 | An ode to peace |  |
BLESSED ARE THE PEACE-MAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE CHILDREN OF GOD.
THE BIBLE.
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AN ODE TO PEACE.
I.
Hail peace! thou daughter of the skies,Thou eldest, gentlest born of Heav'n;
Thou idol of the good and wise,
For whom all states, all empires rise,
Touch'd and refin'd from feudal leav'n,
The dross of schools, and rust of time,
Philosophy's and virtue's true sublime.
From Heav'n, the legislative source
Of justice, equity and right,
All statutes should derive their force,
All governments their pow'rs supreme;
Else a mere Machiavalian dream,
Embryo of sickly study's lamp-oil light:
And Heav'n, where grateful pæans never cease,
Is the congenial latitude of Peace.
II.
Sweet Peace! thou sum of human good;Tho' seated on a throne,
Brighter than what e'er shone
Emblaz'd with Eastern glory,
Monarchs were livery'd things below
The serious envy of a foe,
Lorn subjects of lorn story,
If thou their oracle misunderstood;
White-stol'd and olive-branch'd at their right hand,
If unannounc'd the Saviour of the land.
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III.
Nothing requites the human care,The human wish, the human hope,
Ambition's lifted glance,
Or study's bold advance,
Whether on earth, in sea, or air,
Buoyant on wings of fire (the soul's release)
All Nature man's illimitable scope,
That ends and centres not in godlike Peace.
Without it, where archangels dwell,
Even Paradise, the seat of bliss,
No blissful Paradise could be,
But most emphatically—hell:
Discord (obhorrent fiend) hence far from me!
The yell of dæmons damn'd, and serpent's hiss.
IV.
Sweet Peace, for thee Creation rose,Divinely mild, divinely fair,
(A Deity the model chose)
Studded with wonders, and thick sown with glory,
Wisdom supreme and pow'r's transcendant care,
And Immortality's exhaustless story:
While Raphael's voice, and Gabriel's lyre,
Wak'd to unusual ecstacy and fire,
Run melting music's rapturous rounds,
The pathos, depth, and melody of sounds.
V.
When black'ning tempests low'r,And gather all their pow'r,
Along the troubled sky;
When oceans, tost from shore to shore,
Tumultuous swell, and rage, and roar,
And every boundary defy;
How heart-felt comes the call of Peace,
Gliding upon a dove's wings sent,
Whisp'ring around,—cease, tumults, cease,
Ye elemental strifes, be spent:
While on a sun-beam's apex bright,
Heav'n's smiles break forth and gracious spread;
Darkness horrific yields to light,
Smooth feels the wat'ry world, and earth sings glad!
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VI.
When earthquakes rend the solid ground,And spread ten-fold confusion round,
Distraction and despair;
Or when volcanos hideous ope,
And give the bursting torrent scope,
Flame, thunder, prison'd air;
While boiling seas of melted ore
Shape for themselves a sandless shore,
With smoke-involv'd disruptive roar:
Soon as cessation's angel voice,
(Mercy still Heav'n's peculiar choice)
Breaks, like the music of the spheres,
In ravishment on human ears;
To safety's arms how mortals run,
And hail at noon the rising sun!
With transport viewing,
Peace hope renewing,
Terror's and devastation's stay:
Hearts, lips, expressing
That general blessing,
Nor lips, nor hearts, can e'er repay!
VII.
Science, the mistress of all knowledge,Tho' once, in academic sandals shod,
Confin'd in cells of monkish college,
Yet, thro' the dread immense of time and space,
Furnish'd Omnipotence to trace,
And walk the boundless theatre of God;
Suns her escorters in meridian blaze,
And clouds her chariots flaming with his rays.
But what avails her ken seraphic,
Her eagle eye and eagle pinion,
Her pencil exquisitely graphic,
All Nature's area her dominion;
If Peace hath fled the human kind,
With her the empire of the Mind,
For bodies to contend;
Discord's shrill clarion echoing loud,
Among the selfish, worthless, proud,
Arms! arms!—attack! defend!
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To throw their lines in troubled streams;
With them, by virtue, honour, meant
No more than Bacchanalian dreams:
Kingdoms convuls'd and torn, to them no more
Than seas thrown into tumult on the senseless shore,
Than foliage quiv'ring to the breeze,
Or aguish shake of aspen trees.
IX.
The cohorn's burst, and cannon's roar,Lengthen'd along the cavern'd shore,
In their address to Science,
But hack'ning o'er defiance,
Must cease from blood's abhorr'd alliance,
And give their artificial thunders o'er,
E'er she can lift her telescopic eye,
Or microscopic downward fix,
Take in the wonders of the sky,
From Cynthea's orb to Saturn's moons,
While light's still charming variations mix
A thousand eves, a thousand noons:
Or, on our habitable globe,
Cloath'd in Spring's variegated robe,
Trace endless scenes no less divine,
Tho' less magnificently great they shine.
X.
Unknown to Peace, Improvement standsLike water-pools on barren lands,
The scourings of each hill,
Stagnate, infectious, useless still;
Nought in advance beside those arts
Which Belial's policy imparts,
Arts horrible—to maim and kill,
Earth's guiltless womb with graves to fill;
Each echo lab'ring with the plaints
Of wounded hosts expiring:
While smoaking carnage ev'ry riv'let taints,
One scarlet blush to distant seas retiring.
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XI.
Till Peace extend her social smile,Trade stretches forth no canvas wings,
While the fresh breeze propitious springs,
And gives a world in tribute to our isle:
Golcando's gems, Potosi's ores,
The wealth of Asiatic looms,
Lie perishing and soil'd on foreign shores,
Pearls, spices, balsams, furrs, perfumes;
Save when become the greedy captor's prize,
Whose kindling thunders dare to mock the skies;
Right turn'd to violence, and law
Extended on the prowling panther's paw .
XII.
While Peace, with rapture's eye,Complacency's soft mien,
And countenance serene,
Presides in mildness o'er the plains;
Beneath the genial sky,
Behold the village swains,
How merrily they sing away their toil,
In turning to the sun the glist'ning soil.
Such make the monarch truly great,
And give him all his awful state,
A wire-danc'd figure else of wooden joints:
His sceptre and his crown,
To which all human aspiration points,
Ambition's hand, ambition's brow,
Owe all their lustre to the simple clown,
The crumbling harrow, and the sidelong plow.
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XIII.
But when, revers'd the jocund scene,War to ferocious sternness moulds his face,
And agitates his mien;
Gathers his bullying hosts around,
With drums and trumpets deaf'ning sound;
Distraction reigns in every place,
Culture forsakes the smiling plain,
In arms to dare the camp and main;
By the rough soldier's heedless foot trod down
(Greedy of military food—renown)
The waving golden labours of the swain:
Of ruffian rapine, ruffian plunder,
Nought sacred from the rude intrusion;
All social compact burst asunder,
All order chang'd to wild confusion;
The strongest bully's arm, in bloody fight,
The longest butcher's sword, sole judge of right.
XIV.
See, sitting in her jess'mine bow'r,Far from the prying glance of noon,
With serious, solemn brow;
Or at the milder twilight hour,
Yellow'd anon by full-orb'd moon,
Deep thought inspiring, and the holy vow;
See sage Philosophy explore
All antient and all modern lore:
Thro' the dark mazes of past time,
Big with uncommon fame,
And teeming with rich story,
Dart her keen retrospective glance:
While not less bold, tho' less sublime,
Times present, manners living claim
Her eye contemplative—ah, starv'd in glory!
Much checker'd with sad accident and chance!
(O could our numbers wrap them up from sight,
In the dark covering of primæval night!)
From all, with nice hand accurately weigh'd
In apt comparison's pois'd scale,
Maxims of sterling currency she draws,
Experienc'd wisdom's hoary laws,
Which vary, but eternally ne'er fail,
In happiest language to mankind convey'd.
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XV.
Form'd upon these men grow a godlike race,A glorious Attic, Roman few;
Tho' dead still speaking, challenge as their due,
Honour's and immortality's first place:
The virtuous senator, and patriot bold,
In arms the valourous, and mighty man,
Who always figur'd, undebas'd by gold,
In danger's and difficulty's rough van;
Superior to whole millions of their kind,
The awe of tyrants, and the scourge of slaves;
Of all whom truth and conscience ne'er could bind,
Wolves cloath'd like sheep, false friends, and varnish'd knaves.
XVI.
Thus schemes Philosophy for man,In calm Retirement's dove-perch'd shade,
Her sole associates Peace and Silence made;
Her head but equal'd by her heart,
And both by Heav'n inspir'd:
Draws masterly the full-length plan
Of gen'rous virtue and desert,
Still the more deeply trac'd the more admir'd;
Till with his boist'rous blust'ring band,
The dæmon of hostility draws near,
And with unletter'd savage hand,
Unconscious of the seraph's stand,
Presents his piece, or wields the flashy spear:
Points to his blood-hound-pack, in forms erect
Like man, his imps of havock, to surround
The consecrated spot, by summer deckt
In beauteous foliage, lay it with the ground,
And, Goth-like, glory in the recreant act.
O Peace, far other thy approach,
Unpractis'd rudely to encroach;
Thy only weapons Friendship's artless wiles,
Her graces, dimples, soothing airs, and smiles.
What wonder longing mortals rush into thy arms,
And to Ambition's world prefer thy simpler charms!
Ev'n Adam felt his state elysian cease,
With Eve's last look of innocence and peace.
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XVII.
For Peace, far in the vale of years,On which life's setting sun appears,
With dim and wan reflection;
The merchant cares and fears endures,
Himself to certain risques inures,
His ev'ry pow'r in action.
All av'rice not, nor pride all:
Peace lighting on her southern wings,
Where hawthorn blows, and riv'let springs,
Anon shall change the face of things,
All the whole man resistless change,
His thoughts, his senses new arrange,
Peace rural, (not his plum) his pet, his idol.
XVIII.
For Pleasure's calls no hour to spare,Wearying ev'n patient night with care,
For Peace the honest statesman toils,
In prospect Peace his rest, not pillows,
Tho' tost and buffeted by party broils,
As mariner forlorn by winds and billows:
Nor health, nor constitution spar'd,
With Peace to live or die prepar'd,
No durance he foregoes:
Since all the arts that polish life,
And meliorate, are lost by strife,
No couch for ease he knows.
Illustrious worthy! Heav'n's own fav'rite born,
At once our world to better and adorn!
To give repose to millions (long unknown)
He forfeits greatly, generously, his own.
XIX.
War is the curse of human kind,Entail'd upon us for our crimes,
The sure result of epidemic vice:
War's signal still with folly's chimes,
With lawless and degen'rate times,
When the chaste sober virtues of the mind,
The manly, gen'rous, social, kind,
Have lost their staple, current price.
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Once venerated high, of Greece and Rome;
Temple superb, and the imperial dome,
The noblest massy works of skill,
Of Doric and Corinthian taste,
In rubbish their sunk columns hide,
While savage vulgar minds deride,
At war's wild whoop gone forth, to level and to kill;
Goths, Vandals, Saracenes, in brutal haste,
To tread the shapeless, but thrice holy waste.
XX.
Destructive spoiler! foe alikeTo God and Man, whose motto—Strike!
Reverses the first precept of the sky,
Increase and multiply —
Chief when intestine feuds, and civil broils,
Envy's mean spite, and jealousy's turmoils,
Brethren with brethren horridly at strife,
And citizens to citizens oppos'd;
Freedom is hurt in her first nerve of life,
Haply an wound op'd never to be clos'd,
Inly a gangrene, fest'ring as it spreads,
No art can cure, howe'er its fang it dreads.
XXI.
Some bodies politic are fram'd so strong,By statute-indentation bound so fast,
They to eternity seem to belong,
Beyond external injury to last:
Shallow and weak surmise,
Which pseudo wits but patronize;
Notorious to the grey-hair'd wise,
That such the readier still give way,
Victims to general deep decay,
The greater their duration's length,
Their frame complex colossal as their strength,
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With unavailing fury, firm and fixt,
Against the whole artillery of winds;
Till ah! internally begun to fail,
With slow consuming taint its juices mixt,
Its sure destruction in itself it finds;
From dying roots crept up the morbid leav'n,
Blasted and bare it looks as lightning-struck from heav'n!
XXII.
Far other Britain's doom, by fate's decree,Were not her pow'rs at war against herself;
On fratricide intent,
And parricide, atrocious deeds!
Contented, not one mighty whole to be,
Each, his curst idol worshipping—his pelf,
Sees all his strength on parties spent,
Bares his inglorious breast, and bleeds;
Bleeds by his fellow, kinsman, friend,
Hast'ning to one inexorable end:
The wreath in scorn twin'd round the scorpion rod,
And Satan crown'd our titulary God.
XXIII.
True dignity consists aloneIn well-tim'd mercy bent on peace;
The majesty ev'n of a throne,
Held from the PEOPLE but by lease,
Its awfulness divine maintains,
Not by corporeal mulcts and pains,
But by forgetting and forgiving;
When vengeance, mere punctilious wrongs,
Mere modal injuries, excite;
While to the heart black vengeful choler throngs,
Domestic jealousy, domestic spite,
The dead scarce number'd by the living.
XXIV.
Forgiveness infinite to man,From Heav'n crowds life's ev'n thankless span.
Sunshine and smiling skies perform
Beyond the light'ning and the storm.
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Is statute-guilt and systematic fraud.
Monarchs reign not with Heav'n's consent,
For common good and safety rais'd,
Howe'er by sycophants beprais'd,
When sternly backward to relent;
Wrapt in Prerogative's stiff buckram suits,
And to illegal claims mere legal prostitutes.
XXV.
O Britain! how the Muse with anguish seesThy mighty empire tott'ring to its fall,
Loosen'd at base, by slow but sure degrees,
Like time-rent tow'r, or crazy wall,
Shook from within by earthquake, or on high
Shiver'd by the fork'd light'ning of the sky!
Ages on ages, mid the jars,
And tumults of conflicting states;
The tenfold rage of foreign wars,
Threat'ning and thund'ring at thy gates;
Ages on ages saw thee still arise,
Superior and triumphant, back repelling,
Like froth-spent billows from the shore,
Thy proud insulting foes:
Saw thee, while tempests wrapt the skies,
Ocean to mountains awful swelling,
Like Neptune general peace restore,
And give thy wat'ry world, and clust'ring isles repose.
XXVI.
When the rude barb'rous Dane of old,Pour'd out his myriads on thy coast,
In flame thy towns and cities roll'd,
He prov'd thy valour, and his own vain boast.
Oft as gaunt famine keen'd his appetite,
By scent of plunder to outdare the waves,
Year after year repuls'd, with shameful flight,
To his own land of poverty and slaves,
Alfred beheld him, Alfred mark'd the Great,
In Albion's and the shining rolls of fate.
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XXVII.
Nor better far'd the Spaniard, or the Gaul,A no less ranc'rous, tho' more polish'd foe;
Conspir'd all nations to inthral,
Could but Britannia be laid low:
Still of immense resources proud,
Their hosts unnumber'd as the stars;
Peru, with shout of galleons loud,
Pouring her diamonds in, and massy bars,
Conquest's high sentiment they held,
With insolence and insult swell'd,
Britannia's greatness to intomb,
In her own parent ocean's womb.
XXVIII.
Lo, Albion, riding empress of the deep,Her pendants broadly playing, sheets unfurl'd,
Bourbon and his compeer,
The troublers of our world,
From mean but well-tim'd fear
(Contented to have edg'd Europa's joke)
Becoil'd within themselves were taught to keep,
Stunn'd with the thunder of the British oak.
Thus from the pointed rattling hail,
Within its slime-form'd shell retires the timid snail.
Praise to those deeds of fame no praise expresses,
By Albion's high-born sons atchiev'd,
Our Blenheims, Agincourts, and Cressies,
Who nations from the tyrant's crush reliev'd!
Thanks to the Saviours of the State,
Ever beneath Heav'n's brightest smile,
Our statesmen, gen'rals, monarchs great,
The Edwards, Pitts, and Marlbro's, of our isle:
Whose laurels Greece and Rome renown'd,
Sov'reigns of nations, ne'er surpass'd;
And when no epic trace of them is found,
Shall in memorial's grateful bosom last!
XXIX.
Ah! Britain, shall thy honours on record,Thy deathless name, historically bright,
Thy bold exploits, thy feats of hardihood,
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Be in oblivion lost, wrapt up in Stygian night,
Nor from night's drunken ravings understood!
Where now thy virtue sped?
Thy spirit, vigour, genius fled?
What! sleeping with the vulgar dead?—
Where now thy ardent thirst of fame?
Thy gen'rous pantings after glory?
Thy patriotism's vestal flame?
Thy love of freedom, love of peace,
Oft priz'd at death's most terrible release?
What! the mere flowers of fireside story?
Bound up in calf, on shelves inglorious laid,
While mothlings riot on bookbinder's trade?
XXX.
Where now the guardians of thy State,Thy Senators of blest renown,
Tho' wishing still the Monarch to be great,
Sternly unbiass'd by a crown?
Thy heroes masculinely brave,
Never relax'd by sloth or pleasure;
Than to destroy more blest (like Heav'n) to save,
Life in their country's cause a debt,
On which but payment's price they set,
And but in Freedom's bank esteem'd a treasure?
XXXI.
Albion, attend—the voice of love,Friendship, affection, duty, calls thee;
This mighty truth is seal'd above,
And round beyond thy oak ev'n walls thee:
Public and Private Virtue must
Thy sons alike inspire;
Patriots in senates to be just,
Honest in high debates of strife,
Just, uncorrupt must be, when they retire
To the unstrictur'd walks of social life.
Hypocrisy and falsehood found,
Pure piety, chaste morals scorn'd,
On unobserv'd domestic ground,
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Tho' leading up the patriot van,
Tho' with pretension loud set off,
With oratory's air and grace adorn'd:
Mark him, as God mark'd Cain of old,
Duplicity's arch tool, the son of scoff;
Who sunk and rioting in private vice,
Led by his appetites, yet would pretend
To public virtue, plausible as bold:
Mark him—the traitor hath his price,
Pow'r, gold, his being's aim and end.
XXXII.
Which of thy statesmen, Britain, stands our test,Tho' basking full in sunshine of a throne?—
Strange! spendthrifts, gamblers, to invest,
With no self-empire of their own,
Yet with an empire's boundless pow'r?
—Such men are wretched hirelings by the hour,
Howe'er baptiz'd, at levees and at courts,
Thy dernier guardians, pillars, and supports.
XXXIII.
Let them catch GEORGE's virtues in still life,His manners, temp'rate, chaste—e'er in sad hour,
With false ambition's headstrong strife,
They quite monopolize his pow'r;
Into corruption's conduits vile,
Turn it, the nation's innate wealth,
Her florid legislative health,
All hands, all hearts, all pockets to defile.
XXXIV.
Hence tott'ring on the edge of fate we stand,Beneath impending ills,
Within ourselves begun and cherish'd:
Truth, morals, piety, forsook the land,
With which, while Peace content instills,
No nation finally e'er perish'd.
Greece, erst illustriously arose
On hardy virtue's holy base,
That once remov'd—she fell.—
Rome next assum'd the world's first place,
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Till she, for want of distant foes,
Against her sacred self rebell'd.
The rest let ghostly Monks and Friars tell.
XXXV.
Vice and self-envy broke the charmThat held those States in life;
Friends giving friends a false alarm,
Friends urging friends to mortal strife.
Each, without practising himself,
His neighbour's lack of virtue spying,
The virtue of the whole—mere pelf,
Speech, sentiment, and theory, deeds belying.—
XXXVI.
As if Europa's general scale,Of balanc'd pow'r, were fixt,
No alien foe left to assail,
Or envy Britain's happy isles,
A northern Continent in smiles;
Against ourselves we rise with deadly hate:
Headlong rush forward to one common fate!
The Parent and the Children desp'rate grown,
The hamlet struck with madness from the ---ne!
XXXVII.
O shame to glory's sons, to Virtue's shame,Under one God, one King, one charter, bred,
Stampt such by immemorial fame,
And wisdom taught at wisdom's fountain head:
All nations in amazement round,
All nations with experience crown'd,
By their good genius wisely taught,
That Britons never never yield,
'Till Britons self-doom'd take the field,
Against each other with fell vengeance fraught!
XXXVIII.
Of common self-esteem bereft,Our right hand arms against the left.—
Oceans immense that roll between,
Alter not the atrocious scene:
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On this or that side the Atlantic.
And like the fabled cur that dropt
The substance for the shadow gaping,
Britons, by no example stopt,
Or haply great examples aping,
A wretched paltry tax their own to call
(Upon their saucy brows, deep plodding,
A tuft of peacock-feathers nodding)
Convulse three kingdoms, and endanger all.
XXXIX.
For shame! UNITED we can standA Continent in arms,
All Europe's muster'd legions:
Sweeping the main a world command,
All latitudes, all regions,
By British guns thrown into wide alarms:
DIVIDED, every puny, dastard state,
Now lost in Britain's glory,
Must from her weakness gather strength,
And (Heav'n forbid it!) conquer her at length;
Upon her ruins rise augustly great,
To light the flaming torch of future story.
Britain may safely dare each foreign land,
But not her trait'rous, murd'rous self withstand.
XL.
Her brow low'rs death, extinction's settled frown.—In sullen cloudedness her sun goes down—
Fate's step she treads—to pity's last boon worn,
No longer Heav'n's delighted care,
Heart-sunk and wretchedly forlorn,
Like him of Gaza in despair,
See her, with self-destroying ease,
Her empire's solid columns seize:
Those mighty buttresses o'erthrown,
No pow'r could loosen but her own;
Their strength with her's in one sad moment spent,
At once her crush, her grave, and monument.
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XLI.
And shall Britannia, dear to fame,Of high and venerable name;
Britannia, still the great and good,
So many stubborn cent'ries that hath stood,
Defying accident and time,
The admiration of our world,
Whose bolts and thunders dreadful hurl'd,
Aw'd every kingdom, every clime;
Shall she, to shrink till now unknown,
Step from her adamantine throne;
To-pieces break each clust'ring gem
That sparkles in her diadem?
Throw to the tyrants of the globe
Her purple and her ermine robe?
Then, in stern moment of fall'n pride,
Imbrue her hand in—SUICIDE?
Glutted, like time, with conquest over all,
On her own passive coward dagger fall?
XLII.
Forbid it, Heav'n!—ye patriotic band,Never by vice, low-minded vice unman'd;
A single, but a self-ennobled tribe,
Undazzled by the glitter of a bribe,
Unpractis'd in those recreant arts
Courts boastingly now call their own;
Corruption's arts, unblushing grown,
Wrought into system, not by starts
Dark'ning the lustre of a throne:
Forbid it—if your names would rise
On glory's wafture to the skies;
In Honour's, Virtue's, more than marble fane,
Struck out in golden capitals remain.
FINIS.
The indexing finger need not be pointed more particularly here. One part of the British Empire destroying the trade, and pirating on the productions, of the other, is an unparalleled— what shall I call it?—The deed has not a name in the annals of civilized nations, not to mention the archieves of a Protestant Country!—Every victory, on either side, is a defeat to Great-Britain, on the whole; and every defeat a victory to our common enemies, France and Spain. Our Generals can gain no honour, but what results from the unprovoked slaughter of com-patriots and fellow-citizens: recollecting their services will not be thanking them; and immortality will insult them. O shame, everlasting shame, to Christians, Protestants, and Britons!
Quotations are not usually allowed in the Ode: but perhaps, from so pure and original a source as the Scriptures, the judicious critic will excuse them. The writer would not wish to find Parnassus only seated on profane ground. Beside, in other respects, this Ode is peculiar, and somewhat arbitrary, in its construction.
| An ode to peace | |