And with unruffled mien, and placid sounds,
Contriving torture, and inflicting wounds.7

Nor, in their palmy walks and spicy groves,
The form benign of rural Pleasure roves;

No milk-maid's song, or hum of village talk,
Soothes the lone poet in his evening walk :
No willing arm the flail unwearied plies,

Where the mixed sounds of cheerful labour rise;
No blooming maids and frolic swains are seen
To pay gay homage to their harvest queen:
No heart-expanding scenes their eyes must prove
Of thriving industry and faithful love : 80
But shrieks and yells disturb the balmy air,
Dumb sullen looks of woe announce despair,
And angry eyes through dusky features glare.
Far from the sounding lash the Muses fly,
And sensual riot drowns each finer joy.

Nor less from the gay East, on essenced wings, Breathing unnamed perfumes, Contagion springs;

The soft luxurious plague alike pervades

The marble palaces and rural shades;

Hence thronged Augusta builds her rosy bowers, 40 And decks in summer wreaths her smoky towers; And hence, in summer bowers, Art's costly hand Pours courtly splendours o'er the dazzled land: The manners melt ;—one undistinguished blaze O'erwhelms the sober pomp of elder days; Corruption follows with gigantic stride,

And scarce vouchsafes his shameless front to hide :

The spreading leprosy taints every part,

Infects each limb, and sickens at the heart.

Simplicity, most dear of rural maids, **

Weeping resigns her violated shades :
Stern Independence from his glebe retires,
And anxious Freedom eyes her drooping fires;
By foreign wealth are British morals changed,
And Afric's sons, and India's, smile avenged.

For

you, whose tempered ardour long has borne: Untired the labour, and unmoved the scorn;

1

In Virtue's fasti be inscribed

your fame,

And uttered yours with Howard's honoured name;
Friends of the friendless-Hail, ye generous band!"

Whose efforts yet arrest Heaven's lifted hand,
Around whose steady brows, in union bright,
The civic wreath and Christian's palm unite:
Your merit stands, no greater and no less,
Without, or with the varnish of success:

But seek no more to break a nation's fall,

For

ye have saved yourselves-and that is all. Succeeding times your struggles, and their fate,

With mingled shame and triumph shall relate;
While faithful History, in her various page, 20
Marking the features of this motley age,

To shed a glory, and to fix a stain,

Tells how you strove, and that you strove in vain.

ON THE EXPECTED

GENERAL RISING OF THE FRENCH NATION,

IN 1792.

RISE, mighty nation, in thy strength,
And deal thy dreadful vengeance round;
Let thy great spirit, roused at length,
Strike hordes of despots to the ground!

Devoted land! thy mangled breast
Eager the royal vultures tear;

By friends betrayed, by foes opprest,-
And Virtue struggles with Despair.

The tocsin sounds! arise, arise!

Stern o'er each breast let Country reign;

Nor virgin's plighted hand nor sighs

Must now the ardent youth detain :

ON THE GENERAL RISING OF THE FRENCH.

Nor must the hind who tills thy soil
The ripened vintage stay to press,
Till Rapture crown the flowing bowl,

And Freedom boast of full success.

Briareus-like extend thy hands,

That every hand may crush a foe

;

In millions pour thy generous bands,

And end a warfare by a blow!

Then wash with sad repentant tears

Each deed that clouds thy glory's page;

Each phrensied start impelled by fears,

Each transient burst of headlong rage:

Then fold in thy relenting arms

Thy wretched outcasts where they roam;
From pining want and war's alarms,

O call the child of misery home!

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