The Task, and Other Poems Part 8

Thus war, affording field for the display Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace, Which have their exigencies too, and call For skill in government, at length made king.

King was a name too proud for man to wear With modesty and meekness, and the crown, So dazzling in their eyes who set it on, Was sure to intoxicate the brows it bound.

It is the abject property of most, That being parcel of the common ma.s.s, And dest.i.tute of means to raise themselves, They sink and settle lower than they need.

They know not what it is to feel within A comprehensive faculty, that grasps Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields, Almost without an effort, plans too vast For their conception, which they cannot move.

Conscious of impotence they soon grow drunk With gazing, when they see an able man Step forth to notice; and besotted thus Build him a pedestal and say--Stand there, And be our admiration and our praise.

They roll themselves before him in the dust, Then most deserving in their own account When most extravagant in his applause, As if exalting him they raised themselves.

Thus by degrees, self-cheated of their sound And sober judgment that he is but man, They demi-deify and fume him so That in due season he forgets it too.

Inflated and astrut with self-conceit He gulps the windy diet, and ere long, Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks The world was made in vain if not for him.

Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears, And sweating in his service. His caprice Becomes the soul that animates them all.

He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives, Spent in the purchase of renown for him An easy reckoning, and they think the same.

Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings Were burnished into heroes, and became The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp; Storks among frogs, that have but croaked and died.

Strange that such folly, as lifts bloated man To eminence fit only for a G.o.d, Should ever drivel out of human lips, Even in the cradled weakness of the world!

Still stranger much, that when at length mankind Had reached the sinewy firmness of their youth, And could discriminate and argue well On subjects more mysterious, they were yet Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear And quake before the G.o.ds themselves had made.

But above measure strange, that neither proof Of sad experience, nor examples set By some whose patriot virtue has prevailed, Can even now, when they are grown mature In wisdom, and with philosophic deeps Familiar, serve to emanc.i.p.ate the rest!

Such dupes are men to custom, and so p.r.o.ne To reverence what is ancient, and can plead A course of long observance for its use, That even servitude, the worst of ills, Because delivered down from sire to son, Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.

But is it fit, or can it bear the shock Of rational discussion, that a man, Compounded and made up like other men Of elements tumultuous, in whom l.u.s.t And folly in as ample measure meet, As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules, Should be a despot absolute, and boast Himself the only freeman of his land?

Should when he pleases, and on whom he will, Wage war, with any or with no pretence Of provocation given, or wrong sustained, And force the beggarly last doit, by means That his own humour dictates, from the clutch Of poverty, that thus he may procure His thousands, weary of penurious life, A splendid opportunity to die?

Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old Jotham ascribed to his a.s.sembled trees In politic convention) put your trust I' th' shadow of a bramble, and recline In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch, Rejoice in him and celebrate his sway, Where find ye pa.s.sive fort.i.tude? Whence springs Your self-denying zeal that holds it good To stroke the p.r.i.c.kly grievance, and to hang His thorns with streamers of continual praise?

We too are friends to loyalty; we love The king who loves the law, respects his bounds.

And reigns content within them; him we serve Freely and with delight, who leaves us free; But recollecting still that he is man, We trust him not too far. King though he be, And king in England, too, he may be weak And vain enough to be ambitious still, May exercise amiss his proper powers, Or covet more than freemen choose to grant: Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours, To administer, to guard, to adorn the state, But not to warp or change it. We are his, To serve him n.o.bly in the common cause True to the death, but not to be his slaves.

Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love Of kings, between your loyalty and ours.

We love the man; the paltry pageant you: We the chief patron of the commonwealth; You the regardless author of its woes: We, for the sake of liberty, a king; You chains and bondage for a tyrant's sake.

Our love is principle, and has its root In reason, is judicious, manly, free; Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod, And licks the foot that treads it in the dust.

Were kingship as true treasure as it seems, Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish, I would not be a king to be beloved Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise, Where love is more attachment to the throne, Not to the man who fills it as he ought.

Whose freedom is by sufferance, and at will Of a superior, he is never free.

Who lives, and is not weary of a life Exposed to manacles, deserves them well.

The state that strives for liberty, though foiled And forced to abandon what she bravely sought, Deserves at least applause for her attempt, And pity for her loss. But that's a cause Not often unsuccessful; power usurped Is weakness when opposed; conscious of wrong, 'Tis pusillanimous and p.r.o.ne to flight.

But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought Of freedom, in that hope itself possess All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength, The scorn of danger, and united hearts, The surest presage of the good they seek. *

* The author hopes that he shall not be censured for unnecessary warmth upon so interesting a subject. He is aware that it is become almost fashionable to stigmatise such sentiments as no better than empty declamation. But it is an ill symptom, and peculiar to modern times.--C.

Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more To France than all her losses and defeats, Old or of later date, by sea or land, Her house of bondage worse than that of old Which G.o.d avenged on Pharaoh--the Bastille!

Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts, Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age to age With music such as suits their sovereign ears, The sighs and groans of miserable men!

There's not an English heart that would not leap To hear that ye were fallen at last, to know That even our enemies, so oft employed In forging chains for us, themselves were free.

For he that values liberty, confines His zeal for her predominance within No narrow bounds; her cause engages him Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man.

There dwell the most forlorn of humankind, Immured though unaccused, condemned untried, Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape.

There, like the visionary emblem seen By him of Babylon, life stands a stump, And filleted about with hoops of bra.s.s, Still lives, though all its pleasant boughs are gone.

To count the hour bell and expect no change; And ever as the sullen sound is heard, Still to reflect that though a joyless note To him whose moments all have one dull pace, Ten thousand rovers in the world at large Account it music; that it summons some To theatre, or jocund feast, or ball; The wearied hireling finds it a release From labour, and the lover, that has chid Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke Upon his heart-strings trembling with delight;-- To fly for refuge from distracting thought To such amus.e.m.e.nts as ingenious woe Contrives, hard-shifting and without her tools;-- To read engraven on the mouldy walls, In staggering types, his predecessor's tale, A sad memorial, and subjoin his own;-- To turn purveyor to an overgorged And bloated spider, till the pampered pest Is made familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend;-- To wear out time in numbering to and fro The studs that thick emboss his iron door, Then downward and then upward, then aslant And then alternate, with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task Some relish, till the sum, exactly found In all directions, he begins again:-- Oh comfortless existence! hemmed around With woes, which who that suffers would not kneel And beg for exile, or the pangs of death?

That man should thus encroach on fellow-man, Abridge him of his just and native rights, Eradicate him, tear him from his hold Upon the endearments of domestic life And social, nip his fruitfulness and use, And doom him for perhaps a heedless word To barrenness and solitude and tears, Moves indignation; makes the name of king (Of king whom such prerogative can please) As dreadful as the Manichean G.o.d, Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its l.u.s.tre 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l, a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's n.o.ble 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 l.u.s.t, 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, Antic.i.p.ate perforce some dire event; And seeing the old castle of the state, That promised once more firmness, so a.s.sailed 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.s; Formed for the confutation of the fool Whose lying heart disputes against a G.o.d; 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 a.s.surance of the rest, Is liberty; a flight into His arms Ere yet mortality's fine threads give way, A clear escape from tyrannising l.u.s.t, 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.

Propense his heart to idols, he is held In silly dotage on created things Careless of their Creator. And that low And sordid gravitation of his powers To a vile clod, so draws him with such force Resistless from the centre he should seek, That he at last forgets it. All his hopes Tend downward, his ambition is to sink, To reach a depth profounder still, and still Profounder, in the fathomless abyss Of folly, plunging in pursuit of death.

But ere he gain the comfortless repose He seeks, and acquiescence of his soul, In heaven renouncing exile, he endures What does he not? from l.u.s.ts opposed in vain, And self-reproaching conscience. He foresees The fatal issue to his health, fame, peace, Fortune, and dignity; the loss of all That can enn.o.ble man, and make frail life, Short as it is, supportable. Still worse, Far worse than all the plagues with which his sins Infect his happiest moments, he forebodes Ages of hopeless misery; future death, And death still future; not a hasty stroke, Like that which sends him to the dusty grave, But unrepealable enduring death.

Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears: What none can prove a forgery, may be true; What none but bad men wish exploded, must.

That scruple checks him. Riot is not loud Nor drunk enough to drown it. In the midst Of laughter his compunctions are sincere, And he abhors the jest by which he shines.

Remorse begets reform. His master-l.u.s.t Falls first before his resolute rebuke, And seems dethroned and vanquished. Peace ensues, But spurious and short-lived, the puny child Of self-congratulating Pride, begot On fancied Innocence. Again he falls, And fights again; but finds his best essay, A presage ominous, portending still Its own dishonour by a worse relapse, Till Nature, unavailing Nature, foiled So oft, and wearied in the vain attempt, Scoffs at her own performance. Reason now Takes part with appet.i.te, and pleads the cause, Perversely, which of late she so condemned; With shallow shifts and old devices, worn And tattered in the service of debauch, Covering his shame from his offended sight.

"Hath G.o.d indeed given appet.i.tes to man, And stored the earth so plenteously with means To gratify the hunger of His wish, And doth He reprobate and will He d.a.m.n The use of His own bounty? making first So frail a kind, and then enacting laws So strict, that less than perfect must despair?

Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth, Dishonours G.o.d, and makes a slave of man.

Do they themselves, who undertake for hire The teacher's office, and dispense at large Their weekly dole of edifying strains, Attend to their own music? have they faith In what, with such solemnity of tone And gesture, they propound to our belief?

Nay--conduct hath the loudest tongue. The voice Is but an instrument on which the priest May play what tune he pleases. In the deed, The unequivocal authentic deed, We find sound argument, we read the heart."

Such reasonings (if that name must needs belong To excuses in which reason has no part) Serve to compose a spirit well inclined To live on terms of amity with vice, And sin without disturbance. Often urged (As often as, libidinous discourse Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes Of theological and grave import), They gain at last his unreserved a.s.sent, Till, hardened his heart's temper in the forge Of l.u.s.t and on the anvil of despair, He slights the strokes of conscience. Nothing moves, Or nothing much, his constancy in ill; Vain tampering has but fostered his disease, 'Tis desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of death.

Haste now, philosopher, and set him free.

Charm the deaf serpent wisely. Make him hear Of rect.i.tude and fitness: moral truth How lovely, and the moral sense how sure, Consulted and obeyed, to guide his steps Directly to the FIRST AND ONLY FAIR.

Spare not in such a cause. Spend all the powers Of rant and rhapsody in virtue's praise, Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand, And with poetic trappings grace thy prose Till it outmantle all the pride of verse.-- Ah, tinkling cymbal and high-sounding bra.s.s Smitten in vain! such music cannot charm The eclipse that intercepts truth's heavenly beam, And chills and darkens a wide-wandering soul.

The still small voice is wanted. He must speak, Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect, Who calls for things that are not, and they come.

Grace makes the slave a freeman. 'Tis a change That turns to ridicule the turgid speech And stately tone of moralists, who boast, As if, like him of fabulous renown, They had indeed ability to smooth The s.h.a.g of savage nature, and were each An Orpheus and omnipotent in song.

But transformation of apostate man From fool to wise, from earthly to divine, Is work for Him that made him. He alone, And He, by means in philosophic eyes Trivial and worthy of disdain, achieves The wonder; humanising what is brute In the lost kind, extracting from the lips Of asps their venom, overpowering strength By weakness, and hostility by love.

Patriots have toiled, and in their country's cause Bled n.o.bly, and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompense. We give in charge Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic muse, Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; and sculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in stone and ever-during bra.s.s, To guard them, and to immortalise her trust.

But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, To those who, posted at the shrine of truth, Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood Well spent in such a strife may earn indeed, And for a time ensure to his loved land, The sweets of liberty and equal laws; But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize, And win it with more pain. Their blood is shed In confirmation of the n.o.blest claim, Our claim to feed upon immortal truth, To walk with G.o.d, to be divinely free, To soar, and to antic.i.p.ate the skies!

Yet few remember them. They lived unknown, Till persecution dragged them into fame And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew --No marble tells us whither. With their names No bard embalms and sanctifies his song, And history, so warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this. She execrates indeed The tyranny that doomed them to the fire, But gives the glorious sufferers little praise.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain That h.e.l.lish foes confederate for his harm Can wind around him, but he casts it off With as much ease as Samson his green withes.

He looks abroad into the varied field Of Nature, and, though poor perhaps compared With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Calls the delightful scenery all his own.

His are the mountains, and the valleys his, And the resplendent river's. His to enjoy With a propriety that none can feel, But who, with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say--My Father made them all!

Are they not his by a peculiar right, And by an emphasis of interest his, Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love That planned, and built, and still upholds a world So clothed with beauty, for rebellious man?

Yes--ye may fill your garners, ye that reap The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good In senseless riot; but ye will not find In feast or in the chase, in song or dance, A liberty like his, who, unimpeached Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong, Appropriates nature as his Father's work, And has a richer use of yours, than you.

He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth Of no mean city, planned or e'er the hills Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea With all his roaring mult.i.tude of waves.

His freedom is the same in every state; And no condition of this changeful life So manifold in cares, whose every day Brings its own evil with it, makes it less.

For he has wings that neither sickness, pain, Nor penury, can cripple or confine.

No nook so narrow but he spreads them there With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds His body bound, but knows not what a range His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain; And that to bind him is a vain attempt, Whom G.o.d delights in, and in whom He dwells.