Would wade through blood where human rights require:
Would fight their way to equal laws or death;
And curse their tyrants with their latest breath.
O slaves, why linger! seek repose in graves;
Or break your chains, and be no longer slaves.
Dismiss your fears, your childish doubts divest ;
And be no more the tyrant's scorn and jest;
But read the wise and true historic page,
It speaks of man, in ev'ry clime and age.
It is your duty, ev'ry man should read,
Who hopes to live, or wishes not to bleed.
For ev'ry man, in ev'ry state, should know
What ills men suffer, and from whence they flow.
He then would break the diadem in twain,
Crush the soft scull, and pierce the wearer's brain
Dash the fell monster to his place below,
And triumph bravely on his country's foe.
And next attack the parasitic crew,
By whose support, the savage monarch grew;
Drive to despair, the cringing reptile band,
And snatch the people from oppression's hand.
And then without the least regret could say,
I free'd my country from despotic sway.
O dearest freedom! he who knows thy worth,
Would rather lie in cold, oblivious earth,
Than live to slave for men uncurb'd by laws,
Or live in dread of monarchs, racks, and saws.
For when the pomp of despotism shines,
All nature sickens, withers, and declines.
Its sultry night, is harder still to bear.
Than what the storms of wild commotion are.
No prudence shields us from its dreadful heat;
It follows virtue to the lone retreat;
Pervades the grot, the lonely hill and dale,
The lofty mountain, and the lowly vale.
It leaves no place where Catos may repose;
Or patriots tell their long lamented woes;
It leaves no pillow for the weary head
It visits justice in her humble shed;
Pursues each Sidney from his country far;
And finds few Ludlows (90) too remote to mar.
Such is the heat of this infernal night,
And such is despotism's dismal plight,
The stoutest patriotism feels despair,
And, dying, scorns a base existence there.
If therefore, men must suffer evil things;
'Twere better, anarchy should reign than kings.
For both will reign where men erect a throne:
Feuds come with kings, and kings with feuds alone,
For kings have caus'd the worst, anarchal state,
That man can suffer, or my pen relate,
And this the world's instructive annals tell :
For lo! how Montford, (91) York, (92) and Warwick,
How Richard, (94) Lincoln, (95) Gray (96) and Monmouth, (97) died;
And millions more, who might be nam’d beside :
They died in tumults, caus'd by queens and kings,
From them alone eternal discord springs.
In all the realms on this terraqueous sphere,
The marks of royal discord still appear:
Towns laid in ruins ; countries laid in waste;
Man left a savage, nature's self debas'd,
Are marks of monarchs, though not always known,
But trac'd will lead us to a royal throne.
A tyrant's tools, still meeting some reward
For crimes perform'd to serve their savage lord:
And vile injustice, stil before their eyes,
And long successful must familiarize
Most men to crimes; and crimes replete with woe;
As Alexander's (99) crucifixions show.
The Jews have witness'd what corruption springs
From those foul monsters, princes, wars and kings.
Lo! nations ruin'd, wasted, turn'd to thieves;
And acting what no mind unread, believes.
For see the Jews, with kingly rage inflam'd,
Perform such tragedies for titles claim'd;
That men grow hard by seeing licenc'd guilt,
And human blood by crown'd assassins spilt,
By seeing men commit, in virtue's name,
Most cruel murders, free from dread or shame :
But now deprav'd by monarchs crimes, and sins,
The Jews turn thieves, (100) and civil war begins.
Virtue at last is call'd an empty name;
And deem'd a mask to cheat the weak and tame :
With mutual hatred, kindred, kindred meet,
Justice deride, and goodness call a cheat;
Devour (101) their children, plunder friends and foes; And fill their country with unnatural woes.
And thus they rage like men devoid of sense,
Till other wars, and other ills commence :
'Till foreign war, like some resistless flood,
Broke down their walls, and steep'd their towns in
With one wide ruin crush'd unjust and just;
And laid their pride, and mighty tow'rs in dust.
To these dire feuds and others nam'd before,
I might add thousands for there's thousands more.
The same fell spirit, though forgot, has been
Wherever marks of moral ills are seen.
That spirit, too, though sometimes cloak'd, still reigns
Where wasteful war pollutes a nation's plains.
That spirit despotism, (192) still the same,-
Whate'er its country, or whate'er its name,
Is trac'd by blood; her steps are mark'd with gore,
With bleaching bones, or sights unseen before:
Most dismal sights, where all that's sad appear;
And all that's hateful to the nose or ear:
Where ancient ruins strew the lonely plain;
Where desesrts spread, (103) and owls and tygers reign:
where piles once famous, once the seats of pride,
Now form the dens where hissing serpents hide :
where dismal putrid mangl'd carnage lies;
Where doleful groans from piles of ruins rise:
Where limbless bodies, robb'd of sight, complain;
And men and beasts, in mingl'd heaps remain,
For growling dogs, and screeching fowls to tear;
To glut the wolves and feast the birds of air.
And thus to know what hateful monarchs cause,
Add tenfold evil to the want of laws :
For states not kingless, lawless soon may be ;
Where one is lawless, there no man is free :
T here all must suffer; there such ills unite,
That virtue sickens, even at the sight:
There man is doom'd, beneath monarchal sway,
To droop, like plants beneath the torrid ray;
And scarcely human, wish, yet fear to die ;
But, even death the savage priests deny :
For through their arts, the fear of fictious ill
Makes man obey a cruel tyrant's will.
Fantastic sins engage the thoughts of slaves;
And draw their minds from all the schemes of knaves:
For slaves, though kind and void of sins or (104) crimes,
Are taught to dread the woes of future times.
Their minds are turn'd on some religious strife;
And shut from all the harmless joys of life:
They weep, and sob, and feel ideal woe,
Which, but for tyrants, man would never know.
And while they dread some odd, fantastic things,
A real evil, from the fictions, springs.
Thus mind and body wear the monarch's chains;
And linger here, when not one joy remains.
Their minds with fear, with toil their bodies bend;
And ling❜ring deaths their weary lives must end.
Hence I would choose before a monarch's throne,
To brave the tempests of the torrid zone:
Or wild as nature, wander round the pole,
Where chilling snows in wavy mountains roll.
For more content is found in Lapland caves,
Than that which reigns amidst a herd of slaves :
|