Classic Poem

ON HIS POEM OF LEONIDAS

Go on, my Friend! the noble task pursue,
And think thy genius is thy country's due:
To vulgar wits inferiour themes belong,
But Liberty and Virtue claim thy song.
Yet cease to hope, tho' grac'd with ev'ry charm,
The patriot verse will cold Britannia warm;
Vainly thou striv'st our languid hearts to raise
By great examples drawn from better days:
No longer we to Sparta's fame aspire,
What Sparta scorn'd instructed to admire,
Nurs'd in the love of wealth, and form'd to bend
Our narrow thoughts to that inglorious end.
No gen'rous purpose can enlarge the mind,
No social care, no labour for mankind,
Where mean self-int'rest ev'ry passion guides,
In camps commands, in cabinets presides,
Where Luxury consumes the guilty store,
And bids the villain be a slave for more.
Hence wretched Nation! all thy woes arise,
Avow'd corruption, licens'd perjuries,
Eternal taxes, treaties for a day,
Servants that rule, and senates that obey.
O People, far unlike the Grecian race,
That deems a virtuous poverty disgrace,
That suffers publick wrongs and publick shame,
In council insolent, in action tame!
Say, what is now th' ambition of the great?
Is it to raise their country's sinking state,
Her load of debt to ease by frugal care,
Her trade to guard, her harrass'd poor to spare?
Is it like honest Somers to inspire
The love of laws and Freedom's sacred fire?
Is it like wise Godolphin to sustain
The balanc'd world, and boundless pow'r restrain?
Or is the mighty aim of all their toil
Only to aid the wreck and share the spoil?
On each relation, friend, dependant, pour
With partial wantonness the golden show'r,
And senc'd by strong corruption to despise
An injur'd nation's unavailing cries?
Rouse, Britons! rouse: if sense of shame be weak
Let the loud voice of threat'ning Danger speak.
Lo! France, as Persia once, o'er ev'ry land
Prepares to stretch her all-oppressing hand.
Shall England sit regardless and sedate,
A calm spectatress of the gen'ral fate,
Or call forth all her virtue, and oppose
Like valiant Greece her own and Europe's foes?
O let us seize the moment in our pow'r;
Our follies now have reach'd the fatal hour:
No later term the angry gods ordain;
This crisis lost we shall be wise in vain.
And thou, great Poet! in whose nervous lines
The native majesty of Freedom shines,
Accept this friendly praise, and let me prove
My heart not wholly void of publick love;
Tho' not like thee I strike the sounding string
To notes which Sparta might have deign'd to sing,
But idly sporting in the secret shade
With tender trifles sooth some artless maid.