For Freedom's ear the maiden strikes her notes,
And steps in beauty where his banner floats.
Still to the glowing West she moves to sing,
Where Rome's exploring bird ne'er bathed his wing,
Till, snow-crowned hills and sun-kissed valleys past,
Here, Gallia's offspring hails her sight at last!
Child of Renown! before whose infant hand,
The wreathed invader withered from the land,
Thy Deed shall freshen on the penman's page,
The shame and glory of a wondering age,
And still reviving in the poet's lay,
Thrill the young warrior of some distant day.
In arms supreme, come forth, to greatness dear,
Protect the pilgrim, and the patriot cheer;
Thy slumbering shield with olive garlands dressed,
Rise! crowned by Science, Monarch of the West!
And thou, inspiring Dome! to greet thy reign,
The Muse, exulting, pours her prophet strain.
For thee the bard shall draw, from every clime,
The swelling triumph, and the curtained crime;
Death's moss-grown gates unbar, the sleepers wake,
To charm the good, and bid the guilty quake;
Love's moonlight scene, War's crimson deed unfold,
And all the legends of the days of old.
Wisdom and Wit thy guardian priests shall stand,
And Taste refine, as Truth reforms the land;
Rapture and Grief their rose and cypress twine,
And every heart go mended from thy shrine.
Here pranking youth shall learn, in Pleasure's school,
To hate the folly, and to shun the fool;
Vice, saddening here, shall live for purer days,
And Goodness sanction, while her children gaze;
Learning shall close his page for thy white hour,
And love-lipped Beauty leave her evening bower,
With soul all gladness, and with eye all light,
To hail thy altar, and to bless thy rite.
Here, too, O kindling thought! when Time shall shed
His holy incense o'er the mighty dead,
For thee the Sage shall burst his sacred grave,
To guide in death the realm he lived to save;
For thee the Chief revive the battle's roar,
And wake the sons, whose sires he led before.
Thus shalt thou triumph, decked with every grace,
To charm another and another race;
And, one long day of quenchless splendour past,
Blessed by thy beamy god, in glory go at last!
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the tragick Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love, we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its wo.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws :
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys,-
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
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