Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, His soul asserts not its humanity?
That man's mild nature rises not in war
Against a king's employ? No-'tis not strange : He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives, Just as his father did; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet (To those who know not nature, nor deduce The future from the present) it may seem That not one slave who suffers from the crimes Of this unnatural being, not one wretch Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm To dash him from his throne!
That, basking in the sunshine of a court, Fatten on its corruption-what are they? The drones of the community. They feed On the mechanic's labour; the starved hind For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labour a protracted death To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.
Whence think'st thou kings and parasites arose ? Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces, and bring
Their daily bread ?-From vice, black loathsome vice; From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong; From all that genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
Revenge, and murder.-And, when Reason's voice, Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war, and misery-that virtue Is peace, and happiness, and harmony; When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood; kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound From Time's light footfall, the minutest wave That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble! Ay! to-day Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze That flashes desolation, strong the arm That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes: That mandate is a thunder-peal that died In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash On which the midnight closed; and on that arm The worm has made his meal.
As great in his humility as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good,
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impassive spirit ;-when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no more; Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve; Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that rolled But to appal the guilty. Yes, the grave
Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost Withered that arm: but the unfading fame Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb; The deathless memory of that man whom kings Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance With which the happy spirit contemplates
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,
Shall never pass away.
Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen: for kings And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
High over flaming Rome with savage joy
Loured like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new-created sense within his soul
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound;
Think'st thou his grandeur had not overcome The force of human kindness? and, when Rome With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down, Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood, Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak
Peace, harmony, and love. The Universe,
In nature's silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy,- All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
The sword which stabs his peace.; he cherisheth The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up The tyrant whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Lights it the great alone?
Yon sun, Yon silver beams,
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, the peace Which men alone appreciate?
Spirit of Nature! no!
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs Alike in every human heart.
Thou aye erectest there
Thy throne of power unappealable: Thou art the judge beneath whose nod Man's brief and frail authority
Is powerless as the wind
That passeth idly by :
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth
The show of human justice
As God surpasses man.
Spirit of Nature! thou
Life of interminable multitudes;
Soul of those mighty spheres
Whose changeless paths through heaven's deep silence lie; Soul of that smallest being
The dwelling of whose life Is one faint April sun-gleam ;- Man, like these passive things, Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : Like theirs, his age of endless peace,
Which time is fast maturing, Will swiftly, surely, come;
And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest Will be without a flaw
Marring its perfect symmetry.
4. How beautiful this night! The balmiest sigh Which vernal Zephyrs breathe in Evening's ear Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene.
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which Love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks whence icicles depend, So stainless that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace ;-all form a scene Where musing Solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness, Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone, - So cold, so bright, so still.
The orb of day, In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And vesper's image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully;
Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns, the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.
Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven ?-that dark-red smoke Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round. Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne ! Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage:-loud and more loud The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene, And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud.-Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts That beat with anxious life at sunset there; How few survive, how few are beating now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapped round its struggling powers.
The grey morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path Of the outsallying victors: far behind,`
Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen-
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
I see thee shrink, Surpassing Spirit !-wert thou human else? I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet
Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused and irretrievable.
Man's evil nature, that apology
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood
Which desolates the discord-wasted land:
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; And, where its venomed exhalations spread Ruin and death and woe, where millions lay Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness
Surpassing fabled Eden.
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord
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