ODE XVI.
PALINODIA.
I. 1.
Say did I err, chaste Liberty!
When warm with youthful fire,
I gave the vernal fruits to thee
That ripen'd on my lyre?
When, round thy twin-born sister's
shrine,
I taught the flowers of verse to twine
And blend in one their fresh perfume;
Forbade them, vagrant and disjoin'd,
To give to every wanton wind
Their fragrance and their bloom?
I. 2.
Or did I err, when, free to choose
'Mid fabling Fancy's themes,
I led my voluntary Muse
To groves and haunted streams;
Disdain'd to take that gainful road,
Which many a courtly bard had trod,
And aim'd but at self-planted bays?
I swept my lyre enough for me,
If what that lyre might warble free
My free-born friends might praise.
I. 3.
And art thou mute! or does the fiend that rides
Yon sulphurous tube, by tigers drawn,
Where seas of blood roll their increasing tides
Beneath his wheels while myriads groan,
Does he with voice of thunder make reply:
“I am the Genius of stern Liberty,
“Adore me as thy genuine choice;
“Know, where I hang with wreaths my sacred tree,
“Power undivided, just equality
“Are born at my creative voice?”
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?
III. 1.
Is it not virtue to repine,
When thus transform'd the scene?
“Ah! no,” replied, in strain divine,
The heaven-descending Queen.
And, as she sung, she shot a ray,
Mild as the orient dawn of May,
Enlight'ning while it calm'd my brain:
“Now purg'd, my Son! from error, own
“My blessings ne'er were meant to crown
“The vicious, or the vain.
III. 2.
“'Tis only those of purer clay
“From sensual dross refined,
“In whom the passions pleas'd obey
“The God within the mind,
“Who share my delegated aid,
“Through Wisdom's golden mean convey'd
“From the first source of sov'reign good:
“All else to horrid license tends,
“Springs from vindictive pride, and ends
“In anarchy and blood.
III. 3.
“Had France possess'd a sober patriot band,
“True to their own, and nation's weal,
“Such as, fair Albion, bless'd thy favour'd land,
“When Nassau came thy rights to seal;
“She might—but why compare such wide extremes,
“Why seek for reason in delirious dreams?
“Rather consign to exile and to shame
“Her coward princes, her luxurious peers,
“Who fed the hell-born hydra with their fears,
“That now usurps my hallow'd name.”
