REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY READING
O Muses! virtue stands almost dismay'd!
O lend assistance! grant to her your aid!
Grant her your aid, and let her truths be hurl'd,
In thund'ring numbers round the drowsy world,
To rouse the people to their true delight,
The love of freedom and the sense of right.
For long the earth the rage of war has borne;
And long have tyrants caus'd the world to mourn :
And yet you seldom lend poetick aid,
To serve fair virtue, that celestial maid.
You have too seldom sung her righteous cause;
Or sought the glory of her just applause.
You sing of wars, you sing of battles won;
In fields of slaughter while a state's undone.
You sing of kings, who sought ignoble fame;
While injured millions execrate their name,
While better deeds, and themes are left unsung:
For these your lyre has been so often rung.
Your partial numbers often roll along,
The praise of men, unworthy of your song.
You do too often eulogize the brave,
Who kill ten thousand for the one they save.
You have too often prais'd the spurious great,
As if you dreaded to incur their hate.
You have too often flatter'd vicious kings,
Perhaps their riches brib'd the venal strings.
Has their corruption caus'd the tuneful lyre,
To make such notes as truth could not inspire?
Is that the cause? then muses change your strings :
Let freemen sing who fear no ruthless kings;
Nor would, for favours, titles, pow'r nor gold,
Assert one falshood, nor one truth withhold.
For once inspire an humble bard to sing;
Let truth be told though on an humbler string :
Inspire a freman with poetic rage,
To lash the vices of a vicious age:
And let me now before the public bring,
That strange production call'd a prince or king
In him a sample most replete I find,
Of all the vices which disturb mankind.
The just who know them must detest their reign;
And wish that kings were all depos'd or slain :
And he who drives them off the civil stage,
Will merit praises to the latest age.
To shew their crimes and vicious nature too,
Are themes which, I with good intent, pursue :
Nor is this more than duty (1)* asks of me,
Because no nation, on this earth, is free;
Excepting this, my dear and native soil, (2)
Where peace and freedom still rewards our toil.
*The references in the following poem refer to the appendix.
O blest Columbia! long thy sons shall be,
A grand example for the world to see.
And yet, thy sons, who now so blest appear,
While kings exist, will still have cause to fear,
Unless they watch their public agents well,
And shun the woes which Greece (3) and Rome befel.
For monarchs strive to spread corruption wide,
Through ev'ry region where mankind reside;
Because they wish to keep all nations blind;
Lest truth and reason spread from mind to mind;
Lest good examples placed before their eyes,
Should teach by facts, and make the subject wise,
Lest genial freedom spread its sacred light,
And prompt the slave to vindicate his right;
Lest injur'd subjects, warm'd by freedom's heat,
Rush on like torrents to each monarch's seat,
Pull down the despots, overturn their thrones,
And heap the ruins on the tyrant's bones.
As kings spring up, so dross and scum arise;
The worst of men assume the monarch's guise.
For lo! how meanly, foes to freedom, cow'r,
And bow and cringe, and kiss the earth for pow'r ;
And then as meanly act the tyrant's part,
When pow'r has swell'd the little, selfish heart:
In office, tyrants, cruel, vain, and proud;
If out, the meanest of the meanest crowd:
Kings rise with baseness; and their pow'r descends
To rest in baseness till the monster ends:
For kings, unmov'd, behold another's grief,
And feel no wish to give the least relief:
But mean must be the man who never knows,
A single sorrow for another's woes;
And, though he gratifies his pride and hate,
They think corruptly who desire his state.
Lest doubts on terms, and cavils, hence, arise,
What monarch means, I briefly now premise:
Where, from the ruler at the close of care,
Chief pow'r descends to some surviving heir;
Or where elections can't again devest
The one in whom the highest powers rest;
Or lawless
sway is held by one alone;
There is a monarch, and his seat or throne.
And where the few, such lawless pow'rs possess,
Forms oligarchic, (4) also cause distress.
But then this form, and oligarchic race,
To kingly pow'r must resign their place;
And, like some insects, with their latest breath,
Produce their offspring, while they sink in death;
For thus, at last an oligarchic state
Engenders monarchs either soon or late.
I shall concisely next proceed to shew,
How kings or monarchs, from the germe, must grow. Know, then, that pride, the bane of social life,
Produc'd corruption, enmity and strife.
As carnal heaps engender brilliant flies,
So kings or monarchs, in corruption rise.
They first begin with little arts and wiles,
With bows, professions, flatteries and smiles.
They next employ, as they to notice rise,
Gifts, crimes, offences, promises and lies;
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