His banners in haughty procession shall ride,
On Jehovah's proud altars unfurl'd!
While anthems and priests waft to heaven his praise,
For the slaughter and wreck of a world!
Though widows and orphans together shall crowd,
To gaze as at heaven's dread rod,
And mutter their curses, and mingle their tears,
Invoking the vengeance of God:
Though, while bloated Revelry roars at his board,
Where surfeiting hecatombs fume,
Desolation and Famine shall howl, and old Earth
Her skeleton hordes shall intomb:
All ghastly and mangled, from fields where they fell,
With horrible groanings and cries,
What though, when he slumbers, the dead from their graves
In dread visitation shall rise:
Yet he among heroes exalted shall sit;
And slaves to his splendor shall bend;
And senates shall echo his virtues; and kings
Shall own him their saviour, and friend!
Then hail to the hero whom victory leads,
Triumphant, from fields of renown!
From kingdoms left barren! from plains drench'd in blood!
And the sacking of many a fair town!
I was too full of my subject, and poet like too much delighted with the verses I had so suddenly produced, not to shew them immediately to Mr. Evelyn.
He seemed to do them even more than justice: he read them again and again, and each time with a feeling now of compassion, now of amazement, and now of horror, that shewed how strongly the picture had seized upon his soul. The associations of misery which his imagination added were so forcible that tears repeatedly rolled down his cheeks. To this more soothing trains of thought succeeded. The pain of the past and the present was alleviated by a prospect of futurity. Our minds rose to a state of mutual rapture, excited by a foresight that the time was at length come in which men were awakening to a comprehensive view of their own mad and destructive systems; that their vices began to be on the decline and no longer to be mistaken for the most splendid virtues, as they had formerly been; and that truth was breaking forth upon the world with most animating force and vigour.
There have been few moments of my life in which I have experienced intellectual enjoyment with a pleasure so exquisite. Clarke himself, unused as his thoughts had been to explore the future and wrest happiness to themselves by anticipation, partook of our emotions; and seemed in a state similar to those religious converts who imagine they feel that a new light is broke in upon them. It was a happy afternoon! It was a type of those which shall hereafter be the substitutes of the wretched resources of drinking, obscene conversation, and games of chance, to which men have had recourse that they might rouze their minds: being rather willing to suffer the extremes of misery than that dullness, and inanity, which they find still more insupportable.
This incident united me and Mr. Evelyn more intimately, and powerfully, than all that had passed. The warmth with which he spoke, of the benefits that society must receive from talents like mine, dilated my heart. Every man is better acquainted with his own powers and virtues than any other can possibly be; and, when they are discovered, acknowledged, and applauded, instead of being denied or overlooked as is more generally the case, the pleasure he receives is as great as it is unusual.