And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony
Spare us yet awhile,
Father and God! O spare us yet awhile!
O let not English women drag their flight
Fainting beneath the burden of their babes,
Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday
Laugh'd at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all
Who ever gaz'd with fondness on the forms,
Which grew up with you round the same fire side,
And all who ever heard the sabbath bells
Without the infidel's scorn, make yourselves pure !
Stand forth! be men! repel an impious foe,
Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
That laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of murder; and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison life's amities, and cheat the heart,
Of Faith and quiet Hope, and all that soothes
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
Render them back upon th' insulted ocean,
And let them toss as idly on its waves,
As the vile sea-weeds, which some mountain blast
Swept from our shores! And O! may we return
Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
Repenting of the wrongs, with which we stung
So fierce a foe to frenzy!
I have told,
O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistim'd;
For never can true courage dwell with them,
Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,
Groaning with restless enmity, expect
All change from change of constituted power:
As if a government had been a robe,
On which our vice and wretchedness were tagg'd
Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
Pull'd off at pleasure. Fondly these attach
A radical causation to a few
Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
Who borrow all their hues and qualities
From our own folly and rank wickedness,
Which gave them birth and nurse them. Others, mean. Dote with a mad idolatry; and all,
Who will not fall before their images,
And yield them worship, they are enemies,
Ev'n of their country!-Such have I been deem'd.
But, O dear Britain! O my mother Isle!
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband and a father! who revere
All bonds of natural love, and find them all
Within the limits of thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my mother Isle !
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks, and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of it's future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrow'd from my country! O divine
And beauteous island, thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!—
May my fears,
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roar'd and died away
In the distant tree, which heard, and only heard,
In this low dell bow'd not the delicate grass.
But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
The fruitlike perfume of the golden furze:
The light has left the summit of the hill,
Tho' still a sunny gleam lies beautiful
Aslant the ivied beacon.-Now, farewell,
Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!
On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recall'd
From bodings that have well nigh wearied me,
I find myself upon the brow and pause
Startled! And after lonely sojourning
In such a quiet and surrounded scene,
This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,
Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty
Of that huge amphitheatre of rich
And elmy fields, seems like society,
Conversing with the mind, and giving it
A livelier impulse, and a dance of thought;
And now, beloved SrowEY! I behold
Thy church-tower, and (methinks) the four huge elms Clust'ring, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe's mother dwell in peace! with light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
Rememb ring thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature's quietness
And solitary musings all my heart
Is soften'd, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.
Nether-Stowey, April 20, 1798.
FROM THE GREEK OF SIMONIDES.
WITHIN this tomb, by death's cold hand opprest
The Teian poet's mould'ring ashes rest;
For him the Muses sang, the Graces strove
In conflict sweet, and gave his soul to love.
Now on the banks of Acheron reclin'd,
One thought alone with sorrow chills his mind;
Not, that no more before his wondering eyes
The Sun in solemn majesty will rise;
Or that a banish'd wanderer from its home,
His shade is doom'd on Lethe's shores to roam.
He weeps to think that in his native groves
More happy suitors woo his former loves.
Yet still unchang'd by death the Muse's fire
Dwells in his breast, and wakes his slumbering lyre.
Written in the Blank Leaves of Southey's Madoc.
READER, if instant thy soul-lighted eyes
Perceive the claims of GENIUS as they rise,
Welcome this noblest effort of the NINE,
To deck with Epic wreath their English shrine;
Since there they rose, to emulate, at length.
The Mantuan sweetness, the Meonian strength,
And our green vales and silver shores along
Pour'd Eden's grand, imperishable song.
Again, in all their pomp, they strike the lyre,
Rapid and glowing with primeval fire;
And in the CAMBRIAN'S lofty story twine
Each human interest with each grace divine
Of rapt Imagination, when she soars
From common Talent's flat and glimmering shores,
Her lamp to illumine at that orbit prime
Whose fires are quenchless by the floods of time.
Thus, for the glory of the nineteenth age,
The EPIC MUSE awakes her sacred rage;
In no false ornaments her numbers shine,
The diamonds sparkle genuine from the mine.
What harmonies our captive ear engage!
What living landscapes glow in every page!
What characters, in nature's force display'd,
With coy discrimination's subtlest aid,
On Cimbric regions and on Indian shores
Call to the EPIC VERSE the DRAMA's powers!
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