To keep the matrimonial bond unstain’d;
Covetous only of a virtuous praise,
His life a lesson to the land he sways;
To touch the sword with conscientious awe,
Nor draw it but when duty bids him draw,
To sheath it in the peace-restoring close,
With joy, beyond what victory bestows,
Blest country! where these kingly glories shine,
Blest England! if this happiness be thine.
A.
Guard what you say, the patriotic tribe
Will sneer and charge you with a bribe.
B.
A bribe?
The worth of his three kingdoms I defy,
To lure me to the baseness of a lie.
And of all lies (be that one poet’s boast)
The lie that flatters I abhor the most.
Those arts be their’s that hate his gentle reign,
But he that loves him has no need to feign.
A.
Your smooth eulogium to one crown address’d,
Seems to imply a censure on the rest.
B.
Quevedo, as he tells his sober tale,
Ask’d, when in hell, to see the royal jail,
Approv’d their method in all other things,
But where, good Sir, do you confine your kings?
There — said his guide, the groupe is full in view.
Indeed? Replied the Don — there are but few.
His black interpreter the charge disdain’d —
Few, fellow? There are all that ever reign’d.
Wit undistinguishing is apt to strike
The guilty and not guilty, both alike.
I grant the sarcasm is too severe,
And we can readily refute it here,
While Alfred’s name, the father of his age,
And the Sixth Edward’s grace th’ historic page.
A.
King’s then at last have but the lot of all,
By their own conduct they must stand or fall.
B.
True. While they live, the courtly laureat pays
His quit-rent ode, his pepper-corn of praise,
And many a dunce whose fingers itch to write,
Adds, as he can, his tributary mite;
A subject’s faults, a subject may proclaim,
A monarch’s errors are forbidden game.
Thus free from censure, over-aw’d by fear,
And prais’d for virtues that they scorn to wear,
The fleeting forms of majesty engage
Respect, while stalking o’er life’s narrow stage,
Then leave their crimes for history to scan,
And ask with busy scorn, Was this the man?
I pity kings whom worship waits upon
Obsequious, from the cradle to the throne,
Before whose infant eyes the flatt’rer bows,
And binds a wreath about their baby brows.
Whom education stiffen’d into state,
And death awakens from that dream too late.
Oh! is servility with supple knees,
Whose trade it is to smile, to crouch, to please;
If smooth dissimulation, skill’d to grace
A devil’s purpose with an angel’s face;
Is smiling peeresses and simp’ring peers,
In compassing his throne a few short years;
If the gilt carriage and the pamper’d steed,
That wants no driving and disdains the lead;
If guards, mechanically form’d in ranks,
Playing, at beat of drum, their martial pranks;
Should’ring and standing as if struck to stone,
While condescending majesty looks on;
If monarchy consist in such base things,
Sighing, I say again, I pity kings!
To be suspected, thwarted, and withstood,
Ev’n when he labours for his country’s good,
To see a band call’d patriot for no cause,
But that they catch at popular applause,
Careless of all th’ anxiety he feels,
Hook disappointment on the public wheels,
With all their flippant fluency of tongue,
Most confident, when palpably most wrong,
If this be kingly, then farewell for me
All kingship, and may I be poor and free.
To be the Table Talk of clubs up stairs,
To which th’ unwash’d artificer repairs,
T’ indulge his genius after long fatigue,
By diving into cabinet intrigue,
(For what kings deem a toil, as well they may,
To him is relaxation and mere play)
To win no praise when well-wrought plans prevail,
But to be rudely censur’d when they fail,
To doubt the love his fav’rites may pretend,
And in reality to find no friend,
If he indulge a cultivated taste,
His gall’ries with the works of art well grac’d,
To hear it call’d extravagance and waste,
If these attendants, and if such as these,
Must follow royalty, then welcome ease;
However humble and confin’d the sphere,
Happy the state that has not these to fear.
A.
Thus men whose thoughts contemplative have dwelt,
On situations that they never felt,
Start up sagacious, cover’d with the dust
Of dreaming study and pedantic rust,
And prate and preach about what others prove,
As if the world and they were hand and glove.
Leave kingly backs to cope with kingly cares,
They have their weight to carry, subjects their’s;
Poets, of all men, ever least regret
Increasing taxes and the nation’s debt.
Could you contrive the payment, and rehearse
The mighty plan, oracular, in verse,
No bard, howe’er majestic, old or new,
Should claim my fixt attention more than you.
B.
Not Brindley nor Bridgewater would essay
To turn the course of Helicon that way;
Nor would the nine consent, the sacred tide
Should purl amidst the traffic of Cheapside,
Or tinkle in ’Change Alley, to amuse
The leathern ears of stock-jobbers and jews.
A.
Vouchsafe, at least, to pitch the key of rhime
To themes more pertinent, if less sublime.
When ministers and ministerial arts,
Patriots who love good places at their hearts,
When Admirals extoll’d for standing still,
Or doing nothing with a deal of skill;
Gen’rals who will not conquer when they may,
Firm friends to peace, to pleasure, and good pay,
When freedom wounded almost to despair,
Though discontent alone can find out where,
When themes like these employ the poet’s tongue.
ear as mute as if a syren sung.
Or tell me if you can, what pow’r maintains
A Briton’s scorn of arbitrary chains?
That were a theme might animate the dead,
And move the lips of poets cast in lead.
B.
The cause, tho’ worth the search, may yet elude
Conjecture and remark, however shrewd.
They take, perhaps, a well-directed aim,
Who seek it in his climate and his frame.
Lib’ral in all things else, yet nature here
With stern severity deals out the year.
Winter invades the spring, and often pours
A chilling flood on summer’s drooping flow’rs,
Unwelcome vapors quench autumnal beams,
Ungenial blasts attending, curl the streams,
The peasants urge their
harvest, plie the fork
With double toil, and shiver at their work,
Thus with a rigor, for his good design’d,
She rears her fav’rite man of all mankind.
His form robust and of elastic tone,
Proportion’d well, half muscle and half bone,
Supplies with warm activity and force
A mind well lodg’d, and masculine of course.
Hence liberty, sweet liberty inspires,
And keeps alive his fierce but noble fires.
Patient of constitutional controul,
He bears it with meek manliness of soul,
But if authority grow wanton, woe
To him that treads upon his free-born toe,
One step beyond the bound’ry of the laws
Fires him at once in freedom’s glorious cause.
Thus proud prerogative, not much rever’d,
Is seldom felt, though sometimes seen and heard;
And in his cage, like parrot fine and gay,
Is kept to strut, look big, and talk away.
Born in a climate softer far than our’s,
Not form’d like us, with such Herculean pow’rs,
The Frenchman, easy, debonair and brisk,
Give him his lass, his fiddle and his frisk,
Is always happy, reign whoever may,
And laughs the sense of mis’ry far away.
He drinks his simple bev’rage with a gust,
And feasting on an onion and a crust,
We never feel th’ alacrity and joy
With which he shouts and carols, Vive le Roy,
Fill’d with as much true merriment and glee,
As if he heard his king say — Slave be free.
Thus happiness depends, as nature shews,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Vigilant over all that he has made,
Kind Providence attends with gracious aid,
Bids equity throughout his works prevail,
And weighs the nations in an even scale;
He can encourage slav’ry to a smile,
And fill with discontent a British isle.
A.
Freeman and slave then, if the case be such,
Stand on a level, and you prove too much.
If all men indiscriminately share,
His fost’ring pow’r and tutelary care,
As well be yok’d by despotism’s hand,
As dwell at large in Britain’s charter’d land.
B.
No. Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.
The mind attains beneath her happy reign,
The growth that nature meant she should attain.
The varied fields of science, ever new,
Op’ning and wider op’ning on her view,
She ventures onward with a prosp’rous force,
While no base fear impedes her in her course.
Religion, richest favour of the skies,
Stands most reveal’d before the freeman’s eyes;
No shades of superstition blot the day,
Liberty chaces all that gloom away;
The soul, emancipated, unoppress’d,
Free to prove all things and hold fast the best,
Learns much, and to a thousand list’ning minds,
Communicates with joy the good she finds.
Courage in arms, and ever prompt to show
His manly forehead to the fiercest foe;
Glorious in war, but for the sake of peace,
His spirits rising as his toils increase,
Guards well what arts and industry have won,
And freedom claims him for her first-born son.
Slaves fight for what were better cast away,
The chain that binds them, and a tyrant’s sway,
But they that fight for freedom, undertake
The noblest cause mankind can have at stake,
Religion, virtue, truth, whate’er we call
A blessing, freedom is the pledge of all.
Oh liberty! the pris’ners pleasing dream,
The poet’s muse, his passion and his theme,
Genius is thine, and thou art fancy’s nurse,
Lost without thee th’ ennobling pow’rs of verse,
Heroic song from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires;
Place me where winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing if liberty be there;
And I will sing at liberty’s dear feet,
In Afric’s torrid clime or India’s fiercest heat.
A.
Sing where you please, in such a cause I grant
An English Poet’s privilege to rant,
But is not freedom, at least is not our’s
Too apt to play the wanton with her pow’rs,
Grow freakish, and o’er leaping ev’ry mound
Spread anarchy and terror all around?
B.
Agreed. But would you sell or slay your horse
For bounding and curvetting in his course;
Or if, when ridden with a careless rein,
He break away, and seek the distant plain?
No. His high mettle under good controul,
Gives him Olympic speed, and shoots him to the goal.
Let discipline employ her wholesome arts,
Let magistrates alert perform their parts,
Not skulk or put on a prudential mask,
As if their duty were a desp’rate task;
Let active laws apply the needful curb
To guard the peace that riot would disturb,
And liberty preserv’d from wild excess,
Shall raise no feuds for armies to suppress.
When tumult lately burst his prison door,
And set Plebeian thousands in a roar,
When he usurp’d authority’s just place,
And dar’d to look his master in the face,
When the rude rabbles watch-word was, destroy,
And blazing London seem’d a second Troy,
Liberty blush’d and hung her drooping head,
Beheld their progress with the deepest dread,
Blush’d that effects like these she should produce,
Worse than the deeds of galley-slaves broke loose.
She loses in such storms her very name,
And fierce licentiousness should bear the blame.
Incomparable gem! thy worth untold,
Cheap, though blood-bought, and thrown away when sold;
May no foes ravish thee, and no false friend
Betray thee, while professing to defend;
Prize it ye ministers, ye monarchs spare,
Ye patriots guard it with a miser’s care.
A.
Patriots, alas! the few that have been found
Where most they flourish, upon English ground,
The country’s need have scantily supplied,
And the last left the scene, when Chatham died.
B.
Not so — the virtue still adorns our age,
Though the chief actor died upon the stage.
In him, Demosthenes was heard again,
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain;
She cloath’d him with authority and awe,
Spoke from his lips, and in his looks, gave law.
His speech, his form, his action, full of grace,
And all his country beaming in his face,
He stood, as some inimitable hand
Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand.
No sycophant or slave that dar’d oppose
Her sacred cause, but trembl’d when he rose,
And every venal stickler for the yoke,
Felt himself crush’d at the first word he spoke.
Such men are rais’d to station and command,
When providence means mercy to a land.
H
e speaks, and they appear; to him they owe
Skill to direct, and strength to strike the blow,
To manage with address, to seize with pow’r
The crisis of a dark decisive hour.
So Gideon earn’d a vict’ry not his own,
Subserviency his praise, and that alone.
Poor England! thou art a devoted deer,
Beset with ev’ry ill but that of fear.
The nations hunt; all mark thee for a prey,
They swarm around thee, and thou standst at bay.
Undaunted still, though wearied and perplex’d,
Once Chatham sav’d thee, but who saves thee next?
Alas! the tide of pleasure sweeps along
All that should be the boast of British song.
’Tis not the wreath that once adorn’d thy brow,
The prize of happier times will serve thee now.
Our ancestry, a gallant christian race,
Patterns of ev’ry virtue, ev’ry grace,
Confess’d a God, they kneel’d before they fought,
And praised him in the victories he wrought.
Now from the dust of antient days bring forth
Their sober zeal, integrity and worth,
Courage, ungrac’d by these, affronts the skies,
Is but the fire without the sacrifice.
The stream that feeds the well-spring of the heart
Not more invigorates life’s noblest part,
Than virtue quickens with a warmth divine,
The pow’rs that sin has brought to a decline.
A.
Th’ inestimable estimate of Brown,
Rose like a paper-kite, and charm’d the town;
But measures plann’d and executed well,
Shifted the wind that rais’d it, and it fell.
He trod the very self-same ground you tread,
And victory refuted all he said.
B.
And yet his judgment was not fram’d amiss,
Its error, if it err’d, was merely this —
He thought the dying hour already come,
And a complete recov’ry struck him dumb.
But that effeminacy, folly, lust,
Enervate and enfeeble, and needs must,
And that a nation shamefully debas’d,
Will be despis’d and trampl’d on at last,
Unless sweet penitence her pow’rs renew,
Is truth, if history itself be true.
There is a time, and justice marks the date,
For long-forbearing clemency to wait,
That hour elaps’d, th’incurable revolt
Is punish’d, and down comes the thunder-bolt.
If mercy then put by the threat’ning blow,
William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works Page 2
