Propped in her fall might Freedom's ruin stand;
And purged by fire, and stronger from the storm,
Degraded Justice rear her reverend form.
Now, hope, adieu ;-adieu the generous care
To shield the weak, and tame the proud in war;
The golden chain of realms, when equal awe
Poised the strong balance of impartial law;
When rival states as federate sisters shone,
Alike, yet various, and though many, one;
And, bright and numerous as the spangled sky,
Beamed cach fair star of Europe's galaxy-
All, all are gone, and after-time shall trace
One boundless rule, one undistinguished race;
Twilight of worth, where nought remains to move
The patriot's ardor, or the subject's love.
'Behold, e'en now, while every manly lore
And every muse forsakes my yielding shore ;
Faint, vapid fruits of slavery's sickly clime,
Each tinsel art succeeds, and harlot rhyme ;
To gild the vase, to bid the purple spread
In sightly foldings o'er the Grecian bed,
Their mimic guard where sculptured gryphons
keep,
And Memphian idols watch o'er beauty's sleep To rouse the slumbering sparks of faint desire With the base tinkling of the Teian lyre,
While youth's enervate glance and gloating age
Hang o'er the nazy waltz, or pageant stage,
Each wayward wish of sickly taste to please,
The nightly revel and the noontide ease-
These, Europe. are thy toils, thy trophies these.
'So, when wide-wasting hail, or whelming rain
Have strowed the bearded hope of golden grain,
From the wet furrow, struggling to the skies,
The tall, rank weeds in barren splendor rise;
And strong, and towering o'er the mildewed ear,
Uncomely flowers and baneful herbs appear:
The swain's rich toils to useless poppies yield,
And Famine stalks along the purple field.
And thou, the poet's theme, the patriot's
Where, France, thy hopes, thy gilded promise where ;
When o'er Montpelier's vines, and Jura's snows, All goodly bright, young Freedom's planet rose ? What boots it now, (to our destruction brave,) How strong thine arm in war? a valiant slave. What boots it now that wide thine eagles sail, Fanned by the flattering breath of conquest's gale, What, that, high-piled within yon ample dome, The blood-bought treasures rest of Greece and Rome?
Scourge of the highest, bolt in vangeance hurled By Heaven's dread justice on a shrinking world,
Go, vanquished victor, bend thy proud helm down Before thy sullen tyrant's steely crown.
For him in Afric's sands, and Poland's snows, Reared by thy toil the shadowy laurel grows; And rank in German fields the harvest springs Of pageant councils and obsequious kings. Such purple slaves, of glittering fetters vain, Linked the wide circuit of the Latian chain; And slaves like these shall every tyrant find, To gild oppression, and debase mankind.
'O, live there yet whose hardy souls and high Peace bought with shame, and tranquil bonds defy?
Who, driven from every shore, and lords in vain Of the wide prison of the lonely main,
Cling to their country's rights with freeborn zeal, More strong from every stroke, and patient of the steel?
Guiltless of chains, to them has Heaven consigned
Th' entrusted cause of Europe and mankind :
Or hope we yet in Sweden's martial snows
That Freedom's weary foot may find repose?
No-from yon hermit shade, yon cypress dell,
Where faintly peals the distant matin-bell;
Where bigot kings and tyrant priests had shed
Their sleepy venom o'er his dreadful head;
He wakes, th' avenger-hark! the hills around,
Untamed Asturia bids her clarion sound;
And many an ancient rock, and fleecy plain,
And many a valliant heart returns the strain :
Heard by that shore, where Calpe's armed steep
Flings its long shadow o'er th' Herculean deep,
And Lucian glades, whose hoary poplars wave
In soft, sad murmurs over Inez' grave.
They bless the call who dared the first withstand
The Moslem wasters of their bleeding land,
When firm in faith,and red with slaughtered foes,
Thy spear-encircled crown, Asturia, rose.
Nor these alone; as loud the war-notes swell,
La Mancha's shepherd quits his cork-built cell;
Alhama's strength is there, and those who till
(A hardy race!) Morena's scortched hill;
And in rude arms through wide Galicia's reign,
The swarthy vintage pours her vigorous train.
Saw ye those tribes? not theirs the plumed
boast,
The sightly trappings of a marshalled host ;
No weeping nations curse their deadly skill,
Expert in danger, and inured to kill :-
But theirs the kindling eye, the strenuous arïn;
Theirs the dark cheek, with patriot ardor warm,
Unblanched by sluggard ease, or slavish fear,
And proud and pure the blood that mantles there.
Theirs from the birth is toil;-o'er granite steep,
And heathy wild, to guard the wandering sheep,
To urge the laboring mule, or bend the spear
'Gainst the night-prowling wolf, or felon bear;
The bull's hoarse rage in dreadful sport to mock,
And meet with single sword his bellowing shock.
Each martial chant they know,each manly rhyme,
Rude, ancient lays of Spain's heroic time.
Of him in Xeres' carnage fearless found,
(His glittering brows with hostile spear-heads bound ;)
Of that chaste king whose hardy mountain train
O'erthrew the knightly race of Charlemagne ;
And chiefest him who reared his banner tall
(Illustrious exile,) o'er Valencia's wall;
Ungraced by kings, whose Moorish title rose
The toil-earned homage of his wondering foes.
Yes; every mould'ring tower and haunted
flood,
And the wild murmurs of the waving wood;
Each sandy waste, and orange scented dell,
And red Buraba's field, and Lugo, tell,
How their brave fathers fought, how thick the invaders fell.
'O, virtue long forgot, or vainly tried, To glut a bigot's zeal, or tyrant's pride; Condemned in distant climes to bleed and die 'Mid the dank poisons of Tlascala's sky;
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