The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale In two volumes |
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FRANCE;—ORLEANS;—LANSDOWNE. |
 | The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale |  |
294
FRANCE;—ORLEANS;—LANSDOWNE.
In that cursed land, whence Virtue long had flown;
Where vice, gigantick vice, spurned either throne;
Murdered the monarch of it's fair domain;
Waged impious war with Heaven's eternal reign;—
With disposition faithful to her creed,
Blackened each hour with some atrocious deed;
The hoary priest was butchered in the fane;
Beauty's resistless pathos pled, in vain:
The fiend, consistent, who had steeled all hearts
Against their feeling for ingenuous arts,
By which, at once, we're strengthened, and refined,
By which blows all the beauty of the mind;
With a new tragic pall enforced her scene:
Obdurate, slew, a fair, a helpless queen;
(Yet genuine virtue, true religion thought
Her sufferings had atoned for every fault.)
Ingenious, next, her tenets to display;
To fix her civil, and her moral sway,
More poison still she breathes;—her subject elves
Lead to the church an emblem of themselves;
To a bright deity exalt a whore;
Their mimick Freedom, in the trull, adore;
Where Piety, and Christ, were throned, before.
Where vice, gigantick vice, spurned either throne;
Murdered the monarch of it's fair domain;
Waged impious war with Heaven's eternal reign;—
With disposition faithful to her creed,
Blackened each hour with some atrocious deed;
The hoary priest was butchered in the fane;
Beauty's resistless pathos pled, in vain:
The fiend, consistent, who had steeled all hearts
Against their feeling for ingenuous arts,
By which, at once, we're strengthened, and refined,
By which blows all the beauty of the mind;
With a new tragic pall enforced her scene:
Obdurate, slew, a fair, a helpless queen;
(Yet genuine virtue, true religion thought
Her sufferings had atoned for every fault.)
Ingenious, next, her tenets to display;
To fix her civil, and her moral sway,
295
Lead to the church an emblem of themselves;
To a bright deity exalt a whore;
Their mimick Freedom, in the trull, adore;
Where Piety, and Christ, were throned, before.
To sage Reflexion be my verse applied;—
'Midst these associates, Orleans lived, and died.
How high our virtuous energy may soar,
Reason obeyed; and Passion heard, no more!
How low we sink, when Vice, without controul,
Usurps her dark dominion of the soul!
So strongly, he corroborates my theme;
Such a dire outcast, in the bad extreme;
That even his own indignant faction hurled
Their prince, and culprit, to the nether world:
He was too great a monster for the times;
The Jacobins themselves abhorred his crimes.
'Midst these associates, Orleans lived, and died.
How high our virtuous energy may soar,
Reason obeyed; and Passion heard, no more!
How low we sink, when Vice, without controul,
Usurps her dark dominion of the soul!
So strongly, he corroborates my theme;
Such a dire outcast, in the bad extreme;
That even his own indignant faction hurled
Their prince, and culprit, to the nether world:
He was too great a monster for the times;
The Jacobins themselves abhorred his crimes.
Mortals, unsteady! mortals, never wise!
Prone to distrust the Sovereign of the skies!
Let not the chain, called by the thoughtless, Fate;—
The suffering poor; the proud insulting great;—
The state-assassins of the sage, and good,
Who stain their native soil with generous blood,—
Appal your faith; in every trying hour,
Await the mandates of Celestial Power!
Already, in the realms of France are given
Strong retributions of judicial Heaven.
A gleam, even now, predicts, with orient ray,
Of Peace, and order, the meridian day;
But ere that salutary day shall shine,
Diffusing equal laws, and acts benign,
The King of Kings will vindicate the slain;
And launch his bolt at the blaspheming train:
Apostate priests, too late, the truth aver;
An Orleans haunts, and summons, a Santerre;—
The golden sceptre beaming on the just,
Displays the Power, in whom mankind should trust;
Each murdering atheist feels his iron rod;
And thus each atheist clearly proves a God.
Prone to distrust the Sovereign of the skies!
Let not the chain, called by the thoughtless, Fate;—
The suffering poor; the proud insulting great;—
296
Who stain their native soil with generous blood,—
Appal your faith; in every trying hour,
Await the mandates of Celestial Power!
Already, in the realms of France are given
Strong retributions of judicial Heaven.
A gleam, even now, predicts, with orient ray,
Of Peace, and order, the meridian day;
But ere that salutary day shall shine,
Diffusing equal laws, and acts benign,
The King of Kings will vindicate the slain;
And launch his bolt at the blaspheming train:
Apostate priests, too late, the truth aver;
An Orleans haunts, and summons, a Santerre;—
The golden sceptre beaming on the just,
Displays the Power, in whom mankind should trust;
Each murdering atheist feels his iron rod;
And thus each atheist clearly proves a God.
Windsor Great Park, Nov. 23, 1793.
| The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale | |