Lays him along the snow, a stiffened corse—
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround,
They who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;
Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel this very moment death,
And all the sad variety of pain.
How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flame. How many bleed,
By shameful variance betwixt man and man.
How many pine in want and dungeon-glooms,
Shut from the common air, and common use
Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery. Sore pierced by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty. How many shake,
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse;
Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life,
They furnish matter for the tragic Muse.
Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell,
With friendship, peace, and contemplation joined,
How many, racked with honest passions, droop
In deep retired distress. How many stand
Around the death-bed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish. Thought fond man
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills,
That one incessant struggle render life,
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appalled,
And heedless rambling impulse learn to think;
The conscious heart of charity would warm,
And her wide wish benevolence dilate;
And social tear would rise, the social sigh;
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social passions work.
And here can I forget the generous band,
Who, touched with human woe, redressive searched
Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?
Unpitied and unheard where misery moans;
Where sickness pines; where thirst and hunger burn,
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice.
While in the land of liberty, the land
Whose every street and public meeting glow
With open freedom, little tyrants raged:
Snatched the lean morsel from the starving mouth;
Tore from cold wintry limbs the tattered weed;
Even robbed them of the last of comforts, sleep;
The free-born Briton to the dungeon chained,
Or, as the lust of cruelty prevailed,
At pleasure marked him with inglorious stripes;
And crushed out lives, by secret barbarous ways,
That for their country would have toiled or bled.
Oh, great design! if executed well
With patient care, and wisdom-tempered zeal.
Ye sons of mercy, yet resume the search; Drag forth the legal monsters into light, Wrench from their hands oppression's iron rod, And bid the cruel feel the pains they give. Much still untouched remains; in this rank age, Much is the patriot's weeding hand required.
The toils of law (what dark insidious men
Have cumbrous added to perplex the truth,
And lengthen simple justice into trade),
How glorious were the day that saw these broke,
And every man within the reach of right!
By wintry famine roused, from all the tract
Of horrid mountains which the shining Alps
And wavy Apennines and Pyrenees
Branch out stupendous into distant lands-
Burning for blood! bony, and gaunt and grim!
Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;
And, pouring o'er the country, bear along,
Keen as the north-wind sweeps the glossy snow.
All is their prize. They fasten on the steed,
Press him to earth, and pierce his mighty heart;
Nor can the bull his awful front defend,
Or shake the murdering savages away.
Rapacious, at the mother's throat they fly,
And tear the screaming infant from her breast.
The godlike face of man avails him nought.
Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance
The generous lion stands in softened gaze,
Here bleeds, a hapless undistinguished prey.
But if, apprized of the severe attack,
The country be shut up-lured by the scent,
On churchyards drear (inhuman to relate!)
The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig
The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,
Mixed with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl.
Among those hilly regions, where embraced
In peaceful vales the happy Grisons1 dwell,
Oft, rushing sudden from the loaded cliffs,
Mountains of snow their gathering terrors roll.
From steep to steep, loud thundering, down they come, A wintry waste in dire commotion all,
And herds, and flocks, and travellers, and swains,
And sometimes whole brigades of marching troops,
Or hamlets sleeping in the dead of night,
Are deep beneath the smothering ruin whelmed.
Now, all amid the rigours of the year,
In the wild depth of Winter, while without
The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat
Between the groaning forest and the shore,
Beat by the boundless multitude of waves,
A rural, sheltered, solitary scene;
Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty dead;
Sages of ancient time, as gods revered,
As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind
With arts and arms, and humanized a world.
Roused at the inspiring thought, I throw aside
The long-lived volume; and, deep-musing, hail
The sacred shades, that, slowly rising, pass
Before my wondering eyes. First Socrates2,
Who, firmly good in a corrupted state,
Against the rage of tyrants single stood
Invincible! calm reason's holy law,
That voice of God within the attentive mind,
Obeying, fearless, or in life or death:
Great moral teacher! wisest of mankind!
1 A Swiss Canton, the most extensive, except Bern, in the whole Confederation. It is surrounded on every side by lofty mountains.
Solon1 the next who built his commonweal
On equity's wide base; by tender laws
A lively people curbing, yet undamped
Preserving still that quick peculiar fire,
Whence in the laurelled field of finer arts
And of bold freedom, they unequalled shone-
The pride of smiling Greece, and human-kind.
Lycurgus then, who bowed beneath the force
Of strictest discipline, severely wise,
All human passions. Following him, I see,
As at Thermopyla he glorious fell,
The firm, devoted Chief3, who proved by deeds
The hardest lesson which the other taught.
Then Aristides lifts his honest front;
Spotless of heart, to whom the unflattering voice
Of Freedom gave the noblest name of "JUST;"
In pure majestic poverty revered;
Who, even his glory to his country's weal
Submitting, swelled a haughty rival's fame.
Reared by his care, of softer ray, appears
Cimon 5, sweet-souled, whose genius, rising strong,
Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad,
The scourge of Persian pride; at home, the friend
Of every worth, and every splendid art-
Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.
Then, the last worthies of declining Greece,
Late-called to glory, in unequal times,
Pensive appear.
The fair Corinthian boast,
Timoleon 6, tempered happy, mild and firm,
Who wept the brother while the tyrant bled.
And, equal to the best, the Theban pair7,
Whose virtues, in heroic concord joined,
1 The celebrated Athenian legislator; the son of Execestides, a descendant of Codrus, born about 632,
2 The Spartan legislator; said to have been the founder of the Lacedæmonian institutions and form of government.
3 Leonidas the king of Sparta, who commanded the force appointed to oppose the advance of Xerxes at Thermopylæ, 480 B. C.
4 The son of Lysimachus the Athe
nian, celebrated for his integrity and justice.
5 The Son of Miltiades, the conqueror at Marathon; remarkable for his frankness and affability of manner.
6 The son of Timodemus of Corinth: his brother Timophanes having resolved to make himself tyrant of Corinth, Timoleon caused him to be put to death; or, as some say, slew him with his own hand.
7 Epaminondas and Pelopidas, two Theban commanders and intimate
Their country raised to freedom, virtue, fame.
He too, with whom Athenian honour sunk,
And left a mass of sordid lees behind,
Phocion1 the good; in public life severe,
To virtue still inexorably firm;
But when beneath his low illustrious roof,
Sweet peace and happy wisdom smoothed his brow,
Not friendship softer was, not love more kind.
And he, the last of old Lycurgus' sons,
The generous victim to that vain attempt
To save a rotten state, Agis 2, who saw
Even Sparta's self to servile avarice sunk.
The two Achæan heroes close the train,
Aratus3, who a while relumed the soul
Of fondly lingering liberty in Greece;
And he, her darling, as her latest, hope,
The gallant Philopomen, who to arms
Turned the luxurious pomp he could not cure;
Or, toiling in his farm, a simple swain ;
Or, bold and skilful, thundering in the field.
Of rougher front, a mighty people come !
A race of heroes! in those virtuous times
Which knew no stain, save that with partial flame
Their dearest country they too fondly loved.
Her better founder first, the light of Rome,
Numa 5, who softened her rapacious sons.
friends; who raised their country to an unprecedented, though short-lived power.
1 The son of Phocus, a man of humble origin, born about 402, B. C. He was a great orator, general, and statesman, and one of the last of the great men of Athens. He was condemned through the intrigues of a faction to drink poison, B.C. 317.
2 Agis IV., King of Sparta. He succeeded his father in 244 B.C., and reigned four years. Agis attempted to reform the morals of the Spartans, by restoring the laws of Lycurgus, but was prevented by the aristocracy. He was at length condemned for attempting to introduce innovations
3 The son of Cleinias, born at Sicyon 271, died 213 B.C. His whole life
was spent in an attempt to unite the states of Greece together, so as to resist the overwhelming power of Macedon. He is said to have been killed by slow poison through the agency of Philip of Macedon.
4 Son of Craugis of Megalopolis in Arcadia, and general of the Achæan league. He was considered the greatest man of his day, and was possessed of incorruptible integrity, and undoubted courage. Born 252, B.C.; put to death by Deinocrates 183, B.C.
5 Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, the second king of Rome, remarkable for his piety and peaceful disposition. It may be proper, however, here to remark, that the historical existence of this king is doubted by modern historians.
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