The other was a fell despightful fiend :
Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below:
By pride, and wit, and rage, and rancour, keen'd;
Of man alike, if good or bad, the foe:
With nose up-turn'd, he always made a show
As if he smelt some nauseous scent; his eye
Was cold, and keen, like blast from Boreal snow;
And taunts he casten forth most bitterly.
Such were the twain that off drove this ungodly fry.
E'en so through Brentford town (a town of mud,)
An herd of bristly swine is prick'd along :
The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud,
Still grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous song, And oft they plunge themselves the mire among: But aye the ruthless driver goads them on, And aye of barking dogs the bitter thong Makes them renew their unmelodious moan; Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone.'
[At the time this poem was written, the Spaniards had much distressed our merchant vessels who traded to the South American coast, and seized the crews who had landed to cut logwood in the Bay of Campeachy, which right had been conceded by treaty. The merchants loudly complained of these outrages-remonstrances were made by the British ministry, but no reformation followed. Thus matters continued till 1739, when war was formally declared.]
-Et tantas audetis tollere moles?
Quos ego-sed motos præstat componere fluctus.
Post mihi non simili pœna commissa luetis.
Maturate fugam, regique hæc dicite vestro :
Non illi imperium pelagi, sævumque tridentem,
Sed mihi sorte datum.-VIRG.
As on the sea-beat shore Britannia sat,
Of her degenerate sons the faded fame,
Deep in her anxious heart, revolving sad:
Bare was her throbbing bosom to the gale,
That hoarse and hollow, from the bleak surge blow;
Loose flow'd her tresses; rent her azure robe.
Hung o'er the deep, from her majestic brow
She tore the laurel, and she tore the bay.
Nor ceased the copious grief to bathe her cheek;
Nor ceased her sobs to murmur to the main.
Peace discontented nigh, departing, stretch'd
Her dove-like wings: and War, though greatly roused,
Yet mourns his fetter'd hands. While thus the queen
Of nations spoke; and what she said the muse
Recorded, faithful, in unbidden verse.
"E'en not yon sail, that from the sky-mixt wave,
Dawns on the sight, and wafts the Royal Youth,1
A freight of future glory to my shore;
E'en not the flattering view of golden days,
And rising periods yet of bright renown,
Beneath the parents, and their endless line
(1) Frederic Prince of Wales, then lately arrived.
Through late revolving time, can soothe my rage :
While, unchastised, the' insulting Spaniard dares
Infest the trading flood, full of vain war
Despise my navies, and my merchants seize ;
As, trusting to false peace, they fearless roam
The world of waters wild; made, by the toil,
And liberal blood of glorious ages, mine:
Nor bursts my sleeping thunder on their head.
Whence this unwonted patience? this weak doubt?
This tame beseeching of rejected peace?
This meek forbearance? this unnative fear,
To generous Britons never known before?
And sail'd my fleets for this; on Indian tides
To float, inactive, with the veering winds ?
The mockery of war! while hot disease,
And sloth distemper'd, swept off burning crowds,
For action ardent; and amid the deep,
Inglorious, sunk them in a watery grave.
There now they lie beneath the rolling flood,
Far from their friends, and country, unavenged;
And back the drooping war-ship comes again,
Dispirited, and thin; her sons ashamed
Thus idly to review their native shore;
With not one glory sparkling in their eye,
One triumph on their tongue. A passenger,
The violated merchant comes along;
That far-sought wealth, for which the noxious gale
He drew, and sweat beneath equator suns,
By lawless force detain'd; a force that soon
Would melt away, and every spoil resign,
Were once the British lion heard to roar.
Whence is it that the proud Iberian thus,
In their own well-asserted element,
Dares rouse to wrath the masters of the main ?
Who told him, that the big incumbent war
Would not, ere this, have roll'd his trembling ports
In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
Won by the ravage of a butcher'd world,
Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
Or led the glittering prize into the Thames ?
"There was a time (oh, let my languid sons Resume their spirit at the rousing thought!) When all the pride of Spain, in one dread fleet,
Swell'd o'er the labouring surge; like a whole heaven Of clouds, wide-roll'd before the boundless breeze. Gaily the splendid armament along
Exultant plough'd, reflecting a red gleam,
As sunk the sun, o'er all the flaming vast;
Tall, gorgeous, and elate; drunk with the dream
Of easy conquest; while their bloated war,
Stretch'd out from sky to sky, the gather'd force
Of ages held in its capacious womb.
But soon, regardless of the cumbrous pomp,
My dauntless Britons came, a gloomy few,
With tempests black, the goodly scene deform'd,
And laid their glory waste. The bolts of fate
Resistless thunder'd through their yielding sides;
Fierce o'er their beauty blazed the lurid flame;
And seized in horrid grasp, or shatter'd wide,
Amid the mighty waters, deep they sunk.
Then too from every promontory chill,
Rank fen, and cavern where the wild wave works,
I swept confederate winds, and swell'd a storm.
Round the glad isle, snatch'd by the vengeful blast,
The scatter'd remnants drove; on the blind shelve,
And pointed rock, that marks the' indented shore,
Relentless dash'd, where loud the northern main
Howls through the fractured Caledonian isles.
"Such were the dawnings of my watery reign;
But since how vast it grew, how absolute,
E'en in those troubled times, when dreaded Blake
Awed angry nations with the British name,
Let every humbled state, let Europe say,
Sustain'd, and balanced, by my naval arm.
Ah, what must those immortal spirits think
Of your poor shifts? Those, for their country's good,
Who faced the blackest danger, knew no fear,
No mean submission, but commanded peace.
Ah, how with indignation must they burn?
(If aught, but joy, can touch ethereal breasts)
With shame? with grief? to see their feeble scrs
Shrink from that empire o'er the conquer'd seas
For which their wisdom plann'd, their councils glow'd,
And their veins bled through many a toiling age.
Oh, first of human blessings! and supreme!
Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou!
By whose wide tie the kindred sons of men,
Like brothers live, in amity combined,
And unsuspicious faith; while honest toil
Gives every joy, and to those joys a right,
Which idle, barbarous rapine, but usurps.
Pure is thy reign; when, unaccursed by blood,
Nought, save the sweetness of indulgent showers,
Trickling distils into the verdant glebe;
Instead of mangled carcases, sad seen,
When the blithe sheaves lie scatter'd o'er the field;
When only shining shares, the crooked knife,
And hooks imprint the vegetable wound;
When the land blushes with the rose alone,
The falling fruitage and the bleeding vine.
Oh, Peace! thou source and soul of social life;
Beneath whose calm inspiring influence,
Science his views enlarges, Art refines,
And swelling Commerce opens all her ports;
Bless'd be the man divine, who gives us thee!
Who bids the trumpet hush his horrid clang,
Nor blow the giddy nations into rage;
Who sheaths the murderous blade; the deadly gun
Into the well-piled armoury returns;
And every vigour, from the work of death,
To grateful industry converting, makes
The country flourish, and the city smile.
Unviolated, him the virgin sings;
And him the smiling mother to her train.
Of him the shepherd, in the peaceful dale,
Chaunts; and, the treasures of his labour sure,
The husbandman of him, as at the plough,
Or team, he toils. With him the sailor soothes,
Beneath the trembling moon, the midnight wave;
And the full city, warm, from street to street,
And shop to shop, responsive, rings of him.
Nor joys one land alone: his praise extends
Far as the sun rolls the diffusive day;
Far as the breeze can bear the gifts of peace,
Till all the happy nations catch the song.
"What would not, Peace! the patriot bear for thee? What painful patience? What incessant care?
What mix'd anxiety? What sleepless toil?
E'en from the rash protected what reproach?
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