On—on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales,
Ye locusts of tyranny!—blasting them o'er:
Fill—fill up their wide, sunny waters, ye sails,
From each slave-mart in Europe, and poison their shore.
May their fate be a mockword—may men of all lands
Laugh out with a scorn that shall ring to the poles,
When each sword that the cowards let fall from their hands,
Shall be forged into fetters to enter their souls!
And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven,
Base slaves! may the whet of their agony be,
To think—as the damned haply think of the heaven
They had once in their reach,—that they might have been free.
Shame! shame! when there was not a bosom whose heat
Ever rose o'er the zero of Castlereagh's heart,
That did not, like Echo, your war-hymn repeat,
And send back its prayers with your Liberty's start!
Good God! that in such a proud moment of life,
Worth ages of history—when, had you but hurled
One bolt at your bloody invader, that strife
Between freemen and tyrants had spread through the world!
That then—O, disgrace upon manhood! e'en then
You should falter—should cling to your pitiful breath,
Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood men,
And prefer a slave's life to a glorious death!
It is strange!—it is dreadful! Shout, Tyranny, shout
Through your dungeons and palaces, "Freedom is o'er"—
If there lingers one spark of her fire, tread it out,
And return to your empire of darkness once more.
For if such are the braggarts that claim to be free,
Come, Despot of Russia, thy feet let me kiss,
Far nobler to live the brute-bondman of thee,
Than sully even chains by a struggle like this.
T. Moore.