II. 1.
Avaunt, abhorr'd Democracy!
O for Ithuriel's spear!
To show to Party's jaundiced eye
The fiend she most should fear,
To turn her from the infernal sight
To where, array'd in robes of light,
True Liberty on Seraph wing
Descends to shed that blessing rare,
Of equal rights an equal share
To People, Peers, and King.
II. 2.
To her alone I rais'd my strain,
On her centennial day,
Fearless that age should chill the vein
She nourish'd with her ray.
And what, if glowing at the theme,
Humanity in vivid dream,
Gave to my mind impatient Gaul
(Ah! flattering dream, dismiss'd by fate
Too quickly through the ivory gate)
Freed from despotic thrall?
II. 3.
When Ruin, heaving his gigantic mace,
(Call'd to the deed by Reason's voice),
Crush'd, proud Bastile! thy turrets to their base,
Was it not virtue to rejoice?
That power alone, whose all-combining eye
Beholds, what he ordains, futurity,
Could that tremendous truth reveal,
That, ere six suns had round the zodiac roll'd
Their beams, astonished Europe should behold
All Gallia, one immense Bastile?