Eighteen Hundred and Eleven

Bounteous in vain, with frantic man at strife, Glad Nature pours the means--the joys of life; In vain with orange blossoms scents the gale, The hills with olives clothes, with corn the vale; Man calls to Famine, nor invokes in vain, Disease and Rapine follow in her train; The tramp of marching hosts disturbs the plough, The sword, not sickle, reaps the harvest now, And where the Soldier gleans the scant supply. The helpless Peasant but retires to die; No laws his hut from licensed outrage shield, [3] And war's least horror is the ensanguined field.

Fruitful in vain, the matron counts with pride The blooming youths that grace her honoured side; No son returns to press her widow'd hand, Her fallen blossoms strew a foreign strand. --Fruitful in vain, she boasts her virgin race, Whom cultured arts adorn and gentlest grace; Defrauded of its homage, Beauty mourns, And the rose withers on its virgin thorns. Frequent, some stream obscure, some uncouth name By deeds of blood is lifted into fame; Oft o'er the daily page some soft-one bends To learn the fate of husband, brothers, friends, Or the spread map with anxious eye explores, [4] Its dotted boundaries and penciled shores, Asks where the spot that wrecked her bliss is found, And learns its name but to detest the sound.

And thinks't thou, Britain, still to sit at ease, An island Queen amidst thy subject seas, While the vext billows, in their distant roar, But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore? To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof, Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof? So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know, Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe. Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread, And whispered fears, creating what they dread; Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here, [5] There, the heart-witherings of unuttered fear, And that sad death, whence most affection bleeds, Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes. Thy baseless wealth dissolves in air away, Like mists that melt before the morning ray: No more on crowded mart or busy street Friends, meeting friends, with cheerful hurry greet; Sad, on the ground thy princely merchants bend Their altered looks, and evil days portend, And fold their arms, and watch with anxious breast The tempest blackening in the distant West.

Yes, thou must droop; thy Midas dream is o'er; The golden tide of Commerce leaves thy shore, Leaves thee to prove the alternate ills that haunt [6] Enfeebling Luxury and ghastly Want; Leaves thee, perhaps, to visit distant lands, And deal the gifts of Heaven with equal hands.

Yet, O my Country, name beloved, revered, By every tie that binds the soul endeared, Whose image to my infant senses came Mixt with Religion's light and Freedom's holy flame! If prayers may not avert, if 'tis thy fate To rank amongst the names that once were great, Not like the dim cold Crescent shalt thou fade, Thy debt to Science and the Muse unpaid; Thine are the laws surrounding states revere, Thine the full harvest of the mental year, Thine the bright stars in Glory's sky that shine, [7] And arts that make it life to live are thine. If westward streams the light that leaves thy shores, Still from thy lamp the streaming radiance pours. Wide spreads thy race from Ganges to the pole, O'er half the western world thy accents roll: Nations beyond the Apalachian hills Thy hand has planted and thy spirit fills: Soon as their gradual progress shall impart The finer sense of morals and of art, Thy stores of knowledge the new states shall know, And think thy thoughts, and with thy fancy glow; Thy Lockes, thy Paleys shall instruct their youth, Thy leading star direct their search for truth; Beneath the spreading Platan's tent-like shade, [8] Or by Missouri's rushing waters laid, "Old father Thames" shall be the Poets' theme, Of Hagley's woods the enamoured virgin dream, And Milton's tones the raptured ear enthrall, Mixt with the roar of Niagara's fall; In Thomson's glass the ingenuous youth shall learn A fairer face of Nature to discern; Nor of the Bards that swept the British lyre Shall fade one laurel, or one note expire. Then, loved Joanna, to admiring eyes Thy storied groups in scenic pomp shall rise; Their high soul'd strains and Shakespear's noble rage Shall with alternate passion shake the stage. Some youthful Basil from thy moral lay [9] With stricter hand his fond desires shall sway; Some Ethwald, as the fleeting shadows pass, Start at his likeness in the mystic glass; The tragic Muse resume her just controul, With pity and with terror purge the soul, While wide o'er transatlantic realms thy name Shall live in light, and gather all its fame.

Where wanders Fancy down the lapse of years Shedding o'er imaged woes untimely tears? Fond moody Power! as hopes--as fears prevail, She longs, or dreads, to lift the awful veil, On visions of delight now loves to dwell, Now hears the shriek of woe or Freedom's knell: Perhaps, she says, long ages past away, [10] And set in western waves our closing day, Night, Gothic night, again may shade the plains Where Power is seated, and where Science reigns; England, the seat of arts, be only known By the gray ruin and the mouldering stone; That Time may tear the garland from her brow, And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now.

Yet then the ingenuous youth whom Fancy fires With pictured glories of illustrious sires, With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take From the blue mountains, or Ontario's lake, With fond adoring steps to press the sod By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod; On Isis' banks to draw inspiring air, [11] From Runnymede to send the patriot's prayer; In pensive thought, where Cam's slow waters wind, To meet those shades that ruled the realms of mind; In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow, And hang fresh wreaths round Newton's awful brow. Oft shall they seek some peasant's homely shed, Who toils, unconscious of the mighty dead, To ask where Avon's winding waters stray, And thence a knot of wild flowers bear away; Anxious enquire where Clarkson, friend of man, Or all-accomplished Jones his race began; If of the modest mansion aught remains Where Heaven and Nature prompted Cowper's strains; Where Roscoe, to whose patriot breast belong [12] The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song, Led Ceres to the black and barren moor Where Ceres never gained a wreath before[1]: With curious search their pilgrim steps shall rove By many a ruined tower and proud alcove, Shall listen for those strains that soothed of yore Thy rock, stern Skiddaw, and thy fall, Lodore; Feast with Dun Edin's classic brow their sight, And visit "Melross by the pale moonlight."

But who their mingled feelings shall pursue When London's faded glories rise to view? The mighty city, which by every road, [13] In floods of people poured itself abroad; Ungirt by walls, irregularly great, No jealous drawbridge, and no closing gate; Whose merchants (such the state which commerce brings) Sent forth their mandates to dependant kings: Streets, where the turban'd Moslem, bearded Jew, And woolly Afric, met the brown Hindu; Where through each vein spontaneous plenty flowed, Where Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed. Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street; Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, The broken stair with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, [14] By scattered hamlets trace its antient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way.

With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread The hallowed mansions of the silent dead, Shall enter the long isle and vaulted dome Where Genius and where Valour find a home; Awe-struck, midst chill sepulchral marbles breathe, Where all above is still, as all beneath; Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn, The ponderous mass of Johnson's form to greet, Or breathe the prayer at Howard's sainted feet.

Perhaps some Briton, in whose musing mind [15] Those ages live which Time has cast behind, To every spot shall lead his wondering guests On whose known site the beam of glory rests: Here Chatham's eloquence in thunder broke, Here Fox persuaded, or here Garrick spoke; Shall boast how Nelson, fame and death in view, To wonted victory led his ardent crew, In England's name enforced, with loftiest tone[2], Their duty,--and too well fulfilled his own: How gallant Moore[3], as ebbing life dissolved, But hoped his country had his fame absolved. Or call up sages whose capacious mind [16] Left in its course a track of light behind; Point where mute crowds on Davy's lips reposed, And Nature's coyest secrets were disclosed; Join with their Franklin, Priestley's injured name, Whom, then, each continent shall proudly claim.

Oft shall the strangers turn their eager feet The rich remains of antient art to greet, The pictured walls with critic eye explore, And Reynolds be what Raphael was before. On spoils from every clime their eyes shall gaze, Ægyptian granites and the Etruscan vase; And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson just [17] By Time's slow finger written in the dust.

There walks a Spirit o'er the peopled earth, Secret his progress is, unknown his birth; Moody and viewless as the changing wind, No force arrests his foot, no chains can bind; Where'er he turns, the human brute awakes, And, roused to better life, his sordid hut forsakes: He thinks, he reasons, glows with purer fires, Feels finer wants, and burns with new desires: Obedient Nature follows where he leads; The steaming marsh is changed to fruitful meads; The beasts retire from man's asserted reign, And prove his kingdom was not given in vain. Then from its bed is drawn the ponderous ore, [18] Then Commerce pours her gifts on every shore, Then Babel's towers and terrassed gardens rise, And pointed obelisks invade the skies; The prince commands, in Tyrian purple drest, And Ægypt's virgins weave the linen vest. Then spans the graceful arch the roaring tide, And stricter bounds the cultured fields divide. Then kindles Fancy, then expands the heart, Then blow the flowers of Genius and of Art; Saints, Heroes, Sages, who the land adorn, Seem rather to descend than to be born; Whilst History, midst the rolls consigned to fame, With pen of adamant inscribes their name.

The Genius now forsakes the favoured shore, [19] And hates, capricious, what he loved before; Then empires fall to dust, then arts decay, And wasted realms enfeebled despots sway; Even Nature's changed; without his fostering smile Ophir no gold, no plenty yields the Nile; The thirsty sand absorbs the useless rill, And spotted plagues from putrid fens distill. In desert solitudes then Tadmor sleeps, Stern Marius then o'er fallen Carthage weeps; Then with enthusiast love the pilgrim roves To seek his footsteps in forsaken groves, Explores the fractured arch, the ruined tower, Those limbs disjointed of gigantic power; Still at each step he dreads the adder's sting, [20] The Arab's javelin, or the tiger's spring; With doubtful caution treads the echoing ground. And asks where Troy or Babylon is found.