Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth, In politic convention) put your trust
Blushed on the panels. Mirror needed none In the shadow of a bramble; and, reclined
Where all was vitreous; but in order due

In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch, Convivial table and commodious seat

Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway; (What seemed at least commodious seat) were there; Where find ye passive fortitude! Whence springs Sofa, and couch, and high-built throne august. Your self-denying zeal, that holds it good The same lubricity was found in all,

To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang And all was moist to the warm touch : a scene His thorns with streamers of continual praise ? Of evanescent glory, once a stream,

We too are friends to loyalty. We love And soon to slide into a stream again.

The king, who loves the law, respects his bounds, Alas! 'twas but a mortifying stroke

And reigns content within them: him we serve Of undesigned severity, that glanced

Freely and with delight, who leaves us free: (Made by a monarch) on her own estate,

But recollecting still that he is man, On human grandeur and the courts of kings. We trust him not too far. King though he be, 'Twas transient in its nature, as in show

And king in England too, he may be weak, 'Twas durable; as worthless, as it seemed

And vain enough to be ambitious still; Intrinsically precious; to the foot

May exercise amiss his proper powers, Treacherous and false ; it smiled, and it was cold. Or covet more than freemen choose to grant: Great princes have great playthings. Some have Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours played

To administer, to guard, to adorn, the state, At hewing mountains into men, and some

But not to warp or change it. We are his At building human wonders mountain-high. To serve him nobly in the common cause, Some have amused the dull, sad years of life, True to the death, but not to be his slaves. (Life spent in infolence, and therefore sad) Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love With schemes of monumental fame; and sought Of kings, between your loyalty and ours. By pyramids and mausolean pomp,

We love the man, the paltry pageant you:
Short-lived themselves, to immortalize their bones. We the chief patron of the commonwealth,
Some seek diversion in the tented field,

You the regardless author of its woes:
And make the sorrows of mankind their sport. We for the sake of liberty a king,
But war’s a game, which, were their subjects wise, You chains and bondage for a tyrant's sake.
Kings would not play at. Nations would do well Our love is principle, and has its root
To extort their truncheons from the puny hands In reason, is judicious, manly, free;
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds

Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,

And licks the foot, that treads it in the dust.
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish,

I would not be a king to be beloved
PRAISE OF LIBERTY.

Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise, Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone

Where love is mere attachment to the throne, To reverence'what is ancient, and can plead Not to the man, who fills it as he ought. A course of long observance for its use,

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower That even servitude, the worst of ills,

Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; Because delivered down from sire to son,

And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.

Except what wisdom lays on evil men, But is it fit, or can it bear the shock

Is evil: hurts the faculties, impedes Of rational discussion, that a man,

Their progress in the road of science; blinds Compounded and made up like other men

The eyesight of discovery; and begets Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust

In those that suffer it, a sordid mind And folly in as ample measure meet,

Bestial, a meagre intellect, uufit As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,

To be the tenant of man's noble form. Should be a despot absolute, and boast

Thee therefore still, blame-worthy as thou art, Himself the only freeman of his land?

With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will, By public exigence till annual food Wage war, with any or with no pretence

Fails for the craving hunger of the state, Of provocation given, or wrong sustained,

Thee I account still happy, and the chief And force the beggarly last doit, by means

Among the nations, seeing thou art free; That his own humour dictates, from the clutch My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude, Of poverty, that thus he may procure

Replete with

vapours,

and disposes much His thousands, weary of penurious life,

All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine: A splendid opportunity to die?

Thine unadulterate manners are less soft Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old

And plausible than social life requires, Jothan ascribed to his assembled trees

And thou hast need of disciplina and art

To give thee what politer France receives

Was registered in Heaven ere time began.
From nature's bounty—that humane address We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
And sweetness, without which no pleasure is Die too: the deep foundations that we lay,
In converse, either starved by cold reserve,

Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.
Or flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl. We build with what we deem eternal rock:
Yet being free I love thee: for the sake

A distant age

asks where the fabric stood; Of that one feature can be well content,

And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain,
Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art, The undiscoverable secret sleeps.
To seek no sublunary rest beside.
But once enslaved, farewell! I could endure
Chains no where patiently; and chains at home,

INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY.
Where I am free by birthright, not at all.
Then what were left of roughness in the grain

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, Of British natures, wanting its excuse

And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain, That it belongs to freemen, would disgust

That hellish foes, confederate for his harm, And shock me. I should then with double pain

Can wind around him, but he casts it off Feel all the rigour of thy fickle clime;

With as much ease as Samson his green withes. And, if I must bewail the blessing lost,

He looks abroad into the varied field For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys bled,

Of nature, and though poor perhaps, compared I would at least bewail it under skies

With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Milder, among a people less austere;

Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
In scenes, which having never known me free, His are the mountains, and the vallies his,
Would not reproach me with the loss I felt.

And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
Do I forbode impossible events,

With a propriety that none can feel, And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may!

But who, with filial confidence inspired, But the age of virtuous politics is past,

Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And we are deep in that of cold pretence.

And smiling say—“ My Father made them all!" Patriots are grown too sltrewd to be sincere,

Are they not his by a peculiar right, And we too wise to trust them. He that takes And by an emphasis of interest his, Deep in his soft credulity the stamp

Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, Designed by loud declaimers on the part

Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust,

With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love, Incurs derision for his easy faith,

That planned, and built, and still upholds, a world And lack of knowledge, and with cause enough:

So clothed with beauty for rebellious man? For when was public virtue to be found

Yes-ye may fill your garners, ye that reap Where private was not? Can he love the whole The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good Who loves no part? He be a nation's friend

In senseless riot; but ye will not find Who is in truth the friend of no man there?

In feast or in the chase, in song or dance, Can he be strenuous in his country's cause,

A liberty like bis, who, unimpeached Who slights the charities, for whose dear sake Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong, That country, if at all, must be beloved ?

Appropriates nature as his Father's work, 'Tis therefore sober and good men are sad

And has a richer use of yours than you. For England's glory, seeing it wax pale

He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth And sickly, while her champions wear their hearts Of no mean city: planned or ere the hills So loose to private duty, that no brain,

Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea Healthful and undisturbed by factious fumes, With all his roaring multitude of waves. Can dream them trusty to the general weal.

His freedom is the same in every state; Such were they not of old, whose tempered blades And no condition of this changeful life, Dispersed the shackles of usurped controul,

So manifold in cares, whose every day And hewed them link from link; then Albion's sons Brings its own evil with it, makes it less: Were sons indeed; they felt a filial heart

For he has wings, that neither sickness, pain, Beat high within them at a mother's wrongs; Nor penury, can cripple or confine. And, shining each in his domestic sphere,

No nook so narrow but he spreads them there Shone brighter still, once called to public view. With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds 'Tis therefore many, whose sequestered lot

His body bound; but knows not what a range Forbids their interference, looking on,

His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain; Anticipate perforce some dire event;

And that to bind him is a vain attempt And, seeing the old castle of the state,

Whom God delights in, and in wbom he dwells. That promised once more firmness, so assailed Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste That all its tempest-beaten turrets shake,

His works. Admitted once to his embrace, Stand motionless expectants of its fall.

Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before: All has its date below; the fatal hour

Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart

a

a

a

a

Made pure shall relish, with divine delight

So reads he nature, whom the lamp of truth Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought. Illuminates. Thy lamp, mysterious word! Brutes graze the mountain-top, with faces prone Which whoso sees no longer wanders lost, And eyes intent upon the scanty herb

With intellects bemazed in endless doubt, It yields them: or recumbent on its brow

But runs the road of wisdom. Thou hast built Ruminate heedless of the scene outspread

With means, that were not till by thee employed, Beneath, beyond, and stretching far away

Worlds that had never been hadst thou in strength From inland regions to the distant main.

Been less, or less benevolent than strong. Man views it, and admires; but rests content They are thy witnesses, who speak thy power With what he views. The landscape has his praise, And goodness infinite, but speak in ears But not its author. Unconcerned who formed That hear not, or receive not their report. The paradise he sees, he finds it such,

In vain thy creatures testify of thee, And such well-pleased to find it, asks no more. Till thou proclaim thyself. Theirs is indeed Not so the mind, that has been touched from Heaven, A teaching voice; but 'tis the praise of thine, And in the school of sacred wisdom taught

That whom it teaches it makes prompt to learn, To read his wonders, in whose thought the world, And with the boon gives talents for its use. Fair as it is, existed ere it was.

Till thou art heard, imaginations vain Not for its own sake merely, but for his

Possess the heart, and fables false as hell; Much more, who fashioned it, he gives it praise; Yet, deemed oracular, lure down to death Praise that from earth resulting, as it ought, The muinformed and heedless souls of men. To earth's acknowledged sovereign, finds at once We give to chance, blind chance, ourselves as blind, Jis only just proprietor in Him.

The glory of thy work; which yet appears The soul that sees him, or receives sublimed

Perfect and unimpeachable of blame, New faculties, or learns at least to employ

Challenging human scrutiny, and proved More worthily the powers she owned before; Then skilful most when most severely judged. Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze But chance is not; or is not where thou reignest: Of ignorance, till then she overlooked,

Thy providence forbids that fickle power A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms

(If power she be that works but to confound) Terrestrial in the vast and the minute;

mix her wild vagaries with thy laws. The unambiguous footsteps of the God,

Yet thus we dote, refusing while we can Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing,

Instruction, and inventing to ourselves And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds. Gods such as guilt makes welcome; gods that sleep, Much conversant with Heaven, she often holds Or disregard our follies, or that sit With those fair ministers of light to man,

Amused spectators of this bustling stage. That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp,

Thee we reject, unable to abide Sweet conference. Inquires what strains were they

Thy purity, till pure as thou art pure, With which Heaven rang, when every star, in haste Made such by thee, we love thee for that cause To gratulate the new-created earth,

For which we shunned and hated thee before. Sent forth a voice, and all the sons of God

Then we are free. Then liberty, like day, Shouted for joy.-" Tell me, ye shining hosts, Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven That navigate a sea that knows no storms,

Fires all the faculties with glorious joy. Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,

A voice is heard, that mortal ears hear not If from your elevation, whence ye view

Till thou hast touched them; 'tis the voice of song, Distinctly scenes invisible to man,

A loud hosanna sent from all thy works; And systems, of whose birth no tidings yet

Which he that hears it with a shout repeats, Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race

And adds his rapture to the general praise. Favoured as ours; transgressors from the womb, In that blest moment Nature, throwing wide And hasting to a grave, yet doomed to rise,

Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile And to possess a brighter heaven than yours? The author of her beauties, who, retired As one, who long detained on foreign shores, Behind his own creation, works unseen Pants to return, and when he sees afar

By the impure, and hears his power denied. His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks, Thou art the source, and centre of all minds, From the green wave emerging, darts an eye Their only point of rest, eternal Word! Radiant with joy towards the happy land;

From thee departing they are lost, and rove So I with animated hopes behold,

At random without honour, hope, or peace. And many an aching wish, your beamy fires, From thee is all, that soothes the life of man, That show like beacons in the blue abyss,

His high endeavour, and his glad success, Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home His strength to suffer, and his will to serve. From toilsome life to never-ending rest.

But oh, thou bounteous giver of all good, Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires,

Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown! That give assurance of their own success,

Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor; And that infused from Heaven must thither tend." And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.

THE WINTER WALK AT NOON.

And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,

Without a cloud, and white without a speck And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased

The dazzling splendour of the scene below. With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave; Again the harmony comes o'er the vale; Some chord in unison with what we hear

And through the trees I view the embattled tower, Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

Whence all the music. I again perceive How soft the music of those village bells,

The soothing influence of the wasted strains, Falling at intervals upon the ear

And settle in soft musings as I tread In cadence sweet, now dying all away,

T'he walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, Now pealing loud again, and louder still,

Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on !

The roof, though moveable through all its length With easy force it opens all the cells

As the wind 'sways it, has yet well sufficed,
Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard And intercepting in their silent fall
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,

The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.

No noise is here, or none that binders thought. Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,

The redbreast warbles still, but is content That in a few short moments I retrace

With slender notes, and more than half suppressed: (As in a map the voyager his course)

Pleased with his solitude, and fitting light The windings of my way through many years.

From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes Short as in retrospect the journey seems,

From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, It seemed not alway short; the rugged path,

That tinkle in the withered leaves below. And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.

Charms more than silence. Meditation here Yet feeling present evils, while the past

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart Faintly impress the mind, or cot at all,

May give an useful lesson to the head, How readily we wish time spent revoked,

And learning wiser grow without his books. That we might try the ground again, where once Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, (Through inexperience, as we now perceive) Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells We missed that happiness we might have found! In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend,

Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. A father, whose authority, in show

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, When most severe, and mustering all its force, The mere materials with which wisdom builds, Was but the graver countenance of love ;

Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower,

Does but incumber whom it seems to enrich. And utter now and then an awful voice,

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; But had a blessing in its darkest frown,

Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells, We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand, By which the magic art of shrewder wits That reared us. At a thoughtless age, allured Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. By every gilded folly, we renounced

Some to the fascination of a name His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent

Surrender judgment, hood-winked. Some the style That converse, which we now in vain regret. Infatuates, and through Jabyrinths and wilds How gladly would the man recall to life

Of error leads them by a tune entranced. The boy's neglected sire! a mother too,

While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still, The insupportable fatigue of thought, Might he demand them at the gates of death. And swallowing therefore without pause or choice Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and tamed The total grist unsifted, husks and all. The playful humour; he could now endure, But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course (Himself grown sober in the vale of tears)

Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And feel a parent's presence no restraint.

And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, But not to understand a treasure's worth,

And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time [root, Till time has stolen away the slighted good, Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn Is cause of half the poverty we feel,

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, And makes the world the wilderness it is.

Not shy, as in the world, and to be won The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,

By slow solicitation, seize at once
And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold, The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.

What prodigies can power divine perform
The night was winter in his roughest mood; More grand than it produces year by year,
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon And all in sight of inattentive man?
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,

Familiar with the effect we slight the cause,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast, And in the constancy of nature's course,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,

The regular return of genial months,

And renovation of a faded world,

The beauties of the wilderness are his, See nought to wonder at. Should God again, That make so gay the solitary place As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race

Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms, Of the undeviating and punctual sun,

That cultivation glories in, are his. How would the world admire! but speaks it less He sets the bright procession on its way, An agency divine, to make him know

And marshals all the order of the year; His moment when to sink and when to rise,

He marks the bounds, which winter may not pass, Age after age, than to arrest his course?

And blunts his pointed fury; in its case, All we behold is miracle ; but seen

Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ, So duly all is miracle in vain.

Uninjured, with inimitable art; Where now the vital energy that moved,

And, ere one flowery season fades and dies, While summer was, the pure and subile lymph Designs the blooming wonders of the next. Through the imperceptible meandering veins

Some say that in the origin of things, Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy touch When all creation started into birth, Of unprolific winter has impressed

The infant elements received a law, A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.

From which they swerve not since. That under force But let the months go round, a few short months, Of that controlling ordinance they move, And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, And need not his immediate hand, who first Barren as lances, among which the wind

Prescribed their course, to regulate it now. Makes wintry music, sigling as it goes,

Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

The incumbrance of his own concerns, and spare And more aspiring, and with ampler spread, [lost. The great artificer of all that moves Shall boast new charms, and more than they have The stress of a continual act, the pain Then, each in its peculiar honours clad,

Of unremitted vigilance and care, Shall publish even to the distant eye

As too laborious and severe a task. Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich

So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems, Iu streaming gold; syringa, ivory pure;

To span omnipotence, and measure might, The scentless and the scented rose; this red, That knows no measure, by the scanty rule And of an humbler growth, the other tall,

And standard of his own, that is to-day, And throwing up into the darkest gloom

And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down.
Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew, But how should matter occupy a charge
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf,

Dull as it is, and satisfy a law
That the wind severs from the broken wave; So vast in its demands, unless impelled
The lilac, various in array, now white,

To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set And under pressure of some conscious cause? With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

The Lord of all, himself through all diffused, Studious of ornament, yet unresolved

Sustains, and is the life of all that lives. Which hue she most approved, she chose them all; Nature is but a name for an effect, Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire, But well compensating her sickly looks

By which the mighty process is maintained, With never-cloying odours, early and late ; Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm

Slow circling ages are as transient days; Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, Whose work is without labour; whose designs That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion too,

No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts: Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset And whose beneficence no charge exhausts. With blushing wreaths, investing every spray; Him blind antiquity profaned, not served, Althæa with the purple eye; the broom,

With self-taught rites, and under various names, Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed,

Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan, Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all

And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, With tutelary goddesses and gods, The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf That were not; and commending as they would Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more To each some province, garden, field, or grove. The bright profusion of her scattered stars.- But all are under one. One spirit-His, These have been, and these shall be in their day; Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows, And all this uniforın and coloured scene

Rules universal nature. Not a flower Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load,

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain, And Aush into variety again.

Of his unrivalled pencil. He inspires From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues, Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes

In grains as countless as the sea-side sands, The grand transition, that there lives and works The forms, with which he sprinkles all the earth. A soul in all things, and that soul is God.

Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds