers live, in amity combin'd,
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, unaccurs'd by blood,
Nought, save the sweetness of indulgent showers,
Trickling distils into the vernant glebe;
Instead of mangled carcases, sad-seen,
When the blithe sheaves lie scatter'd o'er the field;
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;
Beneath whose calin inspiring influence,
Science his views enlarges, Art refines,
And swelling Commerce opens all her ports;
Blest 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-pil'd armoury 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,

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The husbandman of him, as at the plough,
Or team, he toils. With him the sailor soothes,
Beneath the trembling Moon, the midnight wave;
And the full city, warm, from street to street,
And shop to shop, responsive, sings 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 cateh the song. [thee?
"What would not, Peace! the patriot bear for
What painful patience? what incessant care?
What mixt anxiety? what sleepless toil?
Ev'n 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 injur'd state.

Ev'n the good patient man, whom reason rules,
Rous'd by bold insult, and injurious rage,
With sharp and sudden check, th' 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. [more,

"And what, my thoughtless sons, should fire you
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,
And honour of your fleets: o'er that to watch,
Ev'n with a hand severe, and jealous eye.
In intercourse be gentle, generous, just,
By wisdom polish'd, and of manners fair;
But on the sea be terrible, untam'd,
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 seiz'd? and seiz'd beneath
The slumbering terrours 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 design'd the firmest state,
That e'er was seated on the subject sea;
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 dissolv'd.
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:
Aud, 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,

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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 inflected,
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 pil'd, in one wide flash
An Ethiopian deluge foams amain
(Whence wondering fable trac'd him from the sky);
Ev'n 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 depriv'd,
Britons, your boasted Isle: her princes sunk ;
Her high built honour moulder'd to the dust;
Unnerv'd 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 free born 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, th' 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
Let loose, and reigning in the rankled breast.
Induc'd at last, by scarce perceiv'd degrees,
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-belov'd May Liberty,
The light of life, the Sun of human kind!
Whence heroes, bards, and patriots borrow flame,
Ev'n 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.

Lo! now my sons, the sons of Freedom! meet
In aweful senate; thither let us fly;

Burn in the patriot's thought, flow from his tongue

In fearless truth; myself, transform'd, preside, And shed the spirit of Britannia round."

This said; her fleeting form, and airy train, Sunk in the gale; and nought but ragged rocks Rush'd on the broken eye; and nought was heard

But the rough cadence of the dashing wave.

ANCIENT AND MODERN ITALY

COMPARED:

BEING THE FIRST PART OF

LIBERTY,

А РОЕМ,

THE CONTENTS OF PART 1.

The

The following poem is thrown into the form of 3 poetical vision. Its scene the ruins of ancient Rome. The goddess of Liberty, who is suppossed to speak through the whole, appears, characterized as British Liberty; to ver. 44Gives a view of ancient Italy, and particularly of republican Rome, in all her magnificence and glory; to ver. 112. This contrasted by modern Italy; its vallies, mountains, culture, cities, people: the difference appearing strongest in the capital city Rome; to ver. 234, ruins of the great works of Liberty more magnificent than the borrowed pomp of Oppression; and from them revived Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture; to ver. 256. The old Romans apostrophized, with regard to the several melancholy changes in Italy: Horace, Tully, and Virgil, with regard to their Tibur, Tusculum, and Naples; to ver. 287. That once finest and most ornamented part of Italy, all along the coast of Baïæ, how changed; to ver. 321. This desolation of Italy applied to Britain; to ver. 344. Address to the goddess of Liberty, that she would deduce from the first ages, her chief establishments, the description of which consti tute the subject of the following parts of this poem. She assents, and commands what she says to be sung in Britain; whose happiness, arising from freedom, and a limited monarchy, she marks; to ver. 391. An immediate vision attends, and paints her words. Invocation.

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

FREDERIC, Prince of Wales.

SIR,

WHEN I reflect upon that ready condescension, that preventing generosity, with which your royal highness received the following poem under your protection; I can alone ascribe it to the recommendation, and influence of the subject. In you the cause and concerns of liberty have so zealous a patron, as entitles whatever may have the least tendency to promote them to the distinction of your favour. And who can entertain this delightful reflection, without feeling a pleasure far superior to that of the fondest author; and of which all true lovers of their country must participate? To behold the noblest dispositions of the prince, and of the patriot, united: an overflowing benevolence, generosity, and candour of heart, joined to an enlightened zeal for liberty, an intimate persuasion that on it depends, the happiness and glory both of kings and people: to see these shining out in pubblic virtues, as they have hitherto smiled in all the social lights and private accomplishments of life, is a prospect that cannot but inspire a general sentiment of satisfaction and gladness, more easy to be felt than expressed.

If the following attempt to trace Liberty from the first ages down to her excellent establishment in Great Britain, ean at all merit your approbation, and prove an entertainment to your royal highness; if it can in any degree answer the dignity of the subject, and of the name under which I presume to shelter it, I have my best reward: particularly as it affords me an opportunity of declaring that I am, with the greatest zeal and respect,

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My lamented Talbot! while with thee The Muse gay rov'd the glad Hesperian round, And drew th' inspiring breath of ancient arts; Ah little thought she her returning verse Should sing our darling subject to thy shade. And does the mystic veil, from mortal beam, Involve those eyes where every virtue smil'd, And all thy father's candid spirit shone? The light of reason, pure, without a cloud; Full of the generous heart, the mild regard ; Honour disdaining blemish, cordial faith, And limpid truth, that looks the very soul. But to the death of mighty nations turn, My strain; be there absorpt the private tear. Musing, I lay; warm from the sacred walks, Where at each step imagination burns:

While scatter'd wide around, awful, and hoar,

10

Lies, a vast monument, once glorious Rome,
The tomb of empire! ruins! that efface
Whate'er, of finish'd, modern pomp can boast. 20

30

Snatch'd by these wonders to that world where Unfetter'd ranges, Fancy's magic hand [thought Led me anew o'er all the solemn scene, Still in the mind's pure eye more solemn drest. When straight, methought, the fair majestic power Of Liberty appear'd. Not, as of old, Extended in her hand the cap, and rod, Whose slave-enlarging touch gave double life : But her bright temples bound with British oak, And naval honours nodded on her brow. Sublime of port: loose o'er her shoulder flow'd Her sea-green robe, with constellations gay. An island-goddess now; and her bigh care The queen of isles, the mistress of the main. My heart beat filial transport at the sight; And, as she mov'd to speak, th' as akened Muse Listen'd intense. A while she look'd around, With mournful eye the well-known ruins mark'd, And then, her sighs repressing, thus began. [mine; "Mine are these wonders, all thou see'st is But, ah, how chang'd; the falling poor remains Of what exalted once th' Ausonian shore. [gloom, Look back through time; and, rising from the Mark the dread scene, that paints whate'er I say.

"The great republic see! that glow'd, sublime, With the mixt freedom of a thousand states:

Rais'd on the thrones of kings her curule chair,
And by her fasces aw'd the subject world.
See busy millions quickening all the land,
With cities throng'd, and teeming culture high :50
For Nature then smiled on her free-born sons,
And pour'd the plenty that belongs to men.
Behold, the country cheering, villas rise,
In lively prospect; by the secret lapse
Of brooks now lost and streams renown'd in song:
In Umbria's closing vales, or on the brow
Of her brown hills that breathe the scented gale:
On Baïa's viny coast; where peaceful seas,
Fann'd by kind zephyrs, ever kiss the shore ;
And suns unclouded shine, through purest air : 60
Or in the spacious neighbourhood of Rome;
Far-shining upward to the Sabine hills,
To Anio's roar, and Tibur's olive shade;
To where Præneste lifts her airy brow;
Or downward spreading to the sunny shore,
Where Alba breaths the freshness of the main.
"See distant mountains leave their vallies dry,
And o'er the proud arcade their tribute pour,
To lave imperial Rome. For ages laid,
Deep, massy, firm, diverging every way,
With tombs of heroes sacred, see her roads:
By various nations trod, and suppliant kings;
With legions flaming, or with triumph gay.

"Full in the centre of these wondrous works,
The pride of Earth! Rome in her glory see!
Behold her demigods, in senate met;
All head to counsel, and all heart to act :
The common-weal inspiring every tongue
With fervent eloquence, unbrib'd, and bold;
Ere tame corruption taught the servile herd
To rank obedient to a master's voice.

70

80

"Her forum see, warm, popular, and loud, In trembling wonder hush'd, when the two sires, As they the private father greatly quell'd, Stood up the public fathers of the state. See Justice judging there, in human shape. Hark, how with Freedom's voice it thunders high,

90

Or in soft murmurs sinks to Tully's tongue.
"Her tribes, her census, see; her generous troops,
Whose pay was glory, and their best reward,
Free for their country and for me to die;
Ere mercenary murder grew a trade.

"Mark, as the purple triumph waves along,
The highest pomp and lowest fall of life.
"Her festive games, the school of heroes, see;
Her circus, ardent with contending youth;
Her streets, her temples, palaces, and baths,
Full of fair forms, of beauty's eldest-born,
And of a people cast in virtue's mould.
While sculpture lives around, and Asian hills 100
Lend their best stores to heave the pillar'd dome:
All that to Roman strength the softer touch
Of Grecian art can join. But language fails
To paint this sun, this centre of mankind;
Where every virtue, glory, treasure, art,
Attracted strong, in heighten'd lustre met.

110

"Need I the contrast mark? unjoyous view!
A land in all, in government, in arts,
In virtue, genius, earth and heaven, revers'd,
Who but, these far-fam'd ruins to behold,
Proofs of a people, whose heroic aims
Soar'd far above the little selfish sphere
Of doubting modern life; who but, infam'd
With classic zeal, these consecrated scenes
Of men and deeds to trace, unhappy land,
Would trust thy wilds, and cities loose of sway?
"Are these the vales, that, once, exulting states
In their warm bosom fed? the mountains these,
On whose high-blooming sides my sons, of old,
I bred to glory? the dejected towns,
120
Where, mean, and sordid, life can scarce subsist,
The scenes of ancient opulence, and pomp?
"Come! by whatever sacred name disguis'd,
Oppression, come! and in thy works rejoice!
See Nature's richest plains to putrid fens
Turn'd by thy fury. From their cheerful bounds,
See raz'd th' enlivening village, farm, and scat.
First, rural toil, by thy rapacious hand
Robb'd of his poor reward, resign'd the plough;
And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe. 150
'Tis thine entire. The lonely swain himself,
Who loves at large along the grassy downs
His flocks to pasture, thy drear champain flies.
Far as the sickening eye can sweep around,
'Tis all one desert, desolate, and grey,
Graz'd by the sullen buffalo alone;
And where the rank uncultivated growth
Of rotting ages taints the passing gale.
Beneath the baleful blast the city pines,
Or sinks enfeebled, or infected burns.
Beneath it mourns the solitary road,
Roll'd in rude mazes o'er th' abandon'd waste;
While ancient ways, ingulf'd, are seen no more.
"Such thy dire plains, thou self-destroyer ! foc
To human kind! Thy mountains too, profuse,
Where savage nature blooms, seem their sad plaint
To raise against thy desolating rod.
There on the breezy brow, where thriving states,
And famous cities, once, to the pleas'd Sun,
Far other scenes of rising culture spread,
Pale shine thy ragged towns. Neglected round,
Each harvest pines; the livid, lean produce
Of heartless labour: while thy hated joys,
Not proper pleasure, lift the lazy hand.
Better to sink in sloth the woes of life,
Than wake their rage with unavailing toil.
Hence drooping Art almost to Nature leaves

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Draw the bright thread in vain, and idly toil.
In vain, forlorn in wilds, the citron blows;
And flowering plants perfume the desert gale.
Through the vile thoru the tender myrtle twines.
Inglorions droops the laurel, dead to song,
And long a stranger to the hero's brow.
"Nor half thy triumph this: cast, from brute
Into the haunts of men thy ruthless eye.
There buxom Plenty never turns her horn;
The grace and virtue of exterior life,

[fields,

180

No clean convenience reigns; ev'n Sleep itself,
Least delicate of powers, reluctant, there,
Lays on the bed impure his heavy head.
Thy horrid walk! dead, empty, unadorn'd,
See streets whose echoes never know the voice
Of cheerful Hurry, Commerce many-tongu'd,
And Art mechanic at his various task,
Fervent, employ'd. Mark the desponding race,
Of occupation void, as void of hope;
Hope, the glad ray, glane'd from Eternal Good,
That life enlivens, and exalts its powers,
With views of fortune-madness all to them!
By thee relentless seiz'd their better joys,
fo the soft aid of cordial airs they fly,
Breathing a kind oblivion o'er their woes,
And love and music melt their souls away.
From feeble Justice see how rash Revenge,
Trembling, the balance snatches; and the sword,
Fearful his lf, to venal ruffians gives.

See where God's altar, nursing murder, stands,
With the red touch of dark assassins stain'd.

190

200

210

"But chief let Rome, the mighty city! speak
The full-exerted genius of thy reign.
Behold her rise amid the lifeless waste,
Expiring Nature all corrupted round ;
While the lone Tyber, through the desert plain,
Winds his waste stores, and sull n sweeps along.
Patch'd from my fragments, in unsolid pomp,
Mark how the temple glazes; and, artful drest,
Amusive, draws the superstitious train.
Mark how the palace lifts a lying front,
Concealing often, in magnific jail,
Proud Want; a deep unanimated gloom!
140 And oft adjoining to the drear abode
Of Misery, whose melancholy walls
Seem its voracious grandeur to reproach.
Within the city bounds, the desert see.
See the rank vine o'er subterranean roofs,
Indecent, spread; beneath whose fretted gold
It once, exulting, flow'd. The people mark,
Matchless, while fir'd by me; to public good
Inexorably firm, just, generous, brave,
Afraid of nothing but unworthy life,
Elate with glory, an heroic soul
Known to the vulgar breast: behold them now
A thin despairing number, all-subdued,
The slaves of slaves, by superstition fool'd,
By vice unmann'd and a licentious rule,
In guile ingenious, and in murder brave.
Such in one land, beneath the same fair clime,
Thy sons, Oppression, are; and such were mine.

150

920

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"Ev'n with thy labour'd pomp, for whose vain show

231

Deluded thousands starve; all age-begrim'd,
Torn, robb'd and scatter'd in unnumber'd sacks,
And by the tempest of two thousand years
Continual shaken, let my ruins vie.
These roads, that yet the Roman hand assert,
Beyond the weak repair of modern toil;
These fractur'd arches, that the chiding stream
No more delighted hear; these rich remains
Of marbles now unknown, where shines imbib'd
Each parent ray; these massy columns, hew'd
From Afric's farthest shore: one granite all,
These obelisks high-towering to the sky,
Mysterious mark'd with dark Egyptian lore;
These endless wonders that this sacred way
Illumine still, and consecrate to fame;
These fountains, vases, urns, and statues, charg`d
With the fine stores of art-compleating Greece.
Mine is, besides, thy every later boast:
Thy Buonarotis, thy Palladios mine;
And mine the fair designs, which Raphael's soul
O'er the live canvass, emanating, breath'd.

240

249

"What would you say, ye conquerors of Earth! Ye Romans! could you raise the laurel'd head; Could you the country see, by seas of blood, And the dread toil of ages, won so dear; Your pride, your triumph, and supreme delight! For whose defence oft, in the doubtful hour, You rush'd with rapture down the gulf of fate, Of death ambitious! till by aweful deeds, Virtues, and courage, that amaze mankind, The queen of nations rose; possest of all Which Nature, Art, and Glory could bestow: 260 What would you say, deep in the last abyss Of slavery, vice, and unambitious want, Thus to behold her sunk? Your crowded plains, Void of their cities; unadorn'd your hills; Ungrac'd your lakes; your ports to ships unknown; Your lawless floods, and your abandon'd streams : These could you know? these could you love Thy Tibur, Horace, could it now inspire, [again? Content, poetic ease, and rural joy,

279

Soon bursting into song; while through the groves
Of headlong Anio, dashing to the vale,
271
In many a tortur'd stream, you mus'd along?
Yon wild retreat, where Superstition dreams,
Could, Tully, you your Tusculum believe?
And could you deem yon naked hills, that form,
Fam'd in old song, the ship forsaken bay,
Your Formian shore? Once the delight of Earth,
Where Art and Nature, ever smiling, join'd
On the gay land to lavish all their stores,
How chang'd, how vacant, Virgil, wide around,
Would now your Naples seem? Disaster'd less
By black Vesuvius thundering o'er the coast,
His midnight earthquakes, and his mining fires,
Than by despotic rage: that inward gnaws,
A native foe: a foreign, tears without.
First from your flatter'd Cæsars this began:
Till, doom'd to tyrants an eternal prey,
Thin-peopled spreads, at last, the syren plain,
That the dire soul of Hannibal disarm'd ;
And wrapt in weeds the shore of Venus lies.
There Baiæ sees no more the joyous throng;
Her bank all beaming with the pride of Rome;
No generous vines now bask along the hills,
Where sport the breezes of the Tyrrhene main :
With baths and temples mix'd, no viilas rise;
Nor, art sustain'd amid reluctant waves,

290

Draw the cool murmurs of the breathing deep :
No spreading ports their sacred arms extend:
No mighty moles the big intrusive storm,
From the calm station, roll resounding back. 300
An almost total desolation sits,

310

A dreary stillness, saddening o'er the coast;
Where, when soft suns and tepid winters rose,
Rejoicing crowds inhal'd the balm of peace;
Where city'd hill to hill reflected blaze;
And where with Ceres, Bacchus wont to hold
A genial strife. Her youthful form, robust,
Ev'n Nature yields; by fire and earthquake reħt :
Whose stately cities in the dark abrupt
Swallow'd at once, or vile in rubbish laid,
A nest for serpents; from the red abyss
New hills, explosive, thrown; the Lucrine lake
A reedy pool; and all to Euma's point,
The sea recovering his usurp❜d domain,
And pour'd triumphant o'er the bury'd dome.
"Hence, Britain, learn; my best-established, last,
And more than Greece, or Rome, my steady reign;
The land where, king and people equal bound
By guardian laws, my fullest blessings flow;
And where my jealous unsubmitting soul,
The dread of tyrants! burns in every breast: 320
Learn hence, if such the miserable fate

330

Of an heroic race, the masters once
Of human kind, what, when depriv'd of me,
How grievous must be thine? In spite of climes,
Whose sun-enliven'd ether wakes the soul
To higher powers; in spite of happy soils,
That, but by labour's slightest aid impell'd,
With treasures teem to thy cold clime unknown;
If there desponding fail the common arts,
And sustenance of life: could life itself,
Far less a thoughtless tyrant's hollow pomp,
Subsist with thee? Against depressing skies,
Join'd to full spread Oppression's cloudy brow,
How could thy spirits hold? where vigour find,
Fore'd fruits to tear from their unnative soil?
Or, storing every harvest in thy ports,
To plough the dreadful all producing wave?"

Here paus'd the goddess. By the pause assur'd,
In trembling accents thus I mov'd my prayer: 340
"Oh, first, and most benevolent of powers!
Come from eternal splendours, here on Earth,
Against despotic pride, and rage, and lust,
To shield mankind; to raise them to assert
The native rights and honour of their race:
Teach me, thy lowest subject, but in zeal
Yielding to none, the progress of thy reign,
And with a strain from thee enrich the Muse.
As thee alone she serves, her patron, thou,
And great inspirer be! then will she joy,
Through narrow life her lot, and private shade;
And when her venal voice she barters vile,
Or to thy open or thy secret foes,

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May ne'er those sacred raptures touch her more,
By slavish hearts unfelt! and may her song
Sink in oblivion with the nameless crew!
Vermin of state to thy o'erflowing light
That owe their being, yet betray thy cause."
Then, condescending kind, the heavenly power
Return'd-" What here, suggested by the scene,
I slight unfold, record and sing at home,
In that best isle, where so we spirits move)
With one quick effort of my will I am.
There Truth, unlicens'd, walks; and dares accost
Ev'n kings themselves, the monarchs of the free!
Fix'd on my rock, there, an indulgent race

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