LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION. CORPSES are cold in the tomb, Stones on the pavement are dumb; And their mothers look pale-like the white shore Her sons are as stones in the way; The abortion, with which she travaileth, Then trample and dance, thou oppressor; 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, 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 Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, Those ungrateful drones who would Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, The seed ye sow, another reaps; Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap; Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, 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, Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; 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 For the negro-ship, whose freight Wrinkling their red gills the while Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, 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: |