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By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand, 330 Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,

True to imagined right, above control,

While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan, And learns to venerate himself as man.

Thine, Freedom-thine the blessings pictured here, Thine are those charms that dazzle and endear; [335 Too blest, indeed, were such without alloy; But foster'd even by Freedom, ills annoy; That independence Britons prize too high,

Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie; 340
The self-dependent lordlings stand alone,

All claims that bind and sweeten life unknown;
Here, by the bonds of nature feebly held,
Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd;
Foments arise, imprison'd factions roar,
Repress'd ambition struggles round her shore,
Till, overwrought, the general system feels
Its motions stop, or frenzy fires the wheels.

345

Nor this the worst. As nature's ties decay,
As duty, love, and honour fail to sway,
Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,
Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
Hence, all obedience bows to these alone,
And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown;

350

[355

Till time may come, when, stripp'd of all her charms,
The land of scholars, and the nurse of arms,
Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
Where kings have toil'd, and poets wrote, for fame-
One sink of level avarice shall lie,

And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonour'd die.

Yet think not, thus when Freedom's ills I state,

I mean to flatter kings, or court the great :
Ye powers of truth, that bid my soul aspire,
Far from my bosom drive the low desire!
And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel
The rabble's rage, and tyrant's angry
Thou transitory flower, alike undone
By proud contempt, or favour's fostering sun;
Still may thy blooms the changeful clime endure !

steel;

360

365

I only would repress them to secure ;
For just experience tells, in every soil,

That those who think must govern those that toil;
And all that Freedom's highest aims can reach,
Is but to lay proportion'd loads on each.

370

Hence, should one order disproportion'd grow,
Its double weight must ruin all below.

375

Oh, then, how blind to all that truth requires,

Who think it freedom, when a part aspires!

Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise in arms,

Except when fast-approaching danger warns:
But when contending chiefs blockade the throne,
Contracting regal power to stretch their own;
When I behold a factious bar, agree

To call it freedom when themselves are free;
Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw,
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law;
The wealth of climes, where savage nations roam,
Pillaged from slaves, to purchase slaves at home:
Fear, pity, justice, indignation, start,

Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart;
Till, half a patriot, half a coward, grown,

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne.

380

385

390

Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour
When first ambition struck at regal power;
And thus, polluting honour in its source,
Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force.
Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore,
Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore?
Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste,
Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste;
Seen Opulence, her grandeur to maintain,
Lead stern Depopulation in her train,
And over fields where scatter'd hamlets rose,
In barren solitary pomp repose?

395

400

Have we not seen, at Pleasure's lordly call,
The smiling long-frequented village fall?
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decay'd,
The modest matron, and the blushing maid,
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,

405

To traverse climes beyond the western main-
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound?

410

Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays
Through tangled forests, and through dangerous ways,
Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 415
And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim;
There, while above the giddy tempest flies,
And all around distressful yells arise-
The pensive exile, bending with his woe,
To stop too fearful, and too faint to go,

Casts a long look where England's glories shine,
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.

420

425

Vain, very vain, my weary search, to find That bliss which centres only in the mind: Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose, To seek a good each government bestows? In every government, though terrors reign, Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain, How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! 430 Still, to ourselves, in every place consign'd,

Our own felicity we make or find:

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

435

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,
To men remote from power but rarely known,

Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own. 438

GOLDSMITH.

SELBORNE.

THAT quiet vale! it greets my vision now,
As when we saw it one autumnal day,

A cloudless sun brightening each feathery spray
Of woods that clothed the Hangar to its brow;

A peep

Woods whose luxuriance hardly might allow
at that small hamlet as it lay,
Bosom'd in orchard-plots and gardens gay,
With here and there a field, perchance, to plough.

Delightful valley! still I own thy claim;
As when I gave thee one last lingering look,
And felt thou wast indeed a fitting nook
For him to dwell in whose undying name
Has unto thee bequeathed its humble fame,
Pure and imperishable-like his book!

BERNARD BARTON.

IZAAK WALTON.

CHEERFUL old man! whose pleasant hours were spent
Where Lea's still waters through their sedges glide;
Or on the fairer banks of peaceful Trent,

Or Dove, hemm'd in by rocks on either side:
Thy book is redolent of fields and flowers,
Of freshly-flowing streams and honeysuckle bowers.

Although I reck not of the rod and line,

Thou needest no such brotherhood to give
Charm to thy artless pages-they shall shine,
And thou, depicted in them, long shall live
For many a one to whom thy craft may be
A thing unknown, ev'n as it is to me.

Thy love of nature, quiet contemplation,
In meadows where the world was left behind;
Still seeking with a blameless recreation
In troubled times to keep a quiet mind;
This, with thy simple utterance, imparts
A pleasure ever new to musing hearts.

BERNARD BARTTON.

ON LOOKING AT SOME ILLUSTRATIONS
OF COWPER'S "RURAL WALKS.”

WHY are these tamer landscapes fraught
With charms, whose meek appeal
To sensibility and thought,

The heart is glad to feel?

Cowper! thy muse's magic skill
Hast made them sacred ground;
Thy gentle memory haunts them still,
And casts a spell around.

The hoary oak, the peasant's nest,
The rustic bridge, the grove,
The turf thy feet have often pressed,
The temple and alcove;

The shrubbery, moss-house, simple urn,
The elms, the lodge, the hall-
Each is thy witness in its turn,
Thy verse the charm of all!

Thy verse, no less to nature true
Than to religion dear,
O'er every object sheds a hue

That long must linger here.

Amid these scenes the hours were spent,
Of which we reap the fruit;
And each is now thy monument,

Since that sweet lyre is mute.

Here, like the nightingale's, were poured

Thy "solitary lays,"

Which sought the glory of the Lord,

"Nor asked for human praise."

BERNARD BARTON.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET

AND CHARING CROSS.

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