The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore Collected by Himself. In Ten Volumes |
 | I, II. |
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TO THOMAS HUME, ESQ. M.D.
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| III, IV. |
| V. |
| VI, VII. |
| VIII, IX. |
| X. |
 | The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore |  |
TO THOMAS HUME, ESQ. M.D.
FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.
Soft sighs the lover through his sweet segar,
And fills the ears of some consenting she
With puffs and vows, with smoke and constancy.
The patriot, fresh from Freedom's councils come,
Now pleas'd retires to lash his slaves at home;
Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia's charms,
And dream of freedom in his bondsmaid's arms.
Come, let me lead thee o'er this “second Rome!”
Where tribunes rule, where dusky Davi bow,
And what was Goose-Creek once is Tiber now :—
This embryo capital, where Fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which second-sighted seers, ev'n now, adorn
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn,
Though nought but woods and J---n they see,
Where streets should run and sages ought to be.
The dying sun prepares his golden grave.
Oh mighty river! oh ye banks of shade!
Ye matchless scenes, in nature's morning made,
While still, in all th' exuberance of prime,
She pour'd her wonders, lavishly sublime,
Nor yet had learn'd to stoop, with humbler care,
From grand to soft, from wonderful to fair;—
Say, were your towering hills, your boundless floods,
Your rich savannas and majestic woods,
Where bards should meditate and heroes rove,
And woman charm, and man deserve her love,—
Its own half-organised, half-minded race
Of weak barbarians, swarming o'er its breast,
Like vermin gender'd on the lion's crest?
Were none but brutes to call that soil their home,
Where none but demigods should dare to roam?
Or worse, thou wondrous world! oh! doubly worse,
Did heaven design thy lordly land to nurse
The motley dregs of every distant clime,
Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime
Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere,
In full malignity to rankle here?
Where the breeze murmurs and the fire-fly shines.
The sculptur'd image of that veteran chief
Who lost the rebel's in the hero's name,
And climb'd o'er prostrate loyalty to fame;
Beneath whose sword Columbia's patriot train
Cast off their monarch, that their mob might reign.
Thou more than soldier and just less than sage!
Of peace too fond to act the conqueror's part,
Too long in camps to learn a statesman's art,
Nature design'd thee for a hero's mould,
But, ere she cast thee, let the stuff grow cold.
Thy fate made thee and forc'd thee to be great.
Yet Fortune, who so oft, so blindly sheds
Her brightest halo round the weakest heads,
Found thee undazzled, tranquil as before,
Proud to be useful, scorning to be more;
Renown the meed, but self-applause the aim;
All that thou wert reflects less fame on thee,
Far less, than all thou didst forbear to be.
Nor yet the patriot of one land alone,—
For, thine's a name all nations claim their own;
And every shore, where breath'd the good and brave,
Echo'd the plaudits thy own country gave.
On yonder dome, and, in those princely halls,—
If thou canst hate, as sure that soul must hate,
Which loves the virtuous, and reveres the great,—
If thou canst loathe and execrate with me
The poisonous drug of French philosophy,
That nauseous slaver of these frantic times,
With which false liberty dilutes her crimes,—
If thou hast got, within thy freeborn breast,
One pulse that beats more proudly than the rest,
With honest scorn for that inglorious soul,
Which creeps and winds beneath a mob's control,
Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod,
And makes, like Egypt, every beast its god,
Rank must be reverenc'd, even the rank that's there:
So here I pause—and now, dear Hume, we part:
But oft again, in frank exchange of heart,
Thus let us meet, and mingle converse dear
By Thames at home, or by Potowmac here.
O'er lake and marsh, through fevers and through fogs,
Midst bears and yankees, democrats and frogs,
Thy foot shall follow me, thy heart and eyes
With me shall wonder, and with me despise.
With thee conversing, through that land I love,
Where, like the air that fans her fields of green,
Her freedom spreads, unfever'd and serene;
And sovereign man can condescend to see
The throne and laws more sovereign still than he.
The “black Aspasia” of the present ------ of the United States, inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas, has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democrat wits in America.
“On the original location of the ground now allotted for the seat of the Federal City (says Mr. Weld) the identical spot on which the capitol now stands was called Rome. This anecdote is related by many as a certain prognostic of the future magnificence of this city, which is to be, as it were, a second Rome.” —Weld's Travels, letter iv.
A little stream runs through the city, which, with intolerable affectation, they have styled the Tiber. It was originally called Goose-Creek.
“To be under the necessity of going through a deep wood for one or two miles, perhaps, in order to see a next-door neighbour, and in the same city, is a curious and, I believe, a novel circumstance.” —Weld, letter iv.
The Federal City (if it must be called a city) has not been much increased since Mr. Weld visited it. Most of the public buildings, which were then in some degree of forwardness, have been since utterly suspended. The hotel is already a ruin; a great part of its roof has fallen in, and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the miserable Scotch and Irish emigrants. The President's house, a very noble structure, is by no means suited to the philosophical humility of its present possessor, who inhabits but a corner of the mansion himself, and abandons the rest to a state of uncleanly desolation, which those who are not philosophers cannot look at without regret. This grand edifice is encircled by a very rude paling, through which a common rustic stile introduces the visiters of the first man in America. With respect to all that is within the house, I shall imitate the prudent forbearance of Herodotus, and say, τα δε εν απορρητω.
The private buildings exhibit the same characteristic display of arrogant speculation and premature ruin; and the few ranges of houses which were begun some years ago have remained so long waste and unfinished that they are now for the most part dilapidated.
The picture which Buffon and De Pauw have drawn of the American Indian, though very humiliating, is, as far as I can judge, much more correct than the flattering representations which Mr. Jefferson has given us. See the Notes on Virginia, where this gentleman endeavours to disprove in general the opinion maintained so strongly by some philosophers that nature (as Mr. Jefferson expresses it) be-littles her productions in the western world. M. de Pauw attributes the imperfection of animal life in America to the ravages of a very recent deluge, from whose effects upon its soil and atmosphere it has not yet sufficiently recovered. —Recherches sur les Américains, part i. tom. i. p. 102.
In the ferment which the French revolution excited among the democrats of America, and the licentious sympathy with which they shared in the wildest excesses of jacobinism, we may find one source of that vulgarity of vice, that hostility to all the graces of life, which distinguishes the present demagogues of the United States, and has become indeed too generally the characteristic of their countrymen. But there is another cause of the corruption of private morals, which, encouraged as it is by the government, and identified with the interests of the community, seems to threaten the decay of all honest principle in America. I allude to those fraudulent violations of neutrality to which they are indebted for the most lucrative part of their commerce, and by which they have so long infringed and counteracted the maritime rights and advantages of this country. This unwarrantable trade is necessarily abetted by such a system of collusion, imposture, and perjury, as cannot fail to spread rapid contamination around it.
| The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore | |