His thorns with streamers of continual praise ?
We too are friends to loyalty. We love
The king who loves the law; refpects his bounds,
And reigns content within them; him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free;
But recollecting still that he is man,
We trust him not too far. King though he be,
And king in England too, he may be weak,
And vain enough to be ambitious ftill;
May exercise amiss his proper pow'rs,
Or cover more than freemen chuse to grant :
Beyond that mark is treason." He is ours,
T'administer, to guard, t' adorn the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his,
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his Naves.
Mark now the diff'rence, ye that boast your
lovc
Of kings, between your loyalty and ours.
We love the man; the paltry pageant you.
We the chief patron of the commonwealth';
You
You the regardless author of its woes.
We, for the sake of liberty, a king;
You chains and bondage, for a tyrant's fake.
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason, is judicious, manly, free;
Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot that treads it in the dust.
Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish,
I would not be a king to be belov'd
Causeless, and daub'd with undiscerning praise,
Where love is mere attachment to the throne,
Not to the man who fills it as he ought,
Whose freedom is by suff'rance, and at will
Of a superior, he is never free,
Who lives, and is not weary of a life
Expos’d to manacles, deserves them well.
The state that strives for liberty, though foild,
And forc'd † abandon what she bravely sought,
Deserves
Deserves at least applause for her attempt,
And pity for her loss. But that's a cause
Not often unsuccessful : pow'r usurp'd
Is weakness when oppos’d; conscious of wrong,
'Tis pufillanimous and prone to flight.
But Naves that once conceive the glowing thought
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess
All that the contest calls for ; spirit, strength,
The scorn of danger, and united hearts,
The surelt presage of the good they seek.*
Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more
To France than all her lofses and defeats,
Old or of later date, by sea or land,
* The author hopes that he shall not be censured for unnecessary warmth upon so interesting a subject. He is aware that it is become almoít fashionable to stigmatize such sentimients as no better than empty declamation ; but it is an ill fymptom, and peculiar to modern times.
Her house of bondage, worse than that of old
Which God aveng'd on Pharaoh-the Bastile.
Ye horrid tow'rs, th' abode of broken hearts,
Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair,
That monarchs have supplied from age to age
With music such as suits their sov’reign ears,
The fighs and groans of miserable men!
There's not an English heart that would not leap
To hear that ye were fall’n at last; to know
That ev'n our enemies, so oft employ'd
In forging chains for us, themselves were free.
For he who values liberty, confines
His zeal for her predominance within
No narrow bounds; her cause engages him
Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man.
There dwell the most forlorn of human kind,
Immur'd though unaccus’d, condemn'd untry'd,
Cruelly spar’d, and hopeless of escape.
There, like the visionary emblem seen
By him of Babylon, life stands a stump,
And
And filletted about with hoops of brass,
Still lives, though all its pleafant boughs are gone,
To count the hour-bell and expect no change ;
And ever, as the sullen found is heard,
Still to reflect, that though a joyless note
To him whose moments all have one dull
pace,
Ten thousand rovers in the world at large
Account it music; that it suminons some
To theatre, or jocund feast or ball :
The wearied hireling finds it a release
From labor; and the lover, who has chid
Its long delay, feels ev'ry welcome stroke
Upon his heart-strings, trembling with delight-
To fly for refuge from distracting thought
To such amusements as ingenious woe
Contrives, hard- shifting, and without her tools
To read engraven on the mouldy walls,
In stagg’ring types, his predeceffor’s tale,
A sad memorial, and subjoin his own
To turn purveyor to an overgorg'd
And
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