Life rising still on life, in higher tone,
Perfection forms, and with perfection bliss.
In universal nature this clear shown,

Nor needeth proof; to prove it were, I wis,

To prove the beauteous world excels the brute abyss.

"Is not the field with lively culture green, A sight more joyous than the dead morass? Do not the skies, with active ether clean, And fann'd by sprightly zephyrs, far surpass The foul November fogs, and slumberous mass, With which sad Nature veils her drooping face? Does not the mountain-stream, as clear as glass, Gay dancing on, the putrid pool disgrace? The same in all holds true, but chief in human

race.

"It was not by vile loitering in ease

That Greece obtain'd the brighter palm of art, That soft yet ardent Athens learnt to please, To keen the wit, and to sublime the heart, In all supreme! complete in every part! It was not thence majestic Rome arose, And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart: For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows; Renown is not the child of indolent repose.

"Had unambitious mortals minded nought, But in loose joy their time to wear away; Had they alone the lap of dalliance sought, Pleas'd on her pillow their dull heads to lay, Rude Nature's state had been our state to-day; No cities e'er their towery fronts had rais'd, No arts had made us opulent and gay; With brother-brutes the human race had graz'd; None e'er had soar'd to fame, none honor'd been, none prais'd.

"Great Homer's song had never fir'd the breast
To thirst of glory, and heroic deeds;
Sweet Maro's Muse, sunk in inglorious rest,
Had silent slept amid the Mincian reeds:
The wits of modern time had told their beads,
And monkish legions been their only strains;
Our Milton's Eden had lain wrapt in weeds,
Our Shakspeare stroll'd and laugh'd with War-
wick swains,

Ne had my master Spenser charm'd his Mulla's plains.

"Dumb too had been the sage historic Muse, And perish'd all the sons of ancient fame; Those starry lights of virtue, that diffuse Through the dark depth of time their vivid flame, Had all been lost with such as have no name. Who then had scorn'd his ease for others' good? Who then had toil'd rapacious men to tame? Who in the public breach devoted stood, And for his country's cause been prodigal of blood?

"But should your hearts to fame unfeeling be,
If right I read, your pleasure all require:
Then hear how best may be obtain'd this fee,
How best enjoy'd this nature's wide desire.
Toil, and be glad! let Industry inspire
Into your quicken'd limbs her buoyant breath!
Who does not act is dead; absorpt entire
In miry sloth, no pride, no joy he hath :

O leaden-hearted men to be in love with death!

"Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, When drooping health and spirits go amiss? How tasteless then whatever can be given! Health is the vital principle of bliss, And exercise of health. In proof of this, Behold the wretch, who slugs his life away, Soon swallow'd in disease's sad abyss; While he whom toil has brac'd, or manly play, Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day.

"O, who can speak the vigorous joy of health? Unclogg'd the body, unobscur'd the mind: The morning rises gay, with pleasing stealth, The temperate evening falls serene and kind. In health the wiser brutes true gladness find. See! how the younglings frisk along the meads, As May comes on, and wakes the balmy wind; Rampant with life, their joy all joy exceeds: Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleas aunce breeds?

"But here, instead, is foster'd every ill,
Which or distemper'd minds or bodies know.
Come then, my kindred spirits! do not spill
Your talents here. This place is but a show,
Whose charms delude you to the den of woe:
Come, follow me, I will direct you right,

Where pleasure's roses, void of serpents, grow, Sincere as sweet; come, follow this good knight, And you will bless the day that brought him to your sight.

"Some he will lead to courts, and some to camps
To senates some, and public sage debates,
Where, by the solemn gleam of midnight-lamps,
The world is pois'd, and manag'd mighty states;
To high discovery some, that new-creates
The face of Earth; some to the thriving mart;
Some to the rural reign, and softer fates;
To the sweet Muses some, who raise the heart;
All glory shall be yours, all nature, and all art.
66 There are, I see, who listen to my lay,
Who wretched sigh for virtue, but despair.
All may be done,' methinks I hear them say,
Ev'n death despis'd by generous actions fair;
All, but for those who to these bowers repair,
Their every power dissolv'd in luxury,
To quit of torpid sluggishness the lair,
And from the powerful arms of sloth get free.
"Tis rising from the dead-Alas!-it cannot be !'

"Would you then learn to dissipate the band
Of these huge threatening difficulties dire,
That in the weak man's way like lions stand,
His soul appal, and damp his rising fire?
Resolve, resolve, and to be men aspire.
Exert that noblest privilege, alone,

Here to mankind indulg'd: control desire :
Let godlike Reason, from her sovereign throne,
Speak the commanding word-I will-and it is
done.

"Heavens! can you then thus waste, in shameful wise,

Your few important days of trial here?
Heirs of eternity! yborn to rise
Through endless states of being, still more near
To bliss approaching, and perfection clear,

ANCIENT AND MODERN ITALY COMPARED :

BEING THE FIRST PART OF

LIBERTY,

A POEM.

The Contents of Part I.

The following poem is thrown into the form of a poetical vision. Its scene the ruins of ancient Rome. The goddess of Liberty, who is supposed to speak through the whole, appears, characterized as British Liberty. Gives a view of ancient Italy, and particularly of republican Rome, in all her magnificence and glory. This contrasted by modern Italy; its valleys, mountains, culture, cities, people: the difference appearing strongest in the capital city, Rome. The ruins of the great works of Liberty more magnificent than the borrowed pomp of Oppression; and from them revived Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture. The old Romans apostrophized, with regard to the sev eral melancholy changes in Italy: Horace, Tully, and Virgil, with regard to their Tibur, Tusculum, and Naples. That once finest and most ornamented part of Italy, all along the coast of Baïs, how changed. This desolation of Italy applied to Britain. Address to the goddess of Liberty, that she would deduce from the first ages, her chief establishments, the description of which constitutes the subject of the following parts of this poem. She assents, and commands what she says to be sung in Britain; whose happiness, arising from freedom, and a limited monarchy, she marks. An immediate vision attends, and paints Invocation.

her words.

O MY lamented Talbot! while with thee
The Muse gay rov'd the glad Hesperian round,
And drew th' inspiring breath of ancient arts;
Ah! little thought she her returning verse
Should sing our darling subject to thy shade.
And does the mystic veil, from mortal beam,
Involve those eyes where every virtue smil❜d,
And all thy father's candid spirit shone?
The light of reason, pure, without a cloud;
Full of the generous heart, the mild regard ;
Honor disdaining blemish, cordial faith,
And limpid truth, that looks the very soul.
But to the death of mighty nations turn,
My strain; be there absorpt the private tear.

Musing, I lay; warm from the sacred walks,
Where at each step imagination burns:
While scatter'd wide around, awful, and hoar,
Lies, a vast monument, once glorious Rome,
The tomb of empire! ruins! that efface
Whate'er, of finish'd, modern pomp can boast.
Snatch'd by these wonders to that world wner-
thought

Unfetter'd ranges, Fancy's magic hand
Led me anew o'er all the solemn scene,
Still in the mind's pure eye more solemn drest.
When straight, methought, the fair majestic power
Of Liberty appear'd. Not, as of old,

Extended in her hand the cap, and rod,

Whose slave-enlarging touch gave double life

But her bright temples bound with British oak,
And naval honors nodded on her brow.
Sublime of port: loose o'er her shoulder flow'd
Her sea-green robe, with constellations gay.
An island-goddess now; and her high care
The queen of isles, the mistress of the main.
My heart beat filial transport at the sight;
And, as she mov'd to speak, th' awaken'd Muse
Listen'd intense. Awhile she look'd around,
With mournful eye the well-known ruins mark'd,
And then, her sighs repressing, thus began.

"Mine are these wonders, all thou see'st is
mine;

But, ah, how chang'd! the falling poor remains
Of what exalted once th' Ausonian shore.
Look back through time; and, rising from the gloom,
Mark the dread scene, that paints whate'er I say.
"The great republic see! that glow'd, sublime,
With the mixt freedom of a thousand states:
Rais'd on the thrones of kings her curule chair,
And by her fasces aw'd the subject world.
See busy millions quickening all the land,
With cities throng'd, and teeming culture high:
For Nature then smil'd on her free-born sons,
And pour'd the plenty that belongs to men.
Behold, the country cheering, villas rise,
In lively prospect;-by the secret lapse

Of brooks now lost and streams renown'd in song:
In Umbria's closing vales, or on the brow
Of her brown hills that breathe the scented gale
On Baïe's viny coast; where peaceful seas,
Fann'd by kind zephyrs, ever kiss the shore;
And suns unclouded shine, through purest air:
Or in the spacious neighborhood of Rome;
Far-shining upward to the Sabine hills.
'To Anio's roar, and Tibur's olive shade;
To where Præneste lifts her airy brow;
Or downward spreading to the sunny shore,
Where Alba breathes the freshness of the main.
"See distant mountains leave their valleys dry,
And o'er the proud arcade their tribute pour,
To lave imperial Rome. For ages laid,
Deep, massy, firm, diverging every way,
With tombs of heroes sacred, see her roads:
By various nations trod, and suppliant kings;
With legions flaming, or with triumph gay.
"Full in the centre of these wondrous works,
The pride of Earth! Rome in her glory see!
Behold her demigods, in senate met;
All head to counsel, and all heart to act:
The common-weal inspiring every tongue
With fervent eloquence, unbrib'd, and bold;
Ere tame corruption taught the servile herd
To rank obedient to a master's voice.

"Her forum see, warm, popular, and loud,
In trembling wonder hush'd, when the two sires,*
As they, the private father greatly quell'd,
Stood up the public fathers of the state.
See Justice judging there, in human shape.
Hark, how with Freedom's voice it thunders high,
Or in soft murmurs sinks to Tully's tongue.
"Her tribes, her census, see; her generous troops,
Whose pay was glory, and their best reward,
Free for their country and for me to die;

Ere mercenary murder grew a trade.

Mark, as the purple triumph waves along,

The highest pomp and lowest fall of life.

Her festive games, the school of heroes, see;

* L. J. Brutus, and Virginius.

Her circus, ardent with contending youth;
Her streets, her temples, palaces, and baths,
Full of fair forms, of beauty's eldest-born,
And of a people cast in virtue's mould.
While sculpture lives around, and Asian hills
Lend their best stores to heave the pillar'd dome :
All that to Roman strength the softer touch
Of Grecian art can join. But language fails
To paint this sun, this centre of mankind;
Where every virtue, glory, treasure, art,
Attracted strong, in heighten'd lustre met.
"Need I the contrast mark? unjoyous view!
A land in all, in government, in arts,
In virtue, genius, earth and heaven, revers'a,
Who but, these far-fam'd ruins to behold,
Proofs of a people, whose heroic aims
Soar'd far above the little selfish sphere
Of doubting modern life; who but, inflam'd
With classic zeal, these consecrated scenes
Of men and deeds to trace,-unhappy land,
Would trust thy wilds, and cities loose of sway?
"Are these the vales, that, once, exulting states
In their warm bosom fed? the mountains these,
On whose high-blooming sides my sons, of old,
I bred to glory? the dejected towns,
Where, mean, and sordid, life can scarce subsist,
The scenes of ancient opulence, and pomp?

"Come! by whatever sacred name disguis'd,
Oppression, come' and in thy works rejoice!
See Nature's richest plains to putrid fens
Turn'd by thy fury. From their cheerful bounds,
She raz'd th' enlivening village, farm, and seat.
First, rural toil, by thy rapacious hand
Robb'd of his poor reward, resign'd the plow;
And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe.
"Tis thine entire. The lonely swain himself,
Who loves at large along the grassy downs
His flocks to pasture, thy drear champain flies.
Far as the sickening eye can sweep around,
"Tis all one desert, desolate, and grey,
Graz'd by the sullen buffalo alone;
And where the rank uncultivated growth
Of rotting ages taints the passing gale,
Beneath the baleful blast the city pines,
Or sinks enfeebled, or infected burns.
Beneath it mourns the solitary road,
Roll'd in rude mazes o'er th'abandon'd waste;
While ancient ways, ingulf'd, are seen no more.

"Such thy dire plains, thou self-destroyer! foc To human-kind! Thy mountains too, profuse, Where savage nature blooms, seem their sad plair. To raise against thy desolating rod. There on the breezy brow, where thriving states, And famous cities, once, to the pleas'd Sun, Far other scenes of rising culture spread, Pale shine thy ragged towns. Neglected round, Each harvest pines; the livid, lean produce Of heartless labor: while thy hated joys, Not proper pleasure, lift the lazy hand. Better to sink in sloth the woes of life, Than wake their rage with unavailing toii. Hence drooping Art almost to Nature leaves The rude unguided year. Thin wave the gifts Of yellow Ceres, thin the radiant blush Of orchard reddens in the warmest ray. To weedy wildness run, no rural wealth (Such as dictators fed) the garden pours. Crude the wild olive flows, and foul the vine, Nor juice Cœcubian, nor Falernian, more, Streams life and joy, save in the Muse's bowl.