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THE LOVER'S RESOLVE.

Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,

What care I how fair she be?

Shall my foolish heart be pinel
'Cause I see a woman kind,
Or a well disposed nature,
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder, than
Turtle-dove or pelican,

If she be not so to me,

What care I how kind she be?

Shall a woman's virtue move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well-deserving known
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest,
Which may gain her name of best,
If she be not such to me,

What care I how good she be?

'Cause her fortune seems too high, Shall I play the fool and die? Those that bear a noble mind,

Where they want of riches find,

Think what with them they would do,
That without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I how great she be?

Great or good, or kind or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair;
If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?

401

402

CLARENCE'S DREAM.

O

CLARENCE'S DREAM.-SHAKESPEARE.

I HAVE passed a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian, faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night
Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days,
So full of dismal terror was the time.
Methought that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embarked, to cross to Burgundy;
And, in my company, my brother Gloster;
Who, from my cabin, tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches; whence we looked toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befallen us. As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O then, methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men, that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,

That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
Often did I strive

To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smothered it within my panting bulk,

IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.

Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
O, then began the tempest to my soul!
I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?”
And so he vanished. Then came wandering by
A shadow, like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud:
"Clarence is come! false, fleeting, perjured Clarence!
That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury:

Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!"
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I, trembling, waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.

403

IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.-BURKE.

MY

Y LORDS: What is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my lords? Where was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

Is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain, as prosecutors; and I believe, my lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men separated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community; all the

404

IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.

commons of England resenting as their own the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.

Do we want a tribunal? No example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. Here we see that sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people would have the heirapparent of the crown to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject; offering a pledge in that situation, for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch.

We have a great hereditary peerage here; those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their posterity, to guard; and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. We have here a new nobility, who have arisen and exalted themselves by various merits, by great military services, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun: we have those who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favor of their sovereign and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects; and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters, that were, the other day, upon a level with them, now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from a place in which they administered high, though subordinate justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge, and to strengthen with their votes, those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided.

My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of this house. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons,

REVELRY IN THE EAST INDIES.

405

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him, in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him, in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him, in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed; whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him, in the name, and by the virtue of those eternal laws of justice, which he has violated.

I impeach him, in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.

REVELRY IN THE EAST INDIES.

E meet 'neath the sounding rafter,

WE

And the walls around are bare;
As they shout to our peals of laughter,
It seems that the dead are there.
But stand to your glasses steady,

We drink to our comrades' eyes;
Quaff a cup to the dead already;
Hurrah! for the next that dies.
Not here are the goblets glowing;
Not here is the vintage sweet;
"Tis cold as our hearts are growing,
And dark as the doom we meet.
But stand to your glasses steady,
And soon shall our pulses rise,-
A cup to the dead already;

Hurrah! for the next that dies.

Not a sigh for the lot that darkles;
Not a tear for the friends that sink;
We'll fall, midst the wine-cup's sparkles,
As mute as the wine we drink.

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