I better like a blunt indifference
And self-respecting slowness, disinclined
To win me at first sight:-and be there joined
Patience and temperance with this high reserve,-
Honour that knows the path and will not swerve;
Affections, which, if put to proof, are kind;
And piety towards God.-Such men of old
Were England's native growth; and, throughout Spain,
Forests of such do at this day remain ;
Then for that country let our hopes be bold;
For matched with these shall policy prove vain,
Her arts, her strength, her iron, and her gold.
O'ERWEENING statesmen have full long relied
On fleets and armies, and external wealth:
But from within proceeds a nation's health;
Which shall not fail, though poor men cleave with pride
To the paternal floor; or turn aside,
In the thronged city, from the walks of gain,
As being all unworthy to detain
A soul by contemplation sanctified.
There are who cannot languish in this strife,
Spaniards of every rank, by whom the good
Of such high course was felt and understood:
Who to their country's cause have bound a life,
Erewhile by solemn consecration given
To labour and to prayer, to Nature and to Heaven.*
THE FRENCH AND THE SPANISH GUERILLAS.
HUNGER, and sultry heat, and nipping blast
From bleak hill-top, and length of march by night
Through heavy swamp, or over snow-clad height,
These hardships ill sustained, these dangers past,
The roving Spanish bands are reached at last,
Charged, and dispersed like foam :-but as a flight
Of scattered quails by signs do reunite,
So these, and, heard of once again, are chased
With combinations of long-practised art
And newly-kindled hope; but they are fled,
Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead;
Where now?-Their sword is at the foeman's heart!
And thus from year to year his walk they thwart,
And hang like dreams around his guilty bed.
*See Laborde's character of the Spanish people; from him the sentiment of these two last lines is taken.
THEY seek, are sought; to daily battle led,
Shrink not, though far out-numbered by their foes:
For they have learned to open and to close
The ridges of grim war; and at their head
Are captains such as erst their country bred
Or fostered, self-supported chiefs,-like those
Whom hardy Rome was fearful to oppose,
Whose desperate shock the Carthaginian fled.
In one who lived unknown a shepherd's life
Redoubted Viriatus breathes again;
And Mina, nourished in the studious shade,
With that great leader vies, who, sick of strife
And bloodshed, longed in quiet to be laid
In some green island of the Western main.
THE power of armies is a visible thing,
Formal, and circumscribed in time and place;
But who the limits of that power can trace
Which a brave people into light can bring
Or hide, at will,-for freedom combating,
By just revenge inflamed? No foot can chase,
No eye can follow to a fatal place,
That power, that spirit, whether on the wing
Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the wind
Within its awful caves. From year to year
Springs this indigenous produce far and near;
No craft this subtile element can bind,
Rising like water from the soil, to find
In every nook a lip that it may cheer.
HERE pause; the Poet claims at least this praise
That virtuous liberty hath been the scope
Of his pure song, which did not shrink from hope
In the worst moment of these evil days;
From hope, the paramount duty that Heaven lays,
For its own honour, on man's suffering heart.
Never may from our souls one truth depart,
That an accursed thing it is to gaze
On prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye;
Nor, touched with due abhorrence of their guilt
For whose dire ends tears flow, and blood is spilt,
And justice labours in extremity,
Forget thy weakness, upon which is built,
O wretched man, the throne of tyranny!
Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright,
Our aged Sovereign sits to the ebb and flow
Of states and kingdoms, to their joy or woe,
Insensible; he sits deprived of sight,
And lamentably wrapped in twofold night,
Whom no weak hopes deceived; whose mind ensued,
Through perilous war, with regal fortitude,
Peace that should claim respect from lawless might.
Dread King of kings, vouchsafe a ray divine
To his forlorn condition! let thy grace
Upon his inner soul in mercy shine;
Permit his heart to kindle, and embrace
(Though were it only for a moment's space)
The triumphs of this hour; for they are THINE!
FOR THE MORNING OF THE DAY APPOINTED FOR A GENERAL
THANKSGIVING, JANUARY 18, 1816.
HAIL, universal source of pure delight!
Thou that canst shed the bliss of gratitude
On hearts howe'er insensible or rude;
Whether thy orient visitations smite
The haughty towers where monarchs dwell;
Or thou, impartial sun, with presence bright
Cheer'st the low threshold of the peasant's cell.
-Not unrejoiced I see thee climb the sky
In naked splendour, clear from mist or haze,
Or cloud approaching to divert the rays
Which, even in deepest winter, testify
Thy power and majesty,
Dazzling the vision that presumes to gaze.
-Well does thine aspect usher in this day;
As aptly suits therewith that timid pace,
Framed in subjection to the chains
That bind thee to the path which God ordains
That thou shalt trace,
Till, with the heavens and earth, thou pass away!
Nor less the stillness of these frosty plains-
Their utter stillness,-and the silent grace
Of yon ethereal summits white with snow,
Whose tranquil pomp, and spotless purity
Report of storms gone by
To us who tread below,
Do with the service of the day accord.
Divinest object which the uplifted eye
Of mortal man is suffered to behold:
Thou, who upon yon snow-clad heights hast poured
Meek splendour, nor forgot'st the humble vale,
Thou who dost warm earth's universal mould,
And for thy beauty were not unadored
Once more, heart-cheering Sun, I bid thee hail!
Bright be thy course to-day; let not this promise fail!
'Mid the deep quiet of this morning hour,
All nature seems to hear me while I speak,
By feelings urged, that do not vainly seek
Apt language, ready as the tuneful notes
That stream in blithe succession from the throats
Of birds in leafy bower,
Warbling a farewell to a vernal shower.
-There is a radiant but a short-lived flame,
That burns for poets in the dawning east,-
And oft my soul hath kindled at the same,
When the captivity of sleep had ceased;
But He who fixed immovably the frame
Of the round world, and built, by laws as strong,
A solid refuge for distress,
The towers of righteousness;
He knows that from a holier altar came
The quickening spark of this day's sacrifice-
Knows that the source is nobler whence doth rise
The current of this matin song,
That deeper far it lies
Than aught dependent on the fickle skies.
Have we not conquered? By the vengeful sword?
Ah, no!-by dint of magnanimity;
That curbed the baser passions, and left free
A loyal band to follow their liege lord,
Close-sighted Honour, and his staid compeers,
Along a track of most unnatural years,
In execution of heroic deeds,
Whose memory, spotless as the crystal beads
Of morning dew upon the untrodden meads,
Shall live enrolled above the starry spheres!
Who to the murmurs of an earthly string
Of Britain's acts would sing,
He with enraptured voice will tell
Of one whose spirit no reverse could quell:
Of one that 'mid the failing never failed.
Who paints how Britain struggled and prevailed,
Shall represent her labouring with an eye
Of circumspect humanity;
Shall show her clothed with strength and skill,
All martial duties to fulfil;
Firm as a rock in stationary fight;
In motion rapid as the lightning's gleam;
Fierce as a flood-gate bursting in the night
To rouse the wicked from their giddy dream-
Woe, woe to all that face her in the field!
Appalled she may not be, and cannot yield.
And thus is missed the sole true glory
That can belong to human story!
At which they only shall arrive
Who through the abyss of weakness dive.
The very humblest are too proud of heart:
And one brief day is rightly set apart
To Him who lifteth up and layeth low,
For that Almighty God to whom we owe-
Say not, that we have vanquished-but that we survive.
How dreadful the dominion of the impure!
Why should the song be tardy to proclaim
That less than power unbounded could not tame
That soul of evil, which, from hell let loose,
Had filled the astonished world with such abuse
As boundless patience only could endure?
Wide-wasted regions-cities wrapped in flame-
Who sees, and feels, may lift a streaming eye
To Heaven,-who never saw may heave a sigh.
But the foundation of our nature shakes,
And with an infinite pain the spirit aches,
When desolated countries, towns on fire,
Are but the avowed attire
Of warfare urged with desperate mind
Against the life of virtue in mankind;
Assaulting without ruth
The citadels of truth;
While the old forest of civility
Is doomed to perish, to the last fair tree.
A crushing purpose, a distracted will,
Opposed to hopes that battened upon scorn,
And to desires, whose ever-waxing horn
Not all the light of earthly power could fill;
Opposed to dark, deep plots of patient skill,
And the celerities of inward force
Which, spurning God, had flung away remorse,
What could they gain but shadows of redress?
--So bad proceeded, propagating worse;
And discipline was passion's dire excess
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