King C HARLES'S soul took flight
This day from his cabal:
I am no Jacobite,
My date is radical.

Our place is in the van,
We move before the facts;
The blood of Milbourne ran
For antecedent acts.

I know not if his name
And type were in my dam,
Our phantoms seem the same
And as he was, I am:

Stern to perceive and say,
Though not officially,
And quit the humble way
From vaulting sympathy;

An English partisan
To swell our kingdom big,
My christening Georgean
And all my color Whig;

Nor yet from landed dower
To reason and to speak,
Impetuous for power
To help the faithful weak;

My quill drawn from the goose
I hissed the cautious sense,
And wrote to be of use,
And for my audience.

Events were all my Muse,
They warped my wish more pure
And dried the fresher dews
Of morning literature.

Imperfect everywhere
As is the cannon cast,
Small time did I forbear
To touch it into blast,

Nor loaded on my heart
That hungered to be free,
The convoluted art,
The printer's factory.

Strong manhood justly wrecked
I took my arms between,
Nor harmed the eagle pecked
By tits of concourse mean;

Nor would with herds unite,—
The small peccary band:
I was the last Free Knight,
Goetz of the Iron Hand.

To this withdrawing pride
From daws and choughs and rooks,
I owe the countryside
And company of books,

Preferring to be blind
And silent lines pursue,
As Milton's lonely mind
The light of Eden knew.

A few strong friendships kind
My castles did maintain,—
The conquests of the mind
To have its causes gain.

How blessed to have seen
And known wide Freedom's day!
Whose generations lean
The forests hid away,

Since Indians lost among
Beneath the cypress firs,
My fathers learned their tongue
And were Interpreters.

Now almost lost again
Amidst a mighty race,
Amidst the teeming men,
My art is like the chase;

My bow is well outclass'd,
My arrows shoot to err,
But to a forest Past
I was Interpreter.