Classic Poem

INTRODUCTION .

I N Richard's days, when lost his pastur'd plain,
The wandering Briton sought the wild wood's reign,
With great disdain beheld the feudal horde,
Poor life-let vassals of a Norman Lord;
And, what no brave man ever lost, possess'd
Himself — for Freedom bound him to her breast.

Lov'st thou that Freedom? By her holy shrine,
If yet one drop of British blood be thine,
See, I conjure thee, in the desert shade,
His bow unstrung, his little household laid,
Some brave forefather; while his fields they share,
By Saxon, Dane, or Norman banish'd there!
And think he tells thee, as his soul withdraws,
As his heart swells against a tyrant's laws,
The war with Fate, though fruitless to maintain,
To guard that liberty he lov'd in vain.

Were thoughts like these the dream of ancient time?
Peculiar only to some age, or clime?
And does not Nature thoughts like these impart,
Breathe in the soul, and write upon the heart?
Ask on their mountains yon deserted band,
That point to Paoli with no plausive hand;
Despising still, their freeborn souls unbroke,
Alike the Gallic and Ligurian yoke!

Yet while the patriots' generous rage we share,
Still civil safety calls us back to care; —
To Britain lost in either Henry's day,
Her woods, her mountains, one wild scene of prey!
Fair Peace from all her bounteous vallies fled,
And Law beneath the barbed arrow bled.

In happier days, with more auspicious fate,
The far-fam'd Edward heal'd his wounded state;
Dread of his foes, but to his subjects dear,
These learn'd to love, as those are taught to fear;
Their laurell'd Prince with British pride obey,
His glory shone their discontent away.

With care the tender flower of love to save,
And plant the olive on Disorder's grave,
For civil storms fresh barriers to provide,
He caught the favouring calm and falling tide.

The social laws from insult to protect,
To cherish peace, to cultivate respect;
The rich from wanton cruelty restrain,
To smoothe the bed of penury and pain;
The hapless vagrant to his rest restore,
The maze of fraud, the haunts of theft explore;
The thoughtless maiden, when subdued by art,
To aid, and bring her rover to her heart;
Wild riot's voice with dignity to quell,
Forbid unpeaceful passions to rebel,
Wrest from revenge the meditated harm,
For this fair Justice rais'd her sacred arm;
For this the rural magistrate, of yore,
Thy honours, Edward, to his mansion bore.

Oft, where old Air in conscious glory sails,
On silver waves that flow through smiling vales,
In Harewood's groves, where long my youth was laid,
Unseen beneath their ancient world of shade,
With many a group of antique columns crown'd,
In gothic guise such mansion have I found.

Nor lightly deem, ye apes of modern race,
Ye cits that sore bedizen Nature's face,
Of the more manly structures here ye view;
They rose for greatness that ye never knew!
Ye reptile cits, that oft have mov'd my spleen
With Venus, and the Graces on your green!
Let Plutus, growling o'er his ill-got wealth,
Let Mercury, the thriving god of stealth,
The shopman, Janus, with his double looks,
Rise on your mounts, and perch upon your books!
But, spare my Venus, spare each sister Grace,
Ye cits, that sore bedizen Nature's face!

Ye royal architects, whose antic taste,
Would lay the realms of Sense and Nature waste;
Forgot, whenever from her steps ye stray,
That folly only points each other way;
Here, though your eye no courtly creature sees,
Snakes on the ground, or monkies in the trees;
Yet let not too severe a censure fall,
On the plain precincts of the ancient Hall.
For though no sight your childish fancy meets,
Of Thibet's dogs, or China's paroquets;
Though apes, asps, lizards, things without a tail,
And all the tribes of foreign monsters fail;
Here shall ye sigh to see, with rust o'ergrown,
The iron griffin and the sphinx of stone;
And mourn, neglected in their waste abodes,
Fire-breathing drakes, and water-spouting gods.

Long have these mighty monsters known disgrace,
Yet still some trophies hold their ancient place;
Where round the Hall, the oak's high surbase rears
The field-day triumphs of two hundred years.

The enormous antlers here recal the day
That saw the forest-monarch forc'd away;
Who, many a flood, and many a mountain past,
Nor finding those, nor deeming these the last,
O'er floods, o'er mountains yet prepar'd to fly,
Long ere the death-drop fill'd his failing eye!

Here, fam'd for cunning, and in crimes grown old,
Hangs his grey brush, the felon of the fold.
Oft, as the rent-feast swells the midnight cheer,
The maudlin farmer kens him o'er his beer,
And tells his old, traditionary tale,
Though known to every tenant of the vale.

Here, where, of old, the festal ox has fed,
Mark'd with his weight, the mighty horns are spread:
Some ox, O Marshall, for a board like thine,
Where the vast master with the vast sirloin
Vied in round magnitude — Respect I bear
To thee, though oft the ruin of the chair.
These, and such antique tokens, that record
The manly spirit, and the bounteous board,
Me more delight than all the gew-gaw train,
The whims and zigzags of a modern brain,
More than all Asia's marmosets to view,
Grin, frisk, and water, in the walks of Kew.

Through these fair vallies, stranger, hast thou stray'd,
By any chance, to visit Harewood's shade,
And seen with honest, antiquated air,
In the plain Hall the magistratial chair?
There Herbet sate — the love of human kind,
Pure light of truth, and temperance of mind,
In the free eye the featur'd soul display'd,
Honour's strong beam, and Mercy's melting shade;
Justice, that, in the rigid baths of law,
Would still some drops from Pity's fountain draw;
Bend o'er her urn with many a generous fear,
Ere his firm seal should force one orphan's tear;
Fair Equity, and Reason scorning art,
And all the sober virtues of the heart —
These sat with Herbert, these shall best avail,
Where statutes order, or where statutes fail.

Be this, ye rural Magistrates, your plan:
Firm be your justice, but be friends to Man.

He whom the mighty master of this ball,
We fondly deem, or farcically call,
To own the Patriarch's truth however loth,
Holds but a mansion crush'd before the moth.

Frail in his genius, in his heart too, frail;
Born but to err, and erring to bewail;
Shalt thou his faults with eye severe explore,
And give to life one human weakness more?

Still mark if Vice or Nature prompts the deed;
Still mark the strong temptation and the need:
On pressing Want, on Famine's powerful call,
At least more lenient let thy justice fall.

For him, who, lost to every hope of life,
Has long with fortune held unequal strife,
Known to no human love, no human care,
The friendless, homeless object of despair;
For the poor Vagrant, feel, while he complains,
Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains.
Alike, if folly or misfortune brought
Those last of woes his evil days have wrought;
Believe with social mercy and with me,
Folly's misfortune in the first degree.

Perhaps on some inhospitable shore
The houseless wretch a widow'd parent bore:
Who, then, no more by golden prospects led,
Of the poor Indian begg'd a leafy bed.
Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that parent mourn'd her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolv'd in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,
The child of misery, baptiz'd in tears!

O Edward, here thy fairest laurels fade!
And thy long glories darken into shade.

While yet the palms thy hardy veterans won,
The deeds of valour that for thee were done,
While yet the wreaths for which they bravely bled,
Fir'd thy high soul, and flourish'd on thy head,
Those veterans to their native shores return'd,
Like exiles wander'd, and like exiles mourn'd;
Or, left at large no longer to bewail,
Were vagrants deem'd, and destin'd to a gaol!

Were there no royal, yet uncultur'd lands,
No wastes that wanted such subduing hands;
Were Cressy's heroes such abandon'd things?
O fate of war! and gratitude of kings!

The gipsy-race my pity rarely move;
Yet their strong thirst of Liberty I love:
Not Wilkes, our freedom's holy martyr more;
Nor his firm phalanx of the common shore.

For this in Norwood's patrimonial groves,
The tawny father with his offspring roves;
When summer suns lead slow the sultry day,
In mossy caves, where welling waters play,
Fann'd by each gale that cools the fervid sky,
With this in ragged luxury they lie.
Oft at the sun the dusky elfins strain
The sable eye, then, snugging, sleep again;
Oft, as the dews of cooler evening fall,
For their prophetic mother's mantle call.

Far other cares that wandering mother wait,
The mouth, and oft the minister of Fate!
From her to hear, in evening's friendly shade,
Of future fortune, flies the village-maid,
Draws her long-hoarded copper from its hold;
And rusty halfpence purchase hopes of gold.
But, ah! ye maids, beware the Gipsy's lures!
She opens not the womb of Time, but yours.
Oft has her hands the hapless Marian wrung,
Marian whom Gay in sweetest strains has sung!
The parson's maid — sore cause had she to rue
The Gipsy's tongue; the parson's daughter too.
Long had that anxious daughter sigh'd to know
What Vellum's sprucy clerk, the valley's bean,
Meant by those glances which at church he stole,
Her father nodding to the psalm's slow drawl;
Long had she sigh'd; at length a prophet came,
By many a sure prediction known to fame,
To Marian known, and all she told, for true:
She knew the future, for the past she knew.

Where, in the darkling shed, the moon's dim rays
Beam'd on the ruins of a one-horse chaise,
Villaria sate, while faithful Marian brought
The wayward prophet of the woe she sought.
Twice did her hands, the income of the week,
On either side, the crooked sixpence seek;
Twice were those hands withdrawn from either side,
To stop the tittering laugh, the blush to hide,
The wayward prophet made no long delay,
No novice she in Fortune's devions way;
" Ere yet," she cried, " ten rolling months are o'er,
Must ye be mothers: maids, at least no more.
With you shall soon, O lady fair, prevail
A gentle youth, the flower of this fair vale.
To Marian, once of Colin Clout the scorn,
Shall bumkin come, and bumkinets be born."

Smote to the heart, the maidens marvell'd sore,
That ten short months had such events in store:
But holding firm, what village-maids believe,
" That strife with fate is milking in a sieve;"
To prove their prophet true, though to their cost.
They justly thought no time was to be lost.

These foes to youth, that seek, with dangerous art,
To aid the native weakness of the heart;
These miscreants from thy harmless village drive,
As wasps felonious from the labouring hive.