Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind.
Why have I stray’d from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant-kings or tyrant-laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,
Our own felicity we make or find:
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy;
The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,
Zeck’s iron crown, and Damiens’ bed of steel,[4]
To men remote from power but rarely known—
Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The Onandago, or Oneida, a lake of the State of New York, which extends westward about twenty miles, where its outlet, the river of Onandago, runs into Lake Ontario, at Oswego, a town with a population, in 1853, of above 5,000.
[4] George and Luke Zeck headed an insurrection in Hungary, A.D. 1514, and George was punished by having a red-hot iron crown placed on his head. Robert François Damiens was an enthusiast who attempted to stab Louis XV. of France, Jan. 5, 1757. Being seized and examined, he said he did not intend to kill the king; and this statement was in some measure borne out by his knife having two blades, of which he used the shorter. He was condemned to be broken alive by horses, having been previously tortured.
