'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes Their progress in the road of science; blinds The eyesight of discovery, and begets, In those that suffer it, a sordid mind Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's noble form.
Thee therefore still, blameworthy as thou art, With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed By public exigence, till annual food Fails for the craving hunger of the state, Thee I account still happy, and the chief Among the nations, seeing thou art free, My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude, Replete with vapours, and disposes much All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine;Thine unadulterate manners are less soft And plausible than social life requires.
And thou hast need of discipline and art To give thee what politer France receives From Nature's bounty--that humane address And sweetness, without which no pleasure is In converse, either starved by cold reserve, Or flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl;Yet, being free, I love thee; for the sake Of that one feature, can be well content, Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To seek no sublunary rest beside.
But once enslaved, farewell! I could endure Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, not at all.
Then what were left of roughness in the grain Of British natures, wanting its excuse That it belongs to freemen, would disgust And shock me. I should then with double pain Feel all the rigour of thy fickle clime;And, if I must bewail the blessing lost For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys bled, I would at least bewail it under skies Milder, among a people less austere, In scenes which, having never known me free, Would not reproach me with the loss I felt.
Do I forebode impossible events, And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may, But the age of virtuous politics is past, And we are deep in that of cold pretence.
Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere, And we too wise to trust them. He that takes Deep in his soft credulity the stamp Designed by loud declaimers on the part Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust, Incurs derision for his easy faith And lack of knowledge, and with cause enough.
For when was public virtue to be found, Where private was not? Can he love the whole Who loves no part? he be a nation's friend Who is, in truth, the friend of no man there?
Can he be strenuous in his country's cause, Who slights the charities for whose dear sake That country, if at all, must be beloved?
--'Tis therefore sober and good men are sad For England's glory, seeing it wax pale And sickly, while her champions wear their hearts So loose to private duty, that no brain, Healthful and undisturbed by factious fumes, Can dream them trusty to the general weal.
Such were not they of old whose tempered blades Dispersed the shackles of usurped control, And hewed them link from link. Then Albion's sons Were sons indeed. They felt a filial heart Beat high within them at a mother's wrongs, And shining each in his domestic sphere, Shone brighter still once called to public view.
'Tis therefore many, whose sequestered lot Forbids their interference, looking on, Anticipate perforce some dire event;And seeing the old castle of the state, That promised once more firmness, so assailed That all its tempest-beaten turrets shake, Stand motionless expectants of its fall.
All has its date below. The fatal hour Was registered in heaven ere time began.
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works Die too. The deep foundations that we lay, Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.
We build with what we deem eternal rock;A distant age asks where the fabric stood;And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, The undiscoverable secret sleeps.
But there is yet a liberty unsung By poets, and by senators unpraised, Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the power Of earth and hell confederate take away;A liberty, which persecution, fraud, Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind, Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more:
'Tis liberty of heart, derived from heaven, Bought with His blood who gave it to mankind, And sealed with the same token. It is held By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure By the unimpeachable and awful oath And promise of a God. His other gifts All bear the royal stamp that speaks them His, And are august, but this transcends them all.
His other works, this visible display Of all-creating energy and might, Are grand, no doubt, and worthy of the Word That, finding an interminable space Unoccupied, has filled the void so well, And made so sparkling what was dark before.
But these are not His glory. Man, 'tis true, Smit with the beauty of so fair a scene, Might well suppose the Artificer Divine Meant it eternal, had He not Himself Pronounced it transient, glorious as it is, And still designing a more glorious far, Doomed it, as insufficient for His praise.
These, therefore, are occasional, and pass;Formed for the confutation of the fool Whose lying heart disputes against a God;That office served, they must be swept away.
Not so the labours of His love; they shine In other heavens than these that we behold, And fade not. There is Paradise that fears No forfeiture, and of its fruits He sends Large prelibation oft to saints below.
Of these the first in order, and the pledge And confident assurance of the rest, Is liberty; a flight into His arms Ere yet mortality's fine threads give way, A clear escape from tyrannising lust, And fill immunity from penal woe.
Chains are the portion of revolted man, Stripes and a dungeon; and his body serves The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul, Opprobrious residence, he finds them all.
