A blithesome youth of courtly mien
Oft called to see this rural queen:
His oily tongue and wily art
Soon gained Maria’s yielding heart.
The aged pair, too, liked the youth,
And thought him naught but love and truth.
The village feast at length is come;
Maria by the youth’s undone:
The youth is gone—so is her fame;
And with it all her sense of shame:
And now she practises the art
Which snared her unsuspecting heart;
And vice, with a progressive sway,
More hardened makes her every day.
Averse to good and prone to ill,
And dexterous in seducing skill;
To look, as if her eyes would melt:
T’ affect a love she never felt;
To half suppress the rising sigh;
Mechanically to weep and cry;
To vow eternal truth, and then
To break her vow, and vow again;
Her ways are darkness, death, and hell:
Remorse and shame and passions fell,
And short-lived joy, with endless pain,
Pursues her in a gloomy train.
O Britain fair, thou queen of isles!
Nor hostile arms nor hostile wiles
Could ever shake thy solid throne
But for thy sins. Thy sins alone
Can make thee stoop thy royal head,
And lay thee prostrate with the dead.
In vain colossal England mows,
With ponderous strength, the yielding foes;
In vain fair Scotia, by her side,
With courage flushed and Highland pride,
Whirls her keen blade with horrid whistle
And lops off heads like tops of thistle;
In vain brave Erin, famed afar,
The flaming thunderbolt of war,
Profuse of life, through blood does wade,
To lend her sister kingdom aid:
Our conquering thunders vainly roar
Terrific round the Gallic shore;
Profoundest statesmen vainly scheme—
’Tis all a vain, delusive dream,
If treacherously within our breast
We foster sin, the deadly pest.
Where Sin abounds Religion dies,
And Virtue seeks her native skies;
Chaste Conscience hides for very shame,
And Honour’s but an empty name.
Then, like a flood, with fearful din,
A gloomy host comes pouring in.
First Bribery, with her golden shield,
Leads smooth Corruption o’er the field;
Dissension wild, with brandished spear,
And Anarchy bring up the rear:
Whilst Care and Sorrow, Grief and Pain
Run howling o’er the bloody plain.
O Thou, whose power resistless fills
The boundless whole, avert those ills
We richly merit: purge away
The sins which on our vitals prey;
Protect, with Thine almighty shield
Our conquering arms by flood and field,
Wheel round the time when Peace shall smile
O’er Britain’s highly-favoured Isle;
When all shall loud hosannas sing
To Thee, the great Eternal King!
But hark! the bleak, loud whistling wind!
Its crushing blast recalls to mind
The dangers of the troubled deep;
Where, with a fierce and thundering sweep,
The winds in wild distraction rave,
And push along the mountain wave
With dreadful swell and hideous curl!
Whilst hung aloft in giddy whirl,
Or drop beneath the ocean’s bed,
The leaky bark without a shred
Of rigging sweeps through dangers dread.
The flaring beacon points the way,
And fast the pumps loud clanking play:
It ’vails not—hark! with crashing shock
She’s shivered ’gainst the solid rock,
Or by the fierce, incessant waves
Is beaten to a thousand staves;
Or bilging at her crazy side,
Admits the thundering hostile tide,
And down she sinks!—triumphant rave
The winds, and close her wat’ry grave!
The merchant’s care and toil are vain,
His hopes He buried in the main—
In vain the mother’s tearful eye
Looks for its sole remaining joy—
In vain fair Susan walks the shore,
And sighs for him she’ll see no more—
For deep they lie in ocean’s womb,
And fester in a wat’ry tomb.
Now, from the frothy, thundering main,
My meditations seek the plain,
Where, with a swift fantastic flight,
They scour the regions of the night,
Free as the winds that wildly blow
O’er hill and dale the blinding snow,
Or, through the woods, their frolics play,
And whirling, sweep the dusty way,
When summer shines with burning glare,
And sportive breezes skim the air,
And Ocean’s glassy breast is fanned
To softest curl by Zephyr bland.