LINES

WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION.

CORPSES are cold in the tomb,

Stones on the pavement are dumb;
Abortions are dead in the womb,

And their mothers look pale-like the white shore
Of Albion, free no more.

Her sons are as stones in the way;
They are masses of senseless clay;
They are trodden and move not away;

The abortion, with which she travaileth,
Is Liberty-smitten to death.

Then trample and dance, thou oppressor;
For thy victim is no redressor;

Thou art sole lord and possessor

Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions—they pave Thy path to the grave.

Hearest thou the festival din

Of death and destruction, and sin,
And wealth, crying Havoc! within?

Tis the Bacchanal triumph, which makes truth dumb,

Thine Epithalamium.

Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!

Let fear, and disquiet, and strife

Spread thy couch in the chamber of life; Marry Ruin, thou tyrant! and God be thy guide To the bed of the bride.

SONG

TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND.

MEN of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
From the cradle to the grave,

Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat-nay, drink your blood!

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps ;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth,-let no impostor heap;
Weave robes,-let not the idle wear;
Forge arms,-in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck, another dwells.

Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre.

ENGLAND IN 1819.

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn-mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field;
An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless-a book sealed;
A Senate-Time's worst statute unrepealed,—
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

SIMILES

FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819.

As from an ancestral oak

Two empty ravens sound their clarion,

Yell by yell, and croak by croak,

When they scent the noonday smoke

Of fresh human carrion;

As two gibbering night-birds flit,

From their bowers of deadly hue, Through the night to frighten it, When the morn is in a fit,

And the stars are none or few;

As a shark and dog-fish wait
Under an Atlantic isle,

For the negro-ship, whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,

Wrinkling their red gills the while

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.

AN ODE

TO THE ASSERTORS OF LIBERTY.

ARISE, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they; Who said they were slain on the battle-day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;

Be the cold chains shaken

To the dust, where your kindred repose, repose: