Spare us yet awhile, Father and God! O! spare us yet awhile, Oh ! let not English women drag their flight Fainting beneath the burden of their babes, Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday Laughed at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands,

all Who ever gazed 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, Who 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 the insulted ocean, And let them toss as idly on its waves As the vile sea-weed, which some mountain-blast Swept from our shores! And oh! 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 mis-timed; 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 tagged
Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
Pulled 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 nursed them. Others,

meanwhile,
Dote with a mad idolatry; and all
Who will not fall before their images,
And yield them worship, they are enemies
Even of their country!

Such have I been deemed
But, О 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 honorable things,

Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being ?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my

soul Unborrowed 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 roared and died away In the distant tree : which heard, and only heard In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze; The light has left the summit of the hill, Though 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! recalled 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 nook, l'his 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 Stowey! I behold
Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge

elms
Clustering, 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 dweil in peace! With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature's quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.
Nether Stowey, April 28th, 1798.

FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER.

A WAR ECLOGUE.
WITH AN APOLOGETIC PREFACE.*

The Scene a desolated Tract in La Vendée. FAMINE is dis

covered lying on the ground; to her enter FIRE and SLAUGHTER. Famine. SISTERS! sisters! who sent you

here? Slaughter. [to Fire.] I will whisper it in her ear.

Fire. No! no! no!
Spirits hear what spirits tell:
'Twill make a holiday in Hell.

No! no! no!
Myself I named him once below,
And all the souls that damned be,
Leaped up at once in anarchy,
Clapped their hands and danced for glee.
They no longer heeded me;

* Printed at the end of the volmine,

But laughed to hear Hell's burning rafters
Unwillingly re-echo laughters !

No! no! no!
Spirits hear what spirits tell:
'Twill make a holiday in Hell!

Fam. Whisper it, sister! so and so !
In a dark hint, soft and slow.

Slau. Letters four do form his name-
And who sent you ?
Both.

The same! the same!
Slau. He came by stealth, and unlocked

my

den, And I have drunk the blood since then Of thrice three hundred thousand men.

Both. Who bade you do it ?
Slau.

The same! the same!
Letters four do form his name.
He let me loose, and cried Halloo !
To him alone the praise is due.

Fam. Thanks, sister, thanks! the men have bled, Their wives and their children faint for bread. I stood in a swampy field of battle; With bones and skulls I made a rattle, To frighten the wolf and carrion-crow And the homeless dog—but they would not go. So off I flew: for how could I bear To see them gorge their dainty fare? I heard a groan and a peevish squall, And through the chink of a cottage-wallCan you guess what I saw there?

Both. Whisper it, sister! in our ear.

Fam. A baby beat it's dying mother:
I had starved the one and was starving the other !

Both. Who bade you do't ?
Fam.

The same! the same !