Читать книгу The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Unknown - Страница 2

A vision came! It was not in the hour

Of sleep; but when the unresisted power

Of magic Fancy, threw, with full control,

Her half prophetic mantle o’er the soul.

The place was thron’d like Britain’s royal halls,

And her proud navy deck’d the tap’stried walls.

Statesmen and heroes grac’d the pictur’d scene;

Fathers who were what since their sons have been;

And some whose laurell’d brows might glow with shame,

Of sons with nought of their’s besides the name.

In this august abode the loud debate

Seem’d hush’d, and prince and peer in silence sate;

E’en G—ff—d’s brazen descant seem’d to fail,

And gasping C—pley gazed on L—d—rd—le;

Panting, they loll’d their contumelious tongues,

And suck’d Italian juice to clear their lungs.

Y—k mus’d on armies; yet, with doubtful trust,

Wish’d he were certain, or the cause were just:

The eye of Cl—r—nce fiercely rang’d the floor,

But soften’d as it fell on D—n—ghm—re;

While L—v—rp—l, who inly seem’d to fear

For place and power, his fellows strove to cheer

With sickly smile; and courtier lords obscene,

Temper’d new filth, to daub their libell’d Queen.

Sudden amid the peers whom England hails

Her nobles—men who fail but when SHE fails,

The vision rose. It was a rev’rend form

Of aged dignity: its eye was warm

With kindlings of a spirit that of old

Made those walls tremble through its earthly mould.

Now a mild glory round its presence play’d,

And ’spoke from heav’nly courts the awful shade.

Its brow wore high reproof; the lifted arm

Was stretch’d for pleading; and there was a charm

Of coming eloquence, as firm it stood,

Like one whose rank was with the great and good;

And well that rank was own’d, when Erskine cried,

“’Tis England’s Chatham!”—“Chatham!” all replied.

Like the dead stillness of the summer air,

When pregnant clouds of shrouded fire are there,

They sat:—and like the voice of thunder broke

The rolling periods, as the vision spoke.

“Is this,” he cried, “the consecrated floor,

Where England’s peerage stood, as known of yore,

Jealous of honour, zealous for the laws;

Justice their sword, and England’s weal their cause?