This said, his powerful wand he wav'd anew:
Instant, a glorious angel-train descends,
The Charities, to-wit, of rosy hue;
Sweet love their looks a gentle radiance lends,
And with seraphic flame compassion blends.
At once, delighted, to their charge they fly:
When lo! a goodly hospital ascends;
In which they bade each lenient aid be nigh, That could the sick-bed smooth of that sad com
It was a worthy edifying sight,
And gives to human kind peculiar grace,
To see kind hands attending day and night,
With tender ministry, from place to place.
Some prop the head; some, from the pallid face
Wipe off the faint cold dews weak nature sheds;
Some reach the healing draught: the whilst, to
The fear supreme, around their soften'd beds, Some holy man by prayer all opening Heaven dispreds.
Attended by a glad acclaiming train,
Of those he rescu'd had from gaping hell, Then turn'd the Knight; and, to his hall again Soft-pacing, sought of peace the mossy cell: Yet down his cheeks the gems of pity fell, To see the helpless wretches that remain'd, There left through delves and deserts dire to yell; Amaz'd, their looks with pale dismay were stain'd, And spreading wide their hands they meek repen tance feign'd.
But ah! their scorned day of grace was past:
For (horrible to tell!) a desert wild
Before them stretch'd, bare, comfortless,and vast;
With gibbets, bones, and carcases defil'd.
There nor trim field, nor lively culture smil'd;
Nor waving shade was seen, nor fountain fair
But sands abrupt on sands lay loosely pil'd,
Through which they floundering toil'd with pain-
ful care,
Whilst Phoebus smote them sore, and fir'd the cloudless air.
Then, varying to a joyless land of bogs, The sadden'd country a grey waste appear'd; Where nought but putrid streams and noisome For ever hung on drizzly Auster's beard; [fogs Or else the ground by piercing Caurus sear'd, Was jagg'd with frost, or heap'd with glazed snow: Through these extremes a ceaseless round they By cruel fiends still hurry'd to and fro, [steer'd, Gaunt Beggary, and Scorn, with many hell-hounds
The first was with base dunghill rags yclad,
Tainting the gale, in which they flutter'd light;
Of morbid hue his features, sunk, and sad;
His hollow eyne shook forth a sickly light;
And o'er his lank jaw-bone, in piteous plight,
His black rough beard was matted rank and vile;
Direful to see! an heart-appalling sight!
Meantime foul scurf and blotches him defile; And dogs, where-e'er he went, still barked all the while.
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 shew
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.
Ev'n 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
And oft they plunge themselves the mire among : But ay the ruthless driver goads them on, And ay of barking dogs the bitter throng Makes them renew their unmelodious moan; Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone.
-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.-
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 blew ;
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 ceas'd the copious grief to bathe her cheek;
Nor ceas'd her sobs to murmur to the main.
Peace discontented nigh, departing, stretch'd
Her dove-like wings. And war, though greatly rous'd,
Yet mourns his fetter'd hands. While thus the queen
Of nations spoke; and what she said the muse
Recorded, faithful, in unbidden verse.
Ev'n not yon sail, that, from the sky-mixt wave, Dawns on the sight, and wafts the Royal Youth '; A freight of future glory to my shore;
1 Frederic Prince of Wales, then lately arrived.
Even not the flattering view of golden days,
And rising periods yet of bright renown,
Beneath the Parents, and their endless line
Through late revolving time, can sooth my rage;
While, unchastis'd, 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 un-native 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, unaveng'd;
And back the drooping war-ship comes again,
Dispirited, and thin; her sons asham'd
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.
|