’Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb

Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds,

That crowd away before the driving wind,

More ardent as the disk emerges more,

Resemble most some city in a blaze,

Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray

Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,

And, tingeing all with his own rosy hue,

From every herb and every spiry blade

Stretches a length of shadow o’er the field,

Mine, spindling into longitude immense,

In spite of gravity, and sage remark

That I myself am but a fleeting shade,

Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance

I view the muscular proportioned limb

Transformed to a lean shank; the shapeless pair,

As they designed to mock me, at my side

Take step for step, and, as I near approach

The cottage, walk along the plastered wall,

Preposterous sight, the legs without the man.

The verdure of the plain lies buried deep

Beneath the dazzling deluge, and the bents

And coarser grass upspearing o’er the rest,

Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine

Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad,

And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.

The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence

Screens them, and seem, half petrified, to sleep

In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait

Their wonted fodder, not, like hungering man,

Fretful if unsupplied, but silent, meek,

And patient of the slow-paced swain’s delay.

He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,

Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft

His broad keen knife into the solid mass:

Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,

With such undeviating and even force

He severs it away: no needless care,

Lest storms should overset the leaning pile

Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.

Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned

The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe

And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,

From morn to eve his solitary task.

Shaggy and lean and shrewd, with pointed ears

And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,

His dog attends him. Close behind his heel

Now creeps he slow, and now with many a frisk,

Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow

With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;

Then shakes his powdered coat and barks for joy.

Heedless of all his pranks the sturdy churl

Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught,

But now and then, with pressure of his thumb,

To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,

That fumes beneath his nose; the trailing cloud

Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.

Now from the roost, or from the neighbouring pale,

Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam

Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side,

Come trooping at the housewife’s well-known call

The feathered tribes domestic; half on wing,

And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,

Conscious, and fearful of too deep a plunge.

The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves

To seize the fair occasion; well they eye

The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved

To escape the impending famine, often scared

As oft return, a pert, voracious kind.

Clean riddance quickly made, one only care

Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,

Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned

To sad necessity the cock foregoes

His wonted strut, and, wading at their head

With well-considered steps, seems to resent

His altered gait, and stateliness retrenched.

How find the myriads, that in summer cheer

The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs,

Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?

Earth yields them naught: the imprisoned worm is safe

Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs

Lie covered close, and berry-bearing thorns

That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose),

Afford the smaller minstrel no supply.

The long-protracted rigour of the year

Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes

Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

As instinct prompts, self-buried ere they die.

The very rooks and daws forsake the fields,

Where neither grub nor root nor earth-nut now

Repays their labour more; and perched aloft

By the way-side, or stalking in the path,

Lean pensioners upon the traveller’s track,

Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them,

Of voided pulse, or half-digested grain.

The streams are lost amid the splendid blank,

O’erwhelming all distinction. On the flood

Indurated and fixed the snowy weight

Lies undissolved, while silently beneath

And unperceived the current steals away;

Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps

The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel,

And wantons in the pebbly gulf below.

No frost can bind it there. Its utmost force

Can but arrest the light and smoky mist

That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.

And see where it has hung the embroidered banks

With forms so various, that no powers of art,

The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene!

Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high

(Fantastic misarrangement) on the roof

Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees

And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops

That trickle down the branches, fast congealed,

Shoot into pillars of pellucid length

And prop the pile they but adorned before.

Here grotto within grotto safe defies

The sunbeam. There imbossed and fretted wild,

The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes

Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain

The likeness of some object seen before.

Thus nature works as if to mock at art,

And in defiance of her rival powers;

By these fortuitous and random strokes

Performing such inimitable feats,

As she with all her rules can never reach.

Less worthy of applause though more admired,

Because a novelty, the work of man,

Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ,

Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,

The wonder of the North. No forest fell

When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores

To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,

And make thy marble of the glassy wave.

In such a palace Aristaeus found

Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale

Of his lost bees to her maternal ear.

In such a palace poetry might place

The armoury of winter, where his troops,

The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet,

Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail,

And snow that often blinds the traveller’s course,

And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.

Silently as a dream the fabric rose.

No sound of hammer or of saw was there.

Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts

Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked

Than water interfused to make them one.

Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues,

Illumined every side. A watery light

Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed

Another moon new-risen, or meteor fallen

From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.

So stood the brittle prodigy, though smooth

And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound

Firm as a rock. Nor wanted aught within

That royal residence might well befit,

For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreaths

Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth,

Blushed on the panels. Mirror needed none

Where all was vitreous, but in order due

Convivial table and commodious seat

(What seemed at least commodious seat) were there,

Sofa and couch and high-built throne august.

The same lubricity was found in all,

And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene

Of evanescent glory, once a stream,

And soon to slide into a stream again.

Alas, ’twas but a mortifying stroke

Of undesigned severity, that glanced

(Made by a monarch) on her own estate,

On human grandeur and the courts of kings

’Twas transient in its nature, as in show

’Twas durable; as worthless, as it seemed

Intrinsically precious; to the foot

Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold.

Great princes have great playthings. Some have played

At hewing mountains into men, and some

At building human wonders mountain high.

Some have amused the dull sad years of life

(Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad)

With schemes of monumental fame, and sought

By pyramids and mausoleum pomp,

Short-lived themselves, to immortalise their bones.

Some seek diversion in the tented field,

And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.

But war’s a game which, were their subjects wise,

Kings should not play at. Nations would do well

To extort their truncheons from the puny hands

Of heroes whose infirm and baby minds

Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,

Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

When Babel was confounded, and the great

Confederacy of projectors wild and vain

Was split into diversity of tongues,

Then, as a shepherd separates his flock,

These to the upland, to the valley those,

God drave asunder and assigned their lot

To all the nations. Ample was the boon

He gave them, in its distribution fair

And equal, and he bade them dwell in peace.

Peace was a while their care. They ploughed and sowed,

And reaped their plenty without grudge or strife,

But violence can never longer sleep

Than human passions please. In every heart

Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war,

Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze.

Cain had already shed a brother’s blood:

The Deluge washed it out; but left unquenched

The seeds of murder in the breast of man.

Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line

Of his descending progeny was found

The first artificer of death; the shrewd

Contriver who first sweated at the forge,

And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel

To a keen edge, and made it bright for war.

Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times,

The sword and falchion their inventor claim,

And the first smith was the first murderer’s son.

His art survived the waters; and ere long,

When man was multiplied and spread abroad

In tribes and clans, and had begun to call

These meadows and that range of hills his own,

The tasted sweets of property begat

Desire of more; and industry in some

To improve and cultivate their just demesne,

Made others covet what they saw so fair.

Thus wars began on earth. These fought for spoil,

And those in self-defence. Savage at first

The onset, and irregular. At length

One eminent above the rest, for strength,

For stratagem, or courage, or for all,

Was chosen leader. Him they served in war,

And him in peace for sake of warlike deeds

Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare?

Or who so worthy to control themselves

As he, whose prowess had subdued their foes?

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 mass,

And destitute 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 god,

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 gods 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 emancipate the rest!

Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone

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 lust

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 assembled 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 passive fortitude? Whence springs

Your self-denying zeal that holds it good

To stroke the prickly 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 nobly 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 prone 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. *

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 God 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 brass,

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 amusements 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 god,

Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

’Tis liberty alone that gives the flower

Of fleeting life its lustre 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

Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit
............