"A CALL TO THE PEople.

"Awake! the patriot poet cries-
Awake! each sire and son;
From long degrading sleep arise,
Ere ruin be begun :

The

very echo of your name, The very shadow of your fame, Hath many a battle won;

And can ye stoop to what ye are !-
Chained followers of Oppression's car!

"Have ye not lavished health and life,
At mad ambition's call?

Have ye not borne the brunt of strife,
Unbroken as a wall!

Have ye not bled for worthless things,
Priests, placemen, concubines and kings?
Have ye
not toiled for all?

And can ye, in this startling hour,
Still slumber in the grasp of power?

"Awake! but not to spend your breath
In unavailing ire;

Awake! but not to deal in death,

Crime, carnage, blood, and fire;
Awake! but not to hurl the brand
Of desolation round the land,
Till all your hopes expire;

Lest vengeance rise amid the gloom,
To push ye to a deeper doom.

"In pity to yourselves, beware

Of battle-breathing knaves,
Who raise their voices in the air
To congregated slaves:
Those men who, Judas-like, betray,
Or lead through Anarchy the way
To dungeons and to graves ;-
Strong arms can work no great reform,
Mind, mind alone must quell the storm!

"Awake! in moral manhood strong,
Endowed with mental might,
With warm persuasion on your tongue,
To plead the cause of Right;

Let reason, centre of the soul,

Your wild and wandering thoughts control,
And give them life and light;

Then may ye hope at length to gain
That freedom ye have sought in vain.

"Oh, God! the future yet shall see,
On this fair world of thine,

The myriads wise, and good, and free,
Fulfil thy blest design:

The dawn of Truth, long overcast,
Shall kindle into day at last,

Bright, boundless, and divine;

And man shall walk the fruitful sod,
A being worthy of his God."

Sufficiently evident is it, that Byron, Keats, and Shelley have furnished the food from which Mr. Prince's mind has derived expansion and vigour. The whole of the fearful revulsions which society is now undergoing, may be traced to the influence exercised by the works of these three poets. They have become the text-books by which the incipient author shapes his opinions and his practice; the scriptures on which he swears. The idea of rooting up all that disfigures or encumbers the earth, and forcing manhood to assume its true dignity instilled by their perusal, infects in no small degree the Muse of Mr. Prince; although it is by him brought to bear on the real miseries of life. Thus, a poem entitled "A Vision of Futurity," sums up, in the following powerful stanzas, the ills, the vices, and the crimes, the absence of which is to constitute the blessedness of years to come :"I see no splendid Tyrant on a Throne, Extorting homage with a bauble rod; No Senate heedless of a People's moan, Cursing the produce of the fertile sod; No pampered priest with sensual pride o'erblown, Shielding Oppression in the name of God; No pensioned concubine, no pauper peer, To scorn the widow's or the orphan's tear.

"I see no Bondsman at his brother's feet,

The weak one fearing what the strong one saith;
No biassed Wealth upon the judgement seat,
Urging its victims to disgrace or death;

No venal pleaders, privileged to cheat

With truth and falsehood in the self-same breath;
No dungeon-glooms; no prisons for the poor;
No partial laws to render power secure.

"I see no human prodigy of war,

Borne on the wings of slaughter unto fame :
The special favourite of some evil star,

Sent forth to gather curses on his name;
Like him whose grave is o'er the ocean far,
At once his country's idol and her shame :
The bloody vulture of Imperial Gaul,
Whose loftiest flight sustained a fatal fall.
"I see no honest toil unpaid-unfed-
No idler revelling in lust and wine;

N. S.-VOL. VI.

M

No sweat and blood unprofitably shed,
To answer every rash and dark design;
No violation of the marriage bed,

The worst transgression of a law divine;
No tempting devil in the shape of gold,

For which men's hearts and minds are bought and sold."

Nor is it only in this poem that the author gives vent to the anguished sense entertained by himself and brothers in distress, of—

"The oppressor's wrong, and proud man's contumely;"

the indignant appeal is made again and yet again, and with increased earnestness. With the keen reproaches contained in the verses which we shall next quote, we cannot concur; for we think the author has laid the burthen on the wrong back. Such is the anomalous state of society at present in England, that the highest and the lowest are alike the victims of an oppressive middle class, who intimidate the one and trample on the other. But the warning of such manifestations as the following, should not pass unheeded: poor men now begin to reason on their state, and though they may reason wrongly, still the danger of their resentment cannot safely be despised. Writhing under a complication of grievous inflictions, they cannot be expected to discriminate nicely; and mistaking the ostensible for the real position, will often run amuck, and seek to avenge themselves blindly. We know not how many of the labouring population would re-echo these strong and fiery lines :

66 THE POOR MAN'S APPEAL.

Listen, ye haughty magnates of the land,

Girt with the splendour of your palace-halls;
Listen, ye proud hereditary band,

Breathing dark spells within your secret walls:
Give back a part of your misguided power,
For danger thrives with each succeeding hour.

"Who raised ye unto grandeur?-Briton's slaves,
Chained to the car of unrequited toil;

The seaman wrestling with the winds and waves,
The ploughman fainting o'er the furrowed soil,
And all the victims of misfortune's frown
Who fill the windings of the sickly town.

"The famished weaver bending o'er his loom,
Venting his agonies with smothered breath;
The miner buried in unbroken gloom,

Looking for life amid the damps of death:
Young children, too, have borne unheeded pains,
To swell the stream of your unhallowed gains.

"If ye are husbands, loving and beloved

If ye are fathers, in your offspring blest-
If ye are men, by human passions moved,-
Let truth and justice plead for the oppressed:

The sorrowing mothers of our babes behold,
Whose homes are sad, and comfortless, and cold.
"Lo! fettered Commerce droops her feeble wing,

And ships lie freightless on the heaving main,
No more with busy sounds our harbours ring:
The breezes come, the tides go back in vain ;
And England's artisans, a squalid brood,
Creep from their homes, and supplicate for food.
"Our once proud marts are desolate and lone,

Our patriots trembling for the nation's fame;
Prison and poor-house, gorged with victims, groan
With complicated misery and shame;
And public pride, and private joy, no more
Can find a place on our unhappy shore.
"Behold where many-armed Rebellion walks,

Gaunt, fierce and fearless, in the eye of day;
And Crime, the offspring of Oppression, stalks
'Mid scenes of strife, and terror, and dismay;
And Vengeance bares his arm, and lifts the brand,
To sweep injustice from the groaning land.
"Forth rush the multitude in mad career,

For unrelenting hunger goads them on;
Stern anarchy is leagued with frantic fear;
Safety, and peace, and liberty are gone :
Mighty and mean are mingled in the fall,—
Now ruin comes and tramples upon all.
"Such is, or shall be, the disastrous end

Of all your stubborn policy and pride;
A wakening people must and will contend

For rights withheld and sustenance denied:
Thoughts of the painful present and the past,
Must bring the hour of reckoning at last."-

We must here close Mr. Prince's volume; for want of space, the reviewer's bane, compels us to forbear further quotation. We have given enough, however, to prove to the reader that there is a spirit at work among the humbler ranks, which, as directed by skilful or careless hands, may be productive of the greatest blessings or deepest curses. The only justification possible of the possession by one order, of rights which are denied to another, lies in the fact of that other lacking the intelligence requisite for their proper exercise. But if intelligence is pretty nearly equally diffused, equal rights will be demanded and obtained. A timely recognition of this truth may save much trouble and commotion.

Our selections from Mr. Prince's book have been purposely made from poems which bear upon the great question now at issue between the operatives and their employers; but our readers must not therefrom conclude that it is wholly composed of such. Many other

occasional pieces are contained in it, some of great beauty, and all breathing that simplicity, and taste for rural enjoyment, so prevalent in the effusions of all uneducated poets. It may perhaps be worthy of a remark en passant, that Mr. Prince has been somewhat more unfavourably situated in this respect, than many of his predecessors. Clare's occupations were in accordance with his temperament. He, while pursuing his daily avocations, could breathe the pure air of heaven, gaze into the blue sky, and drink deep draughts of inspiration from its very fount; and hence does he anxiously regard the face of Nature, as if she were a living friend whom he might lose; and hence learns to note, with affectionate solicitude, every passing change in her countenance, and delineate every delicate variation of her character. Most of his poems were composed under the immediate influence of this feeling, and if they could not be transcribed almost at the very moment of conception, they were irrecoverably lost to himself and others. But how different has it been with Mr. Prince ! Confined within the precincts of the " sickly town," amid scenes of the most dire distress, and surrounded by all things anti-poetical and ungenial, the smells of oil and steam, and the rumbling clatter of machinery in a cotton-mill,-has he cultivated his faculty of song. Thus, in his rural aspirations is perceptible that absence of satiety, and unrestrained gush of pleasurable sensations, so requisite to poetry of this kind. In his "Poet's Sabbath," (a sweetly elaborated production, which few authors would be ashamed to own,) this is peculiarly evident. The descriptions in this poem seem to partake of the first blush of novelty; and we cannot do other than sympathize with the overflowing to which the denizen of cities gives vent, when escaped on his only term of liberty from crowded streets and daily toil to green fields and rustic recreation. Even the initial lines, taken in connexion with the writer's circumstances, are striking

"Sabbath! thou art my Ararat of life,

Smiling above the deluge of my cares.'

One or two of the subsequent stanzas, however, might, with advantage to the poet's reputation, have been omitted.

The latter part of Mr. Prince's little brochure is occupied with Lyrics for the People." As a song-writer, the poet seems as yet only trying his wings;-there is, however, much of the spirit of Burns in him, and a few years will give him that depth of tone and instinct of feeling, which satisfies the judgement, and goes at once to the heart. We recommend him, also, in this department, not to aim at imitation-but originality.

In conclusion, we must declare our conviction that the merits of Mr. Prince are of such a degree as to entitle him to the deliberate attention of the friends of literature. It is not for the good of society that men like him should waste their energies in fruitless struggles with adversity. But let him live in the faith, and fear not!