The Poetical Works of John Langhorne :: :: University of Virginia Library

In Richard's days, when lost his pastur'd plain,
The wand'ring Briton sought the wild wood's reign,
With great disdain beheld the feudal hord,
Poor life-let vassals of a Norman Lord;
And, what no brave man ever lost, possess'd
Himself—for Freedom bound him to her breast.

Lov'st thou that Freedom? By her holy shrine,
If yet one drop of British blood be thine,
See, I conjure thee, in the desart shade,
His bow unstrung, his little household laid,
Some brave forefather; while his fields they share,
By Saxon, Dane, or Norman banish'd there!
And think he tells thee, as his soul withdraws,
As his heart swells against a tyrant's laws,
The war with Fate, though fruitless to maintain,
To guard that liberty he lov'd in vain.

Were thoughts like these the dream of ancient time?
Peculiar only to some age, or clime?
And does not Nature thoughts like these impart,
Breathe in the soul, and write upon the heart?

Ask on their mountains yon deserted band,
That point to Paoli with no plausive hand;
Despising still, their freeborn souls unbroke,
Alike the Gallic and Ligurian yoke!

Yet while the patriots' gen'rous rage we share,
Still civil safety calls us back to care;—
To Britain lost in either Henry's day,
Her woods, her mountains one wild scene of prey!
Fair Peace from all her bounteous vallies fled,
And Law beneath the barbed arrow bled.

In happier days, with more auspicious fate,
The far-fam'd Edward heal'd his wounded state;
Dread of his foes, but to his subjects dear,
These learn'd to love, as those are taught to fear,
Their laurell'd Prince with British pride obey,
His glory shone their discontent away.

With care the tender flower of love to save,
And plant the olive on Disorder's grave,
For civil storms fresh barriers to provide,
He caught the fav'ring calm and falling tide.

The Appointment, and its Purposes.

The social laws from insult to protect,
To cherish peace, to cultivate respect;
The rich from wanton cruelty restrain,
To smooth the bed of penury and pain;
The hapless vagrant to his rest restore,
The maze of fraud, the haunts of theft explore;
The thoughtless maiden, when subdu'd by art,
To aid, and bring her rover to her heart;
Wild riot's voice with dignity to quell,
Forbid unpeaceful passions to rebel,
Wrest from revenge the meditated harm,
For this fair Justice rais'd her sacred arm;
For this the rural magistrate, of yore,
Thy honours, Edward, to his mansion bore.

Ancient Justice's Hall.

Oft, where old Air in conscious glory sails,
On silver waves that flow thro' smiling vales,
In Harewood's groves, where long my youth was laid,
Unseen beneath their ancient world of shade,
With many a group of antique columns crown'd,
In gothic guise such mansion have I found.

Nor lightly deem, ye apes of modern race,
Ye cits that sore bedizen Nature's face,

Of the more manly structures here ye view;
They rose for greatness that ye never knew!
Ye reptile cits, that oft have mov'd my spleen
With Venus, and the Graces on your green!
Let Plutus, growling o'er his ill-got wealth,
Let Mercury, the thriving god of stealth,
The shopman, Janus, with his double looks,
Rise on your mounts, and perch upon your books!
But, spare my Venus, spare each sister Grace,
Ye cits, that sore bedizen Nature's face!

Ye royal architects, whose antic taste,
Would lay the realms of Sense and Nature waste;
Forgot, whenever from her steps ye stray,
That folly only points each other way;
Here, tho' your eye no courtly creature sees,
Snakes on the ground, or monkies in the trees;
Yet let not too severe a censure fall,
On the plain precincts of the ancient Hall.

For tho' no sight your childish fancy meets,
Of Thibets' dogs, or China's perroquets;
Tho' apes, asps, lizzards, things without a tail,
And all the tribes of foreign monsters fail;
Here shall ye sigh to see, with rust o'ergrown,
The iron griffin and the sphynx of stone;
And mourn, neglected in their waste abodes,
Fire-breathing drakes, and water-spouting gods.

Long have these mighty monsters known disgrace,
Yet still some trophies hold their ancient place;
Where, round the Hall, the oak's high surbase rears
The field-day triumphs of two hundred years.

Th' enormous antlers here recal the day
That saw the forest-monarch forc'd away;
Who, many a flood, and many a mountain past,
Nor finding those, nor deeming these the last,
O'er floods, o'er mountains yet prepar'd to fly,
Long ere the death-drop fill'd his failing eye!

Here, fam'd for cunning, and in crimes grown old,
Hangs his grey brush, the felon of the fold.
Oft, as the rent feast swells the midnight cheer,
The maudlin farmer kens him o'er his beer,
And tells his old, traditionary tale,
Tho' known to ev'ry tenant of the vale.

Here, where, of old, the festal ox has fed,
Mark'd with his weight, the mighty horns are spread:
Some ox, O Marshall, for a board like thine,
Where the vast master with the vast sirloin
Vied in round magnitude—Respect I bear
To thee, tho' oft the ruin of the chair.

These, and such antique tokens, that record
The manly spirit, and the bounteous board,

Me more delight than all the gew-gaw train,
The whims and zigzags of a modern brain,
More than all Asia's marmosets to view
Grin, frisk, and water in the walks of Kew.

Character of a Country Justice.

Thro' these fair vallies, stranger, hast thou stray'd,
By any chance, to visit Harewood's shade,
And seen with honest, antiquated air,
In the plain Hall the magistratial chair?
There Herbert sate—the love of human kind,
Pure light of truth, and temperance of mind,
In the free eye the featur'd soul display'd,
Honour's strong beam, and Mercy's melting shade;
Justice, that, in the rigid paths of law,
Would still some drops from Pity's fountain draw,
Bend o'er her urn with many a gen'rous fear,
Ere his firm seal should force one orphan's tear;
Fair Equity, and Reason scorning art,
And all the sober virtues of the heart—
These sate with Herbert, these shall best avail,
Where statutes order; or where statutes fail.

General Motives for Lenity.

Be this, ye rural Magistrates, your plan:
Firm be your justice, but be friends to Man.

He whom the mighty master of this ball,
We fondly deem, or farcically call,
To own the Patriarch's truth however loth,
Holds but a mansion crush'd before the moth.

Frail in his genius, in his heart, too, frail,
Born but to err, and erring to bewail;
Shalt thou his faults with eye severe explore,
And give to life one human weakness more?

Still mark if Vice or Nature prompts the deed;
Still mark the strong temptation and the need:
On pressing Want, on Famine's pow'rful call,
At least more lenient let thy justice fall,

Apology for Vagrants.

For him, who, lost to ev'ry hope of life,
Has long with fortune held unequal strife,
Known to no human love, no human care,
The friendless, homeless object of despair;
For the poor Vagrant, feel, while he complains,
Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains.
Alike, if folly or misfortune brought
Those last of woes his evil days have wrought;
Believe with social mercy and with me,
Folly's misfortune in the first degree.

Perhaps on some inhospitable shore
The houseless wretch a widow'd parent bore;
Who, then, no more by golden prospects led,
Of the poor Indian begg'd a leafy bed.
Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that parent mourn'd her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolv'd in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,
The child of misery, baptiz'd in tears!

Apostrophe to Edward the Third.

O Edward, here thy fairest laurels fade!
And thy long glories darken into shade

While yet the palms thy hardy veterans won,
The deeds of valour that for thee were done,
While yet the wreaths for which they bravely bled,
Fir'd thy high soul, and flourish'd on thy head,
Those veterans to their native shores return'd,
Like exiles wander'd, and like exiles mourn'd;
Or, left at large no longer to bewail,
Were vagrants deem'd, and destin'd to a jail!

Were there no royal, yet uncultur'd lands,
No wastes that wanted such subduing hands?
Were Cressy's heroes such abandon'd things?
O fate of war! and gratitude of kings!

The Gypsey-Life.

The gypsey-race my pity rarely move;
Yet their strong thirst of Liberty I love.
Not Wilkes, our freedom's holy martyr, more;
Nor his firm phalanx, of the common shore.

For this in Norwood's patrimonial groves,
The tawny father with his offspring roves;
When summer suns lead slow the sultry day,
In mossy caves, where welling waters play,
Fann'd by each gale that cools the fervid sky,
With this in ragged luxury they lie.
Oft at the sun the dusky elfins strain
The sable eye, then, snugging, sleep again;
Oft, as the dews of cooler evening fall,
For their prophetic mother's mantle call.

Far other cares that wandering mother wait,
The mouth, and oft the minister of Fate!
From her to hear, in ev'ning's friendly shade,
Of future fortune, flies the village-maid,
Draws her long-hoarded copper from its hold;
And rusty halfpence purchase hopes of gold.

But, ah! ye maids, beware the Gypsey's lures!
She opens not the womb of Time, but yours.
Oft has her hands the hapless Marian wrung,
Marian, whom Gay in sweetest strains has sung!

The parson's maid—sore cause had she to rue
The Gypsey's tongue; the parson's daughter too.
Long had that anxious daughter sigh'd to know
What Vellum's sprucy clerk, the valley's beau,
Meant by those glances, which at church he stole,
Her father nodding to the psalm's slow drawl;
Long had she sigh'd, at length a prophet came,
By many a sure prediction known to fame,
To Marian known, and all she told, for true:
She knew the future, for the past she knew.

Where, in the darkling shed, the moon's dim rays
Beam'd on the ruins of a one-horse chaise
Villaria sate, while faithful Marian brought
The wayward prophet of the woe she sought.
Twice did her hands, the income of the week,
On either side, the crooked sixpence seek;
Twice were those hands withdrawn from either side,
To stop the titt'ring laugh, the blush to hide.
The wayward prophet made no long delay,
No novice she in Fortune's devious way!
“Ere yet,” she cried, “ten rolling months are o'er,
“Must ye be mothers; maids, at least no more.
“With you shall soon, O lady fair, prevail
“A gentle youth, the flower of this fair vale.
“To Marian, once of Colin Clout the scorn,
“Shall bumkin come, and bumkinets be born.”

Smote to the heart, the maidens marvell'd sore,
That ten short months had such events in store;
But holding firm, what village-maids believe,
‘That strife with fate is milking in a sieve;’
To prove their prophet true, tho' to their cost,
They justly thought no time was to be lost.

These foes to youth, that seek, with dang'rous art,
To aid the native weakness of the heart;
These miscreants from thy harmless village drive,
As wasps felonious from the lab'ring hive.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

2. PART THE SECOND.

TO ROBERT WILSON CRACROFT, ESQ.

Born with a gentle heart, and born to please
With native goodness, of no fortune vain,
The social aspect of inviting ease,
The kind opinion, and the sense humane;

To thee, my Cracroft, whom, in early youth,
With lenient hand, and anxious love I led
Thro' paths where science points to manly truth,
And glory gilds the mansions of the dead:

To thee this offering of maturer thought,
That, since wild Fancy flung the lyre aside,
With heedful hand the Moral Muse hath wrought,
That Muse devotes, and bears with honest pride.

Yet not that period of the human year,
When Fancy reign'd, shall we with pain review,
All Nature's seasons different aspects wear,
And now her flowers, and now her fruits are due.

Not that in youth we rang'd the smiling meads,
On Essex' shores the trembling angle play'd,
Urging at noon the slow boat in the reeds,
That wav'd their green uncertainty of shade.

Nor yet the days consum'd in Hackthorn's vale,
That lonely on the heath's wild bosom lies,
Should we with stern severity bewail,
And all the lighter hours of life despise.

For Nature's seasons different aspects wear,
And now her flowers, and now her fruits are due;
A while she freed us from the scourge of Care,
But told us then—for social ends we grew.

To find some virtue trac'd on life's short page,
Some mark of service paid to human kind,
Alone can chear the wintry paths of age,
Alone support the far-reflecting mind.

Oh! often thought—when Smith's discerning care
To further days prolong'd this failing frame!
To die, was little—But what heart could bear
To die, and leave an undistinguish'd name?

Blagdon-House, Feb. 22, 1775.

Protection of the Poor.

Yet, while thy rod restrains the needy crew,
Remember that thou art their monarch too.
King of the Beggars!—Lov'st thou not the name?
O, great from Ganges to the golden Tame!
Far-ruling sovereign of this begging ball,
Low at thy footstool other thrones shall fall.
His alms to thee the whisker'd Moor convey,
And Prussia's sturdy beggar own thy sway;
Courts, senates—all to Baal that bend the knee,
King of the beggars, these are fiefs to thee!

But still, forgot the grandeur of thy reign,
Descend to duties meaner crowns disdain;
That worst excrescency of power forego,
That pride of kings, Humanity's first foe.

Let age no longer toil with feeble strife,
Worn by long service in the war of life;
Nor leave the head, that time hath whiten'd, bare
To the rude insults of the searching air;
Nor bid the knee, by labour harden'd, bend,
O thou, the poor man's hope, the poor man's friend!

If, when from Heav'n severer seasons fall,
Fled from the frozen roof, and mouldering wall,
Each face the picture of a winter-day,
More strong than Teniers' pencil could pourtray;—
If then to thee resort the shivering train,
Of eruel days, and cruel man complain,
Say to thy heart [remembering him who said]
‘These people come from far, and have no bread.’

Nor leave thy venal clerk empower'd to hear;
The voice of want is sacred to thy ear.
He, where no fees his sordid pen invite,
Sports with their tears, too indolent to write;
Like the fed monkey in the fable, vain
To hear more helpless animals complain.

But chief thy notice shall one monster claim,
A monster furnish'd with a human frame,
The parish-officer!—tho' Verse disdain
Terms that deform the splendor of the strain;
It stoops to bid thee bend the brow severe
On the sly, pilfering, cruel overseer;
The shuffling farmer, faithful to no trust,
Ruthless as rocks, insatiate as the dust!

When the poor hind, with length of years decay'd,
Leans feebly on his once subduing spade,
Forgot the service of his abler days,
His profitable toil, and honest praise,
Shall this low wretch abridge his scanty bread,
This slave, whose board his former labours spread?

When harvest's burning suns and sick'ning air
From labour's unbrac'd hand the grasp'd hook tear,
Where shall the helpless family be fed,
That vainly languish for a father's bread?
See the pale mother, sunk with grief and care,
To the proud farmer fearfully repair;
Soon to be sent with insolence away,
Referr'd to vestries, and a distant day!
Referr'd—to perish!—Is my verse severe?
Unfriendly to the human character?
Ah! to this sigh of sad experience trust.
The truth is rigid, but the tale is just.

If in thy courts this caitiff wretch appear,
Think not, that patience were a virtue here.
His low-born pride with honest rage controul;
Smite his hard heart, and shake his reptile soul.

But, hapless! oft thro' fear of future woe,
And certain vengeance of th' insulting foe,
Oft, ere to thee the poor prefer their pray'r,
The last extremes of penury they bear.

Wouldst thou then raise thy patriot office higher,
To something more than magistrate aspire?
And, left each poorer, pettier chace behind,
Step nobly forth, the friend of human kind?
The game I start courageously pursue!
Adieu to fear! to indolence adieu!
And, first we'll range this mountain's stormy side,
Where the rude winds the shepherd's roof deride,
As meet no more the wintry blast to bear,
And all the wild hostilities of air.
—That roof have I remember'd many a year;
It once gave refuge to a hunted deer—
Here, in those days, we found an aged pair;—
But Time untenants—Hah! what seest thou there?
“Horror!—By Heav'n, extended on a bed
“Of naked fearn, two human creatures dead!
“Embracing as alive!—ah, no!—no life!
“Cold, breathless!”
'Tis the shepherd and his wife.

I knew the scene, and brought thee to behold
What speaks more strongly than the story told.

They died thro' want—
“By every power I swear,
“If the wretch treads the earth, or breathes the air,
“Thro' whose default of duty, or design,
“These victims fell, he dies.”
They fell by thine.
“Infernal!—Mine!—by—”
Swear on no pretence:
A swearing Justice wants both grace and sense.

When thy good father held this wide domain,
The voice of sorrow never mourn'd in vain.
Sooth'd by his pity, by his bounty fed,
The sick found med'cine, and the aged bread.
He left their interest to no parish-care,
No bailiff urg'd his little empire there:
No village-tyrant starv'd them, or oppress'd;
He learnt their wants, and he those wants redress'd.

E'en these, unhappy! who, beheld too late,
Smote thy young heart with horror at their fate,
His bounty found, and destin'd here to keep
A small detachment of his mountain-sheep.
Still pleas'd to see them from the annual fair
Th' unwritten history of their profits bear;
More nobly pleas'd those profits to restore,
And, if their fortune fail'd them, make it more.

When Nature gave her precept to remove
His kindred spirit to the realms of love,
Afar their anguish from thy distant ear,
No arm to save, and no protection near,
Led by the lure of unaccounted gold,
Thy bailiff seiz'd their little flock, and sold.

Their want contending parishes survey'd,
And this disown'd, aud that refus'd to aid:
A while, who should not succour them, they tried,
And in that while the wretched victims died.

“I'll scalp that bailiff—sacrifice.”
In vain
To rave at mischief, if the cause remain!

O days long lost to man in each degree!
The golden days of hospitality!
When liberal fortunes vied with liberal strife
To fill the noblest offices of life;
When Wealth was Virtue's handmaid, and her gate
Gave a free refuge from the wrongs of fate;
The poor at hand their natural patrons saw,
And lawgivers were supplements of law!

Lost are those days, and Fashion's boundless sway
Has borne the guardian magistrate away.
Save in Augusta's streets, on Gallia's shore,
The rural patron is beheld no more.

No more the poor his kind protection share,
Unknown their wants, and unreceiv'd their pray'r.

Yet has that Fashion, long so light and vain,
Reform'd at last, and led the moral train?
Have her gay vot'ries nobler worth to boast
For Nature's love, for Nature's virtue lost?
No—fled from these, the sons of fortune find
What poor respect to wealth remains behind.
The mock regard alone of menial slaves,
The worship'd calves of their outwitting knaves!

Foregone the social, hospitable days,
When wide vales echo'd with their owner's praise,
Of all that ancient consequence bereft,
What has the modern Man of Fashion left?

Does he, perchance, to rural scenes repair,
And “waste his sweetness” on the essenc'd air?
Ah! gently lave the feeble frame he brings,
Ye scouring seas! and ye sulphureous springs!

And thou, Brighthelmstone, where no cits annoy,
(All borne to Margate, in the Margate-hoy,)
Where, if the hasty creditor advance,
Lies the light skiff, and ever-bailing France,
Do thou defend him in the dog-day suns!
Secure in winter from the rage of duns!

While the grim catchpole, the grim porter swear,
One that he is, and one, he is not there,
The tortur'd us'rer, as he murmurs by,
Eyes the Venetian blinds, and heaves a sigh.

O, from each title folly ever took,
Blood! Maccarone! Cicisbeo! or Rook!
From each low passion, from each low resort,
The thieving alley, nay, the righteous court,
From Bertie's, Almack's, Arthur's, and the nest
Where Judah's ferrets earth with Charles unblest;—
From these and all the garbage of the great,
At Honour's, Freedom's, Virtue's call—retreat!

Has the fair vale, where rest, conceal'd in flowers,
Lies in sweet ambush for thy careless hours,
The breeze, that, balmy fragrance to infuse,
Bathes its soft wing in aromatic dews,
The stream, to soothe thine ear, to cool thy breast,
That mildly murmurs from its crystal rest;—
Have these less charms to win, less power to please,
Than haunts of rapine, harbours of disease?

Will no kind slumbers o'er thine eyelids creep,
Save where the sullen watchman growls at sleep?
Does morn no sweeter, purer breath diffuse
Than steams thro' alleys from the lungs of Jews?
And is thy water, pent in putrid wood,
Bethesda-like, when troubled only good?

Is it thy passion Linley's voice to hear,
And has no mountain-lark detain'd thine ear?
Song marks alone the tribes of airy wing;
For, trust me, man was never meant to sing:
And all his mimic organs e'er exprest,
Was but an imitative howl at best.

Is it on Garrick's attitude you doat?
See on the pointed cliff yon lordly goat!
Like Lear's, his beard descends in graceful snow,
And wild he looks upon the world below.

Superior here the scene in every part!
Here reigns great Nature, and there little art!
Here let thy life assume a nobler plan,
To Nature faithful, and the friend of man!

Unnumber'd objects ask thy honest care,
Beside the orphan's tear, the widow's pray'r.
Far as thy power can save, thy bounty bless,
Unnumber'd evils call for thy redress.

Seest thou afar yon solitary thorn,
Whose aged limbs the heath's wild winds have torn?
While yet to cheer the homeward shepherd's eye,
A few seem straggling in the ev'ning sky!
Not many suns have hasten'd down the day,
Or blushing moons immers'd in clouds their way,

Since there a scene, that stain'd their sacred light,
With horror stopp'd a felon in his flight;
A babe just born that signs of life exprest,
Lay naked o'er the mother's lifeless breast.
The pitying robber, conscious that, pursu'd,
He had no time to waste, yet stood and view'd;
To the next cot the trembling infant bore,
And gave a part of what he stole before;
Nor known to him the wretches were, nor dear,
He felt as man, and dropp'd a human tear.

Far other treatment she who breathless lay,
Found from a viler animal of prey.

Worn with long toil on many a painful road,
That toil increas'd by Nature's growing load,
When ev'ning brought the friendly hour of rest,
And all the mother throng'd about her breast,
The ruffian officer oppos'd her stay,
And, cruel, bore her in her pangs away,
So far beyond the town's last limits drove,
That to return were hopeless, had she strove.
Abandon'd there—with famine, pain and cold,
And anguish, she expir'd—the rest I've told.

“Now let me swear—For, by my soul's last sigh,
“That thief shall live, that overseer shall die.”

Too late!—His life the gen'rous robber paid,
Lost by that pity which his steps delay'd!
No soul-discerning Mansfield sate to hear,
No Hertford bore his prayer to mercy's ear;
No lib'ral justice first assign'd the gaol,
Or urg'd, as Camplin would have urg'd his tale.

The living object of thy honest rage,
Old in parochial crimes, and steel'd with age,
The grave church-warden! unabash'd he bears
Weekly to church his book of wicked prayers.
And pours, with all the blasphemy of praise,
His creeping soul in Sternhold's creeping lays!

Refers to the conclusion of the First Part.

The Mahometan Princes seem to have a regular system of begging. Nothing so common as to hear that the Dey of Algiers, &c. &c. are dissatisfied with their presents. It must be owned, it would be for the welfare of the world, if Princes in general would adhere to the maxim, that, “it is better to “beg than to steal.”

Tu poscis vilia rerum,
Quamvis fers te nullius egentem.
Hor.

END OF THE SECOND PART.

3. PART THE THIRD.

TO THOMAS SMITH, M.D. Of Wrington, in the County of Somerset, THIS LAST OF THE LITTLE POEMS, INTENDED TO CULTIVATE, IN THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE, THAT HUMANITY BY WHICH HE IS SO AMIABLY DISTINGUISHED, IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY HIS MOST OBLIGED, MOST AFFECTIONATE, AND MOST FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE AUTHOR.

Depredation.

O, No! Sir John—the Muse's gentle art
Lives not to blemish, but to mend the heart.
While Gay's brave robber grieves us for his fate,
We hold the harpies of his life in hate.
Ingenuous youth, by Nature's voice addrest,
Finds not the harden'd, but the feeling breast;
Can form no wish the dire effects to prove
Of lawless valour, or of venal love,
Approves the fondness of the faithful maid,
And mourns a gen'rous passion unrepaid.

Yet would I praise the pious zeal that saves
Imperial London from her world of knaves;
Yet would I count it no inglorious strife
To scourge the pests of property and life.

Come then, long skill'd in theft's illusive ways,
Lord of the clue that thrids her mighty maze!
Together let us beat all Giles's fields,
Try what the night-house, what the round-house yields,

Hang when we must, be candid when we please,
But leave no bawd, unlicens'd, at her ease.

Say first, of thieves above, or thieves below,
What can we order till their haunts we know?
Far from St.James's let your Nimrods stray,
But stop and call at Stephen's in their way.
That ancient victualler, we've been told, of late,
Has kept bad hours, encourag'd high debate;
That those without still pelting those within,
Have stunn'd the peaceful neighbours with their din;
That if you close his private walls invest,
'Tis odds, you meet with some unruly guest—
Good Lord, Sir John, how would the people stare,
To see the present and the late Lord Mayor,
Bow to the majesty of Bow-street chair!

Illustrious chiefs! can I your haunts pass by,
Nor give my long-lov'd Liberty a sigh?
That heav'nly plant which long unblemish'd blew,
Dishonour'd only, only hurt by you!
Dishonour'd, when with harden'd front you claim
To deeds of darkness her diviner name!
For you grim Licence strove with hydra breath
To spread the blasts of pestilence and death:
Here for poor vice, for dark ambition there
She scatter'd poison thro' the social air.

Yet here, in vain—Oh, had her toil been vain,
When with black wing she swept the western main;
When with low labour, and insidious art,
She tore a daughter from her parent's heart!

Oh, Patriots, ever patriots out of place,
Fair Honour's foil, and Liberty's disgrace!
With spleen I see your wild illusions spread
Thro' the long region of a land misled;
See commerce sink, see cultivation's charms
Lost in the rage of anarchy and arms!

And thou, O Ch—m, once a nation's pride,
Borne on the brightest wave of glory's tide!
Hast thou the parent spurn'd, the erring child
With prospects vain to ruin's arms beguil'd?
Hast thou the plans of dire defection prais'd
For the poor pleasure of a statue rais'd?

Oh, Patriots, ever patriots out of place,
From Charles quite graceless, up to Grafton's grace!

Where forty-five once mark'd the dirty door,
And the chain'd knife invites the paltry whore;
Tho' far, methinks, the choicest guests are fled,
And Wilkes and Humphrey number'd with the dead,

Wilkes, who in death would friendship's vows fulfil,
True to his cause, and dines with Humphrey still—
Where sculks each dark, where roams each desp'rate wight,
Owls of the day and vultures of the night,—
Shall we, O Knight, with cruel pains explore,
Clear these low walks, and think the bus'ness o'er?
No—much, alas! for you, for me remains,
Where Justice sleeps, and Depredation reigns.

Wrapt in kind darkness, you no spleen betray,
When the gilt Nabob lacqueys all the way:
Harmless to you his towers, his forests rise,
That swell with anguish my indignant eyes;
While in those towers raz'd villages I see,
And tears of orphans watering every tree.
Are these mock-ruins that invade my view?
These are the entrails of the poor Gentoo.
That column's trophied base his bones supply;
That lake the tears that swell'd his sable eye!
Let here, O Knight, their steps terrific steer
Thy hue and cry, and loose thy bloodhounds here.

Oh, Mercy, thron'd on his eternal breast,
Who breath'd the savage waters into rest;
By each soft pleasure that thy bosom smote,
When first creation started from his thought;
By each warm tear that melted o'er thine eye,
When on his works was written ‘These must die!’

If secret slaughter yet, nor cruel war
Have from these mortal regions forc'd thee far,
Still to our follies, to our frailties blind,
Oh, stretch thy healing wings o'er human kind!
—For them I ask not, hostile to thy sway,
Who calmly on a brother's vitals prey;
For them I plead not, who, in blood embru'd,
Have ev'ry softer sentiment subdu'd.

This was written about the year 1776.

Chained to the table, to prevent depredations.

Prisons.

Yet, gentle power, thy absence I bewail,
When seen the dank, dark regions of a gaol;
When found alike in chains and night enclos'd,
The thief detected, and the thief suppos'd!
Sure, the fair light and the salubrious air
Each yet-sus pected prisoner might share.
—To lie, to languish in some dreary cell,
Some loathed hold, where guilt and horror dwell,
Ere yet the truth of seeming facts be tried,
Ere yet their country's sacred voice decide,
Britain, behold thy citizens expos'd,
And blush to think the Gothic age unclos'd!

Filiation.

Oh, more than Goths, who yet decline to raze
That pest of James's puritanic days,

The savage law that barb'rously ordains
For female virtue lost a felon's pains!—
Dooms the poor maiden, as her fate severe,
To toil and chains a long-enduring year.

Th' unnatural monarch, to the sex unkind,
An owl obscene, in learning's sunshine blind!
Councils of pathics, cabinets of tools,
Benches of knaves, and parliaments of fools!
Fanatic fools, that, in those twilight times,
With wild religion cloak'd the worst of crimes!—
Hope we from such a crew, in such a reign,
For equal laws, or policy humane?

Here, then, O Justice, thy own power forbear;
The sole protector of th' unpitied fair.
Tho' long intreat the ruthless overseer;
Tho' the loud vestry tease thy tortur'd ear;
Tho' all to acts, to precedents appeal,
Mute be thy pen, and vacant rest thy seal.

Yet shalt thou know, nor is the diff'rence nice,
The casual fall from impudence of vice.
Abandon'd guilt by active laws restrain,
But pause.....if Virtue's slightest spark remain.
Left to the shameless lash, the hard'ning gaol,
The fairest thoughts of modesty would fail.

The down-cast eye, the tear that flows amain,
As if to ask her innocence again;
The plaintive babe, that slum'bring seem'd to lie
On her soft breast, and wakes at the heav'd sigh;
The cheek that wears the beauteous robe of shame;
How loth they leave a gentle breast to blame!

Here, then, O Justice, thy own power forbear;—
The sole protector of th' unpitied fair!

7I. c. 4.