Oh Liberty! the prisoner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion and his theme;
Genius is thine, and thou art fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee the ennobling powers of verse;
Heroic song from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires:
Place me where winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing, if liberty be there;
And I will sing at liberty's dear feet,
In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat.
Table Talk.
'Tis liberty alone, that gives the flow'r
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it.
Task, book v.
His depressive malady, and the source of its cure:
I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since; with many an arrow deep infix'd
My panting side was charg'd, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by One, who had himself
Been hurt by th' archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.[777]
With gentle force soliciting the darts
He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live.
Book iii.
The employment of his time, and design of his life and writings:
Me therefore studious of laborious ease,
Not slothful, happy to deceive the time,
Not waste it, and aware that human life
Is but a loan to be repaid with use,
When He shall call his debtors to account,
From whom are all our blessings; business finds
E'en here: while sedulous I seek t' improve,
At least neglect not, or leave unemploy'd,
The mind he gave me; driving it, though slack
Too oft, and much impeded in its work
By causes not to be divulg'd in vain,
To its just point—the service of mankind.
Book iii.