Forth steps the spruce philosopher, and tells Of homogeneal and discordant springs And principles; of causes how they work By necessary laws their sure effects;Of action and reaction. He has found The source of the disease that nature feels, And bids the world take heart and banish fear.
Thou fool! will thy discovery of the cause Suspend the effect, or heal it? Has not God Still wrought by means since first He made the world, And did He not of old employ His means To drown it? What is His creation less Than a capacious reservoir of means Formed for His use, and ready at His will?
Go, dress thine eyes with eye-salve, ask of Him, Or ask of whomsoever He has taught, And learn, though late, the genuine cause of all.
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--My country! and while yet a nook is left, Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed With dripping rains, or withered by a frost, I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies And fields without a flower, for warmer France With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers.
To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire Upon thy foes, was never meant my task;But I can feel thy fortune, and partake Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart As any thunderer there. And I can feel Thy follies too, and with a just disdain Frown at effeminates, whose very looks Reflect dishonour on the land I love.
How, in the name of soldiership and sense, Should England prosper, when such things, as smooth And tender as a girl, all essenced o'er With odours, and as profligate as sweet, Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath, And love when they should fight; when such as these Presume to lay their hand upon the ark Of her magnificent and awful cause?
Time was when it was praise and boast enough In every clime, and travel where we might, That we were born her children. Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Farewell those honours, and farewell with them The hope of such hereafter. They have fallen Each in his field of glory; one in arms, And one in council;--Wolfe upon the lap Of smiling victory that moment won, And Chatham, heart-sick of his country's shame.
They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still Consulting England's happiness at home, Secured it by an unforgiving frown If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought, Put so much of his heart into his act, That his example had a magnet's force, And all were swift to follow whom all loved.
Those suns are set. Oh, rise some other such!
Or all that we have left is empty talk Of old achievements, and despair of new.
Now hoist the sail, and let the streamers float Upon the wanton breezes. Strew the deck With lavender, and sprinkle liquid sweets, That no rude savour maritime invade The nose of nice nobility. Breathe soft, Ye clarionets, and softer still, ye flutes, That winds and waters lulled by magic sounds May bear us smoothly to the Gallic shore.
True, we have lost an empire--let it pass.
True, we may thank the perfidy of France That picked the jewel out of England's crown, With all the cunning of an envious shrew.
And let that pass--'twas but a trick of state.
A brave man knows no malice, but at once Forgets in peace the injuries of war, And gives his direst foe a friend's embrace.
And shamed as we have been, to the very beard Braved and defied, and in our own sea proved Too weak for those decisive blows that once Insured us mastery there, we yet retain Some small pre-eminence, we justly boast At least superior jockeyship, and claim The honours of the turf as all our own.
Go then, well worthy of the praise ye seek, And show the shame ye might conceal at home, In foreign eyes!--be grooms, and win the plate, Where once your nobler fathers won a crown!--'Tis generous to communicate your skill To those that need it. Folly is soon learned, And, under such preceptors, who can fail?
There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know. The shifts and turns, The expedients and inventions multiform To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win--To arrest the fleeting images that fill The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, And force them sit, till he has pencilled off A faithful likeness of the forms he views;Then to dispose his copies with such art That each may find its most propitious light, And shine by situation, hardly less Than by the labour and the skill it cost, Are occupations of the poet's mind So pleasing, and that steal away the thought With such address from themes of sad import, That, lost in his own musings, happy man!
He feels the anxieties of life, denied Their wonted entertainment, all retire.
Such joys has he that sings. But ah! not such, Or seldom such, the hearers of his song.
Fastidious, or else listless, or perhaps Aware of nothing arduous in a task They never undertook, they little note His dangers or escapes, and haply find There least amusement where he found the most.
But is amusement all? studious of song And yet ambitious not to sing in vain, I would not trifle merely, though the world Be loudest in their praise who do no more.
Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay?
It may correct a foible, may chastise The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress, Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch;But where are its sublimer trophies found?
What vice has it subdued? whose heart reclaimed By rigour, or whom laughed into reform?
Alas, Leviathan is not so tamed.
Laughed at, he laughs again; and, stricken hard, Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales, That fear no discipline of human hands.
