To snatch my country from that damning doom,—
That deadliest curse that on the conquered waits—
A Conqueror’s satrap, thron’d within her gates!
True, he was false, despotic—all you please—
Had trampled down man’s holiest liberties—
Had, by a genius form’d for nobler things
Than lie within the grasp of vulgar Kings,
But rais’d the hopes of men—as eaglets fly
With tortoises aloft into the sky—
To dash them down again more shatteringly!