Читать книгу Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin - Various - Страница 21

Table of Contents

Written for the purpose of being recited on the Anniversary of the 14th of August. By William Roscoe, Esq.

O’er the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France,

See the day-star of liberty rise;

Through the clouds of detraction unsullied advance,

And hold its new course through the skies!

An effulgence so mild, with a lustre so bright,

All Europe with wonder surveys;

And, from deserts of darkness and dungeons of night,

Contends for a share of the blaze.

Ah! who ’midst the horrors of night would abide,

That can breathe the pure breezes of morn?

Or who, that has drunk the pure crystalline tide,

To the feculent flood would return?

When the bosom of Beauty the throbbing heart meets,

Ah, who can the transport decline?

Or who, that has tasted of Liberty’s sweets,

The prize but with life would resign?

Let Burke like a bat from its splendour retire,

A splendour too strong for his eyes;

Let pedants and fools his effusions admire,

Entrapt in his cobwebs like flies.

Shall insolent Sophistry hope to prevail

Where Reason opposes her weight,

When the welfare of millions is hung in the scale,

And the balance yet trembles with fate?

But ’tis over—high Heaven the decision approves,

Oppression has struggled in vain,

To the hell she has form’d Superstition removes,

And Tyranny bites his own chain.

In the records of Time a new era unfolds,

All nature exults in its birth;

His creation benign the Creator beholds,

And gives a new charter to earth.

Oh! catch the high import, ye winds, as ye blow;

Oh! hear it, ye waves, as ye roll,

From regions that feel the sun’s vertical glow,

To the farthest extremes of the Pole.

Equal rights, equal laws, to the nations around,

Peace and friendship its precepts impart,

And wherever the footsteps of man shall be found,

He shall bind the decree on his heart.

[The Account of what was “anticipated to take place at the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom”—alluded to on page 29—duly appeared in The Anti-Jacobin, but has never hitherto formed a part of the collection of its Poetry. As it is marked by much ability, and has been often quoted, it appears to the editor desirable to introduce some portion of it into the present edition of the Poetry.