She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two That so much beauty would do well to purge; And show this queen of cities, that so fair May yet be foul; so witty, yet not wise. It is not seemly, nor of good report, That she is slack in discipline; more prompt To avenge thau to prevent the breach of law: That she is rigid in denouncing death On petty robbers, and indulges life And liberty, and ofttimes honour too, To peculators of the public gold:
That thieves at home must hang; but he, that puts Into his over-gorged and bloated purse The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes. Nor is it well, nor can it come to good, That, through profane and infidel contempt Of holy writ, she has presumed to annul And abrogate, as roundly as she may, The total ordinance and will of God; Advancing Fashion to the post of Truth, And centring all authority in modes And customs of her own, till Sabbath rites Have dwindled into unrespected forms, And knees and hassocks are well-nigh divorced. God made the country, and man made the town, What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts That can alone make sweet the bitter draught That life holds out to all, should most abound And least be threaten'd in the fields and groves? Possess ye, therefore, ye who, borne about In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue But that of idleness, and taste no scenes But such as art contrives, possess ye still Your element; there only can ye shine; There only minds like yours can do no harm. Our groves were planted to console at noon The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve The moonbeam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music. We can spare The splendour of your lamps; they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes; the thrush departs Scared, and the offended nightingale is mute. There is a public mischief in your mirth; It plagues your country. Folly such as yours, Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan, Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you, A mutilated structure, soon to fall.
Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book-Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow-Prodigies enumerated-Sicilian earthquakes-Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sinGod the agent in them-The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved-Our own late miscarriages accounted for-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau-But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation-The reverend advertiser of engraved sermons-Petit-maître parson-The good preacher-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb-Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved-Apostrophe to popular applause-Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated withSum of the whole matter-Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity-Their folly and extravagance-The mischiefs of profusion-Profusion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities.
OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, It does not feel for man; the natural bond Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colour'd like his own; and, having power To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey. Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; And, worse than all, and most to be deplored, As human nature's broadest, foulest blot, Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart, Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush, And hang his head, to think himself a man? I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd. No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Just estimation prized above all price, I had much rather be myself the slave, And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no slaves at home :-then why abroad? And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave That parts us, are emancipate and loosed. Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall. That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, And let it circulate through every vein Of all your empire; that where Britain's power Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
Sure there is need of social intercourse, Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, Between the nations in a world that seems To toll the death-bell of its own decease, And by the voice of all its elements To preach the general doom.* When were the winds Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry? Fires from beneath, and meteors + from above, Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd,
Have kindled beacons in the skies; and the old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. Is it a time to wrangle, when the props And pillars of our planet seem to fail, And Nature with a dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all? But grant her end More distant, and that prophecy demands A longer respite, unaccomplish'd yet; Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak Displeasure in His breast who smites the earth Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice. And 'tis but seemly, that, where all deserve And stand exposed by common peccancy To what no few have felt, there should be peace, And brethren in calamity should love.
Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood. Her palaces are dust. In all her streets The voice of singing and the sprightly chord Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show Suffer a syncope and solemn pause;
Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica.
Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Asia during the whole summer of 1783.
While God performs upon the trembling stage Of his own works the dreadful part alone. How does the earth receive him?-with what signs Of gratulation and delight her King? Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad, Her sweetest flowers, her aromatic gums, Disclosing Paradise where'er he treads?
She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps And fiery caverns, roars beneath his foot.
The hills move lightly, and the mountains smoke, For he has touch'd them. From the extremest point Of elevation down into the abyss
His wrath is busy, and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise,
The rivers die into offensive pools,
And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross And mortal nuisance into all the air;
What solid was, by transformation strange, Grows fluid; and the fix'd and rooted earth, Tormented into billows, heaves and swells, Or with a vortiginous and hideous whirl Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs And agonies of human and of brute Multitudes, fugitive on every side, And fugitive in vain. The sylvan sceno Migrates uplifted; and with all its soil Alighting in far distant fields, finds out A new possessor, and survives the change. Ocean has caught the frenzy, and, upwrought To an enormous and o'erbearing height, Not by a mighty wind, but by that Voice Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore Resistless. Never such a sudden flood, Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge, Possess'd an inland scene. Where now the throng That press'd the beach, and, hasty to depart, Look'd to the sea for safety? They are gone, Gone with the refluent wave into the deep- A prince with half his people! Ancient towers, And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes Where beauty oft and letter'd worth consume Life in the unproductive shades of death, Fall prone: the pale inhabitants come forth And, happy in their unforeseen release From all the rigours of restraint, enjoy The terrors of the day that sets them free.
Who then, that has thee, would not hold thee fast, Freedom! whom they that lose thee so regret, That e'en a judgment, making way for thee, Seems in their eyes a mercy for thy sake.
Such evil sin hath wrought; and such a flame Kindled in heaven, that it burns down to earth,
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