"WINTER MORNING WALK."

ARGUMENT.

A frosty morning. The foddering of cattle. The woodman and his dog. The poultry. Whimsical effects of frost at a waterfall. The Empress of Russia's palace of ice. Amusements of monarchs. War, one of them. Wars, whence. And whence monarchy. The evils of it. English and French loyalty contrasted. The Bastile, and a prisoner there. Liberty the chief recommendation of this country. Modern patriotism questionable, and why. The perishable nature of the best human institutions. Spiritual liberty not perishable. The slavish state of man by nature. Deliver him, Deist, if you can. Grace must do it. The respective merits of patriots and martyrs stated. Their different treatment. Happy freedom of the man whom grace makes free. His relish of the works of God. dress to the Creator.

SUNRISE IN WINTER.

"T is morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds, That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze,

Ad

Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.

MY SHADOW.

Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance

I view the muscular proportioned limb
Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
As they designed to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plastered wall,
Preposterous sight! the legs without the man

THE JEWELLED MANTLE OF SNOW.

The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.

CATTLE IN WINTER. PATIENCE.-OUT-DOOR FODDERING.

The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,

Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging, oft,
His broad, keen knife into the solid mass;
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.

THE WOODMAN GOING TO THE WOOD. HIS DOG. HIS PIPE.

Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe And drive the wedge, in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears, And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, But now and then with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.

FEEDING OF POULTRY IN A WINTER'S MORNING. SPARROWS. -THE COCK.

Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing, And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious, and fearful of too deep a plunge. The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves, To seize the fair occasion; well they eye The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared, As oft return, a pert voracious kind. Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity, the cock foregoes His wonted strut; and, wading at their head With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait and stateliness retrenched.

FATE OF BIRDS DURING WINTER.

How find the myriads, that in summer cheer The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs, Due sustenance, or where subsist they now? Earth yields them naught; the imprisoned worm is Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close; and berry-bearing thorns, That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.

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The long-protracted rigor of the year
Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes
Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

As instinct prompts; self-buried ere they die.

ROOKS AND DAWS IN WINTER.

The very rooks and daws forsake the fields, Where neither grub, nor root, nor earth-nut, now Repays their labor more; and perched aloft By the wayside, or stalking in the path, Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track, Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them, Of voided pulse, or half-digested grain.

THE FROZEN STREAM; THE MILL-DAM.

The streams are lost amid the splendid blank, O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood, Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight Lies undissolved; while silently beneath, And unperceived, the current steals away. Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel, And wantons in the pebbly gulf below: No frost can bind it there; its utmost force Can but arrest the light and smoky mist, That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.

FROST-WORKS IN THE STREAMLET'S BANKS.

And see where it has hung the embroidered banks
With forms so various, that no powers of art,
The pencil or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high
(Fantastic misarrangement !) on the roof
Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees
And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops,
That trickle down the branches, fast congealed,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,

And prop the pile they but adorned before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies
The sunbeam; there, embossed and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain

The likeness of some object seen before.

NATURE'S SPORTS OUTDO THE WORKS OF ART. — FREAK OF
THE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA.

Thus nature works as if to mock at art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By these fortuitous and random strokes
Performing such inimitable feats,

As she with all her rules can never reach.
Less worthy of applause, though more admired,
Because a novelty, the work of man,
Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ,
Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,
The wonder of the north.

THE PALACE OF ICE. ARISTEUS, CYRENE.
No forest fell,
When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores
To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.

In such a palace Aristaus1 found
Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his lost bees to her maternal ear:
In such a palace poetry might place
The armory of winter; where his troops,
The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet,
Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail,
And snow, that often blinds the traveller's course,
And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.

BUILDING OF THE ICE PALACE.

Silently as a dream the fabric rose ; No sound of hammer or of saw was there : Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one. Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumined every side; a watery light Gleamed through the clear transparency, Another moon new risen, or meteor fallen From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene. So stood the brittle prodigy; though smooth And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound Firm as a rock.

FURNITURE OF THE ICE PALACE

[seemed

that

Some seek diversion in the tented field,
And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.
But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at. Nations would do well
Textort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

GOD ASSIGNED THE NATIONS THEIR PLACES.

When Babel was confounded, and the great Confederacy of projectors wild and vain Was split into diversity of tongues, Then, as a shepherd separates his flock, These to the upland, to the valley those, God drave asunder, and assigned their lot To all the nations. Ample was the boon He gave them, in its distribution fair And equal; and He bade them dwell in peace. Peace was a while their care: they ploughed, and

sowed,

And reaped their plenty without grudge or strife.
But violence can never longer sleep
Than human passions please.

THE WAR-PASSION. CAIN. TUBAL.

In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war; Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze. Cain had already shed a brother's blood: The Deluge washed it out; but left unquenched The seeds of murder in the breast of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver, who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unbloodied steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him, Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim; And the first smith was the first murderer's son.

COVETOUSNESS THE MOTHER OF WAR.

His art survived the waters; and ere long, When man was multiplied, and spread abroad In tribes and clans, and had begun to call These meadows and that range of hills his own, The tasted sweets of property begat Desire of more; and industry in some, To improve and cultivate their just demesne, Made others covet what they saw so fair. Thus war began on earth: these fought for spoil, And those in self-defence.

ORIGIN OF MILITARY CHIEFTAINSHIP.

Savage at first

The onset, and irregular. At length
One eminent above the rest for strength,
For stratagem, for courage, or for all,
Was chosen leader; him they served in war,
And him in peace, for sake of warlike deeds

Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare?
Or who so worthy to control themselves,
As he, whose prowess had subdued their foes?
Thus war, affording field for the display

Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace,
Which have their exigencies too, and call
For skill in government, at length made king.

HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE INVENTION OF KINGS AND
TYRANTS.

King was a name too proud for man to wear
With modesty and meekness; and the crown,
So dazzling in their eyes, who set it on,
Was sure t' intoxicate the brows it bound.

It is the abject property of most,
That, being parcel of the common mass,
And destitute of means to raise themselves,
They sink, and settle lower than they need.
They know not what it is to feel within
A comprehensive faculty, that
grasps
Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields,
Almost without an effort, plans too vast
For their conception, which they cannot move.

THE BASENESS OF THE MANY INVITES THE DESPOTISM OF ONE. MAN-WORSHIP.

Conscious of impotence, they soon grow drunk With gazing when they see an able man Step forth to notice: and, besotted thus, Build him a pedestal, and say, 'Stand there, And be our admiration and our praise.' They roll themselves before him in the dust, Then most deserving in their own account, When most extravagant in his applause, As if exalting him they raised themselves. Thus, by degrees, self-cheated of their sound And sober judgment, that he is but man, They demi-deify and fume him so, That in due season he forgets it too.

THE FULL-FLEDGED AUTOCRAT. CONQUERORS. Inflated and astrut with self-conceit, He gulps the windy diet; and, ere long, Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks The world was made in vain, if not for him. Thenceforth they are his cattle; drudges, born To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears, And sweating in his service, his caprice Becomes the soul that animates them all. He deems a thousand or ten thousand lives, Spent in the purchase of renown for him, An easy reckoning; and they think the same. Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings Were burnished into heroes, and became The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp; Storks among frogs, that have but croaked and died.

KING AND HERO-WORSHIP; ITS PREVALENCE STRANGE.

Strange, that such folly, as lifts bloated man To eminence fit only for a god, Should ever drivel out of human lips,

Even in the cradled weakness of the world!
Still stranger much, that when at length mankind
Had reached the sinewy firmness of their youth,
And could discriminate and argue well

On subjects more mysterious, they were yet
Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear
And quake before the gods themselves had made :
But above measure strange, that neither proof
Of sad experience, nor examples set

By some,
whose patriot virtue has prevailed,
Can even now, when they are grown mature
In wisdom, and with philosophic deeds
Familiar, serve to emancipate the rest!

REVERENCE FOR ANTIQUITY A SNARE. — IRRATIONAL MON-
STROUSNESS OF SLAVERY.

Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet,
As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,
Should be a despot absolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will,
Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation given, or wrong sustained,
And force the beggarly last doit, by means
That his own humor dictates, from the clutch
Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A splendid opportunity to die?

FALSE LOYALTY.

Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees

In politic convention) put your trust

In the shadow of a bramble, and recline

In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch,
Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway,
Where find ye passive fortitude? Whence springs
Your self-denying zeal, that holds it good
To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang
His thorns with streamers of continual praise?

TRUE LOYALTY. THE KING OF ENGLAND. TREASON.

We too are friends to loyalty. We love The king, who loves the law, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them: him we serve Freely and with delight, who leaves us free; But, recollecting still that he is man, We trust him not too far. King though he be, And king in England too, he may be weak And vain enough to be ambitious still; May exercise amiss his proper powers,

Or covet more than freemen choose to grant :
Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours,
To administer, to guard, to adorn, the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his,
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his slaves.

LOYALTY AND SERVILITY CONTRASTED.

man,

Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love
Of kings, between your loyalty and ours.
We love the the paltry pageant you :
We the chief patron of the commonwealth,
You the regardless author of its woes :
We, for the sake of liberty, a king;

You chains of bondage for a tyrant's sake.
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason, is judicious, manly, free;
Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot that treads it in the dust.
Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish,
I would not be a king to be beloved
Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise,
Where love is mere attachment to the throne,
Not to the man who fills it as he ought.

TRUE FREEDOM.-STRUGGLES FOR LIBERTY.

Whose freedom is by sufferance, and at will
Of a superior, he is never free.
Who lives, and is not weary of a life
Exposed to manacles, deserves them well.

The state that strives for liberty, though foiled,
And forced to abandon what she bravely sought,
Deserves at least applause for her attempt,
And pity for her loss. But that's a cause
Not often unsuccessful power usurped

Is weakness when opposed: conscious of wrong,
'Tis pusillanimous and prone to flight.

But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess

All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,
The scorn of danger, and united hearts :
The surest presage of the good they seek.1

THE BASTILE THE SHAME OF FRANCE. THE CAUSE OF
LIBERTY THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY.

Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more To France than all her losses and defeats, Old or of later date, by sea or land, Her house of bondage, worse than that of old Which God avenged on Pharaoh - the Bastile. Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts; Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age to age With music, such as suits their sovereign ears, The sighs and groans of miserable men! There's not an English heart that would not leap To hear that ye were fallen at last; to know

1 The author hopes that he shall not be censured for unnecessary warmth upon so interesting a subject. He is aware that it is become almost fashionable to stigmatize such sentiments as no better than empty declamation: but it is an ill symptom, and peculiar to modern times.

That even our enemies, so oft employed
In forging chains for us, themselves were free.
For he who values liberty confines
His zeal for her predominance within
No narrow bounds; her cause engages him
Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man.

THE PRISONER OF THE BASTILE.

There dwell the most forlorn of human kind, Immured though unaccused, condemned untried, Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. There, like the visionary emblem seen By him of Babylon, life stands a stump, And, filleted about with hoops of brass, Still lives, though all his pleasant boughs are gone, To count the hour-bell, and expect no change; And ever, as the sullen sound is heard, Still to reflect, that though a joyless note To him, whose moments all have one dull pace, Ten thousand rovers in the world at large Account it music; that it summons some To theatre, or jocund feast, or ball: The wearied hireling finds it a release From labor; and the lover, who has chid Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke Upon his heart-strings, trembling with delight; To fly for refuge from distracting thought To such amusements as ingenious woe Contrives hard-shifting, and without her tools; To read engraven on the mouldy walls, In staggering types, his predecessor's tale, A sad memorial, and subjoin his own; To turn purveyor to an over-gorged And bloated spider, till the pampered pest Is made familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend; To wear out time in numbering to and fro The studs, that thick emboss his iron door; Then downward and then upward, then aslant And then alternate; with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task Some relish; till, the sum exactly found In all directions, he begins again.

CAPTIVITY; ITS HORRORS.

O comfortless existence! hemmed around With woes, which who that suffers would not kneel And beg for exile, or the pangs of death? That man should thus encroach on fellow-man, Abridge him of his just and native rights, Eradicate him, tear him from his hold Upon the endearments of domestic life And social, nip his fruitfulness and use, And doom him for perhaps a heedless word To barrenness, and solitude, and tears, Moves indignation; makes the name of king (Of king whom such prerogative can please) As dreadful as the Manichean god,1 Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

1 The Manichean sect, named for their founder Manes, in the third century, adored a dual deity, made up of the principle of good and the principle of evil.