His spirits rising as his toils increase,

Guards well what arts and industry have won,
And Freedom claims him for her first-born son,
Slaves fight for what were better cast away-
The chain that binds them, and a tyrant's sway;
But they, that fight for freedom, undertake
The noblest cause mankind can have at stake:-
Religion, virtue, truth, whate'er we call
A blessing-freedom is the pledge of all.
O Liberty! the pris'ner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion, and his theme;
Genius is thine, and thou art Fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee th' ennobling pow'rs of verse;
Heroic song from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires:
Place me where Winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing, if Liberty be there;

And I will sing at Liberty's dear feet,

In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat.

A. Sing where you please; in such a cause I grant

An English poet's privilege to rant;

But is not Freedom-at least is not ours

Too apt to play the wanton with her pow'rs,

Grow freakish, and, o'erleaping ev'ry mound,

Spread anarchy and terror all around?

B. Agreed. But would you sell or slay your horse For bounding and curvetting in his course?

Or if, when ridden with a careless rein,

He break away, and seek the distant plain?
No. His high mettle, under good control,

Gives him Olympic speed, and shoots him to the goal.
Let Discipline employ her wholesome arts ;

Let magistrates alert perform their parts;
Not sculk or put on a prudential mask,
As if their duty were a desp'rate task;
Let active Laws apply the needful curb,
To guard the Peace, that Riot would disturb;
And Liberty, preserv'd from wild excess,
Shall raise no feuds for armies to suppress.
When Tumult lately burst his prison-door,
And set plebeian thousands in a roar;
When he usurp'd Authority's just place,
And dar'd to look his master in the face;
When the rude rabble's watchword was-Destroy
And blazing London seem'd a second Troy;
Liberty blush'd, and hung her drooping head,
Beheld their progress with the deepest dread;
Blush'd, that effects like these she should produce,
Worse than the deeds of galley-slaves broke loose.

She loses in such storms her very name,
And fierce Licentiousness should bear the blame.
Incomparable gem! thy worth untold;

Cheap though blood-bought, and thrown away when sold;
May no foes ravish thee, and no false friend
Betray thee, while professing to defend!
Prize it, ye ministers; ye monarch's spare;
Ye patriots guard it with a miser's care.

A. Patriots, alas! the few that have been found,
Where most they flourish, upon English ground,
The country's need have scantily supplied,
And the last left the scene, when Chatham died,
B. Not so the virtue still adorns our age.
Though the chief actor died upon the stage.
In him Demosthenes was heard again;
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain;
She cloth'd him with authority and awe,
Spoke from his lips, and in his looks gave law.
His speech, his form, his action, full of grace,
And all his country beaming in his face,
He stood, as some inimitable hand

Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand.
No Sycophant or slave, that dar'd oppose
Her sacred cause, but trembled when he rose ;
And ev'ry venal stickler for the yoke
Felt himself crush'd at the first word he spoke.

Such men are rais'd to station and command,
When Providence means mercy to a land.
He speaks, and they appear; to him they owe
Skill to direct, and strength to strike the blow;
To manage with address, to seize with pow'r,
The crisis of a dark decisive hour:

So Gideon earned a vict❜ry not his own;
Subserviency his praise, and that alone.

Poor England! thou art a devoted deer,
Beset with ev'ry ill but that of fear.

The nations hunt; all mark thee for a prey;

They swarm around thee, and thou stand'st at bay,
Undaunted still, though wearied and perplex'd;

Once Chatham sav'd thee; but who saves thee next?
Alas! the tide of pleasure sweeps along

All, that should be the boast of British song.

'Tis not the wreath, that once adorn'd thy brow,
The prize of happier times, will serve thee now.
Our ancestry, a gallant Christian race,
Patterns of ev'ry virtue, ev'ry grace,

Confess'd a God; they kneel'd before they fought,
And prais'd him in the victories he wrought.
Now from the dust of ancient days bring forth

Their sober zeal, integrity, and worth ;
Courage, ungrac'd by these, affronts the skies,
Is but the fire without the sacrifice.`

The stream, that feeds the well-spring of the heart,
Not more invigorates life's noblest part,

Than Virtue quickens, with a warmth divine,
The pow'rs, that Sin has brought to a decline.
A. Th' inestimable Estimate of Brown

Rose like a paper-kite, and charm'd the town ;
But measures, plann'd and executed well,
Shifted the wind that rais'd it, and it fell.
He trod the very self-same ground you tread,
And Victory refuted all he said.

B. And yet his judgment was not fram'd amiss : Its error, if it err'd, was merely this

He thought the dying hour already come,
And a complete recovery struck him dumb.
But that effeminacy, folly, lust,

Enervate and enfeeble, and needs must;
And that a nation shamefully debas'd,
Will be despis'd and trampled on at last,
Unless sweet Penitence her pow'rs renew;
Is truth, if history itself be true.

There is a time, and Justice marks the date,
For long-forbearing Clemency to wait;
That hour elaps'd, th' incurable revolt
Is punish'd, and down comes the thunderbolt.
If Mercy then put by the threat'ning blow,
Must she perform the same kind office now?
May she! and, if offended Heav'n be still
Accessible, and pray'r prevail she will.
'Tis not, however, insolence and noise,
The tempest of tumultuary joys,
Nor is it yet despondence and dismay
Will win her visits, or engage her stay;
Pray'r only, and the penitential tear,

Can call her smiling down, and fix her here.
But when a country (one that I could name)
In prostitution sinks the sense of shame;
When infamous Venality, grown bold,
Writes on his bosom to be let or sold ;
When Perjury, that Heav'n-defying vice,
Sells oaths by tale, and at the lowest price;
Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made,
To turn a penny in the way of trade;
When Avrice starves (and never hides his face)
Two or three millions of the human race,
And not a tongue inquires, how, where, or when,
Though conscience will have twinges now and then ;

When profanation of the sacred ca se
In all its parts, times, ministry, and laws,
Bespeaks a land, once Christian, fall'n and lost,
In all, that wars against that title most;
What follows next let cities of great name,
And regions long since desolate proclaim.
Nineveh, Babylon, and ancient Rome,
Speak to the present times, and times to come;
They cry aloud in ev'ry careless ear,

Stop, while ye may; suspend your mad career;
O learn from our example and our fate,
Learn wisdom and repentance, ere too late.
Not only vice disposes and prepares
The Mind, that slumbers sweetly in her snares,
To stoop to Tyranny's usurp'd command,
And bend her polish'd neck beneath his hand,
(A dire effect, by one of Nature's laws,
Unchangeably connected with its cause);
But Providence himself will intervene,
To throw his dark displeasure o'er the scene.
All are his instruments; each form of war,
What burns at home, or threatens from afar,
Nature in arms, her elements at strife,
The storms, that overset the joys of life,
Are but his rods to scourge a guilty land,
And waste it at the bidding of his hand.
He gives the word, and Mutiny soon roars
In all her gates, and shakes her distant shores;
The standards of all nations are unfurl'd;
She has one foe, and that one foe the world:
And, if he doom that people with a frown,

And mark them with a seal of wrath press'd down,
Obduracy takes place; callous and tough,

The reprobated race grows judgment-proof:

Earth shakes beneath them, and Heav'n roars above;

But nothing scares them from the course they love.
To the lascivious pipe and wanton song,
That charm down fear, they frolic it along,
With mad rapidity and unconcern,
Down to the gulf, from which is no return.
They trust in navies, and their navies fail-
God's curse can cast away ten thousand sail!
They trust in armies, and their courage dies;
In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;
But all they trust in withers, as it must,
When He commands, in whom they place no trust.
Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast.
A long dispis'd, but now victorious, host:
Tyranny sends the chain, that must abridge

The noble sweep of all their privilege;
Gives Liberty the last, the mortal shock;
Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock.

A. Such lofty strains embellish what you teach : Mean you to prophesy, or but to preach?

B. I know the mind, that feels indeed the fire.
The muse imparts, and can command the lyre,
Acts with a force, and kindles with a zeal,
Whate'er the theme, that others never feel.
If human woes her soft attention claim,
A tender sympathy pervades the frame ;
She pours a sensibility divine

Along the nerve of ev'ry feeling line.
But if a deed, not tamely to be borne,

Fire indignation and a sense of scorn,

The strings are swept with such a pow'r, so loud, The storm of music shakes th' astonished crowd. So, when remote futurity is brought

Before the keen inquiry of her thought,

A terrible sagacity informs

The poet's heart; he looks to distant storms;
He hears the thunder ere the tempest low'rs;

And, arm'd with strength surpassing human pow'rs,
Seizes events ss yet unknown to man,

And darts his soul into the dawning plan.

Hence, in a Roman mouth, the graceful name

Of prophet and of poet was the same;

Hence British poets too the priesthood shar'd,
And ev'ry hallow'd druid was a bard.
But no prophetic fires to me belong :
I play with syllables, and sport in song.

A. At Westminster, where little poets strive
To set a distich upon six and five,

Where Discipline, helps op'ning buds of sense,
And makes his pupils proud with silver pence,
was a poet too; but modern taste

Is so refin'd, and delicate, and chaste,
That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms,
Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.
Thus, all success depending on an ear,
And thinking I might purchase it too dear,
If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound,
Aud truth cut short to make a period round,

I judged a man of sense could scarce do worse,

Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.
B. Thus reputation is a spur to wit,

And some wits flag through fear of losing it.
Give me the line that ploughs its stately course

Like a proud swan, conqu'ring the stream by force;