The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore

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But MARY, 'mong these bold essays
Of Genius and of Art to raise
A semblance of those weeping eyes--
A vision worthy of the sphere
Thy faith has earned thee in the skies,
And in the hearts of all men here,--
None e'er hath matched, in grief or grace,
CANOVA'S day-dream of thy face,
In those bright sculptured forms, more bright
With true expression's breathing light,
Than ever yet beneath the stroke
Of chisel into life awoke.
The one,[1] portraying what thou wert
In thy first grief,--while yet the flower
Of those young beauties was unhurt
By sorrow's slow, consuming power;
And mingling earth's seductive grace
With heaven's subliming thoughts so well,
We doubt, while gazing, in _which_ place
Such beauty was most formed to dwell!--
The other, as thou look'dst, when years
Of fasting, penitence and tears
Had worn thy frame;--and ne'er did Art
With half such speaking power express
The ruin which a breaking heart
Spreads by degrees o'er loveliness.
Those wasting arms, that keep the trace,
Even still, of all their youthful grace,
That loosened hair of which thy brow
Was once so proud,--neglected now!--
Those features even in fading worth
The freshest bloom to others given,
And those sunk eyes now lost to earth
But to the last still full of heaven!

Wonderful artist! praise, like mine--
Tho' springing from a soul that feels
Deep worship of those works divine
Where Genius all his light reveals--
How weak 'tis to the words that came
From him, thy peer in art and fame,[2]
Whom I have known, by day, by night,
Hang o'er thy marble with delight;
And while his lingering hand would steal
O'er every grace the taper's rays[3]
Give thee with all the generous zeal
Such master spirits only feel,
That best of fame, a rival's prize!

[1] This statue is one of the last works of Canova, and was not yet in
marble when I left Rome. The other, which seems to prove, in contradiction
to very high authority, that expression of the intensest kind is fully
within the sphere of sculpture, was executed many years ago, and is in the
possession of the Count Somariva at Paris.

[2] Chantrey.

[3] Canova always shows his fine statue, the Venere Vincitrice, by the
light of a small candle.

EXTRACT XVI.

Les Charmettes.

_A Visit to the house where Rousseau lived with Madame de Warrens.--
Their Menage.--Its Grossness.--Claude Anet.--Reverence with which the spot
is now visited.--Absurdity of this blind Devotion to Fame.--Feelings
excited by the Beauty and Seclusion of the Scene. Disturbed by its
Associations with Rousseau's History.--Impostures of Men of Genius.--Their
Power of mimicking all the best Feelings, Love, Independence, etc_.

Strange power of Genius, that can throw
Round all that's vicious, weak, and low,
Such magic lights, such rainbows dyes
As dazzle even the steadiest eyes.

* * * * *

'Tis worse than weak--'tis wrong, 'tis shame,
This mean prostration before Fame;
This casting down beneath the car
Of Idols, whatsoe'er they are,
Life's purest, holiest decencies,
To be careered o'er as they please.
No--give triumphant Genius all
For which his loftiest wish can call:
If he be worshipt, let it be
For attributes, his noblest, first;
Not with that base idolatry
Which sanctifies his last and worst.

I may be cold;--may want that glow
Of high romance which bards should know;
That holy homage which is felt
In treading where the great have dwelt;
This reverence, whatsoe'er it be,
I fear, I feel, I have it _not_:--
For here at this still hour, to me
The charms of this delightful spot,
Its calm seclusion from the throng,
From all the heart would fain forget,
This narrow valley and the song
Of its small murmuring rivulet,
The flitting to and fro of birds,
Tranquil and tame as they were once
In Eden ere the startling words
Of man disturbed their orisons,
Those little, shadowy paths that wind
Up the hillside, with fruit-trees lined
And lighted only by the breaks
The gay wind in the foliage makes,
Or vistas here and there that ope
Thro' weeping willows, like the snatches
Of far-off scenes of light, which Hope
Even tho' the shade of sadness catches!--
All this, which--could I once but lose
The memory of those vulgar ties
Whose grossness all the heavenliest hues
Of Genius can no more disguise
Than the sun's beams can do away
The filth of fens o'er which they play--
This scene which would have filled my heart
With thoughts of all that happiest is;--
Of Love where self hath only part,
As echoing back another's bliss;
Of solitude secure and sweet.
Beneath whose shade the Virtues meet.
Which while it shelters never chills
Our sympathies with human woe,
But keeps them like sequestered rills
Purer and fresher in their flow;
Of happy days that share their beams
'Twixt quiet mirth and wise employ;
Of tranquil nights that give in dreams
The moonlight of the morning's joy!--
All this my heart could dwell on here,
But for those gross mementoes near;
Those sullying truths that cross the track
Of each sweet thought and drive them back
Full into all the mire and strife
And vanities of that man's life,
Who more than all that e'er have glowed
With fancy's flame (and it was _his_,
In fullest warmth and radiance) showed
What an impostor Genius is;
How with that strong, mimetic art
Which forms its life and soul, it takes
All shapes of thought, all hues of heart,
Nor feels itself one throb it wakes;
How like a gem its light may smile
O'er the dark path by mortals trod,
Itself as mean a worm the while
As crawls at midnight o'er the sod;
What gentle words and thoughts may fall
From its false lip, what zeal to bless,
While home, friends, kindred, country, all,
Lie waste beneath its selfishness;
How with the pencil hardly dry
From coloring up such scenes of love
And beauty as make young hearts sigh
And dream and think thro' heaven they rove,
They who can thus describe and move,
The very workers of these charms,
Nor seek nor know a joy above
Some Maman's or Theresa's arms!

How all in short that makes the boast
Of their false tongues they want the most;
And while with freedom on their lips,
Sounding their timbrels, to set free
This bright world, laboring in the eclipse
Of priestcraft and of slavery,--
They may themselves be slaves as low
As ever Lord or Patron made
To blossom in his smile or grow
Like stunted brushwood in his shade.
Out on the craft!--I'd rather be
One of those hinds that round me tread,
With just enough of sense to see
The noonday sun that's o'er his head,
Than thus with high-built genius curst,
That hath no heart for its foundation,
Be all at once that's brightest, worst,
Sublimest, meanest in creation!

CORRUPTION,

AND

INTOLERANCE.

TWO POEMS.

ADDRESSED TO AN ENGLISHMAN BY AN IRISHMAN.

PREFACE.

The practice which has been lately introduced into literature, of writing
very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a rather happy
invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to
account; and as horses too heavy for the saddle may yet serve well enough
to draw lumber, so Poems of this kind make excellent beasts of burden and
will bear notes though they may not bear reading. Besides, the comments in
such cases are so little under the necessity of paying any servile
deference to the text, that they may even adopt that Socratic, "_quod
supra nos nihil ad nos."_

In the first of the two following Poems, I have ventured to speak of the
Revolution of 1688, in language which has sometimes been employed by Tory
writers and which is therefore neither very new nor popular. But however
an Englishman might be reproached with ingratitude for depreciating the
merits and results of a measure which he is taught to regard as the source
of his liberties--however ungrateful it might appear in Alderman Birch to
question for a moment the purity of that glorious era to which he is
indebted for the seasoning of so many orations--yet an Irishman who has
none of these obligations to acknowledge, to whose country the Revolution
brought nothing but injury and insult, and who recollects that the book of
Molyneux was burned by order of William's Whig Parliament for daring to
extend to unfortunate Ireland those principles on which the Revolution was
professedly founded--an Irishman _may_ be allowed to criticise freely the
measures of that period without exposing himself either to the imputation
of ingratitude or to the suspicion of being influenced by any Popish
remains of Jacobitism. No nation, it is true, was ever blessed with a more
golden opportunity of establishing and securing its liberties for ever
than the conjuncture of Eighty-eight presented to the people of Great
Britain. But the disgraceful reigns of Charles and James had weakened and
degraded the national character. The bold notions of popular right which
had arisen out of the struggles between Charles the First and his
Parliament were gradually supplanted by those slavish doctrines for which
Lord Hawkesbury eulogizes the churchmen of that period, and as the
Reformation had happened too soon for the purity of religion, so the
Revolution came too late for the spirit of liberty. Its advantages
accordingly were for the most part specious and transitory, while the
evils which it entailed are still felt and still increasing. By rendering
unnecessary the frequent exercise of Prerogative,--that unwieldy power
which cannot move a step without alarm,--it diminished the only
interference of the Crown, which is singly and independently exposed
before the people, and whose abuses therefore are obvious to their senses
and capabilities. Like the myrtle over a celebrated statue in Minerva's
temple at Athens, it skilfully veiled from the public eye the only
obtrusive feature of royalty. At the same time, however, that the
Revolution abridged this unpopular attribute, it amply compensated by the
substitution of a new power, as much more potent in its effect as it is
more secret in its operations. In the disposal of an immense revenue and
the extensive patronage annexed to it, the first foundations of this power
of the Crown were laid; the innovation of a standing army at once
increased and strengthened it, and the few slight barriers which the Act
of Settlement opposed to its progress have all been gradually removed
during the Whiggish reigns that succeeded; till at length this spirit of
influence has become the vital principle of the state,--an agency, subtle
and unseen, which pervades every part of the Constitution, lurks under all
its forms and regulates all its movements, and, like the invisible sylph
or grace which presides over the motions of beauty,

"_illam, quicquid agit, quoquo westigia flectit,
componit furlim subsequiturque."_

The cause of Liberty and the Revolution are so habitually associated in
the minds of Englishmen that probably in objecting to the latter I may be
thought hostile or indifferent to the former. But assuredly nothing could
be more unjust than such a suspicion. The very object indeed which my
humble animadversions would attain is that in the crisis to which I think
England is now hastening, and between which and foreign subjugation she
may soon be compelled to choose, the errors and omissions of 1688 should
be remedied; and, as it was then her fate to experience a Revolution
without Reform, so she may now endeavor to accomplish a Reform without
Revolution.

In speaking of the parties which have so long agitated England, it will be
observed that I lean as little to the Whigs as to their adversaries. Both
factions have been equally cruel to Ireland and perhaps equally insincere
in their efforts for the liberties of England. There is one name indeed
connected with Whiggism, of which I can never think but with veneration
and tenderness. As justly, however, might the light of the sun be claimed
by any particular nation as the sanction of that name be monopolized by
any party whatsoever. Mr. Fox belonged to mankind and they have lost in
him their ablest friend.

With respect to the few lines upon Intolerance, which I have subjoined,
they are but the imperfect beginning of a long series of Essays with which
I here menace my readers upon the same important subject. I shall look to
no higher merit in the task than that of giving a new form to claims and
remonstrances which have often been much more eloquently urged and which
would long ere now have produced their effect, but that the minds of some
of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the
more, the stronger light is shed upon them.

CORRUPTION,

AN EPISTLE.

Boast on, my friend--tho' stript of all beside,
Thy struggling nation still retains her pride:
That pride which once in genuine glory woke
When Marlborough fought and brilliant St. John spoke;
That pride which still, by time and shame unstung,
Outlives even Whitelocke's sword and Hawkesbury's tongue!
Boast on, my friend, while in this humbled isle[1]
Where Honor mourns and Freedom fears to smile,
Where the bright light of England's fame is known
But by the shadow o'er our fortunes thrown;
Where, doomed ourselves to naught but wrongs and slights,[2]
We hear you boast of Britain's glorious rights,
As wretched slaves that under hatches lie
Hear those on deck extol the sun and sky!
Boast on, while wandering thro' my native haunts,
I coldly listen to thy patriot vaunts;
And feel, tho' close our wedded countries twine,
More sorrow for my own than pride from thine.

Yet pause a moment--and if truths severe
Can find an inlet to that courtly ear,
Which hears no news but Ward's gazetted lies,
And loves no politics in rhyme but Pye's,--
If aught can please thee but the good old saws
Of "Church and State," and "William's matchless laws,"
And "Acts and Rights of glorious Eighty-eight,"--
Things which tho' now a century out of date
Still serve to ballast with convenient words,
A few crank arguments for speeching lords,--
Turn while I tell how England's freedom found,
Where most she lookt for life, her deadliest wound;
How brave she struggled while her foe was seen,
How faint since Influence lent that foe a screen;
How strong o'er James and Popery she prevailed,
How weakly fell when Whigs and gold assailed.

While kings were poor and all those schemes unknown
Which drain the people to enrich the throne;
Ere yet a yielding Commons had supplied
Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied,
Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep
With bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep,
Frankly avowed his bold enslaving plan
And claimed a right from God to trample man!
But Luther's schism had too much roused mankind
For Hampden's truths to linger long behind;
Nor then, when king-like popes had fallen so low,
Could pope-like kings escape the levelling blow.[3]
That ponderous sceptre (in whose place we bow
To the light talisman of influence now),
Too gross, too visible to work the spell
Which modern power performs, in fragments fell:
In fragments lay, till, patched and painted o'er
With fleurs-de-lis, it shone and scourged once more.

'Twas then, my friend, thy kneeling nation quaft
Long, long and deep, the churchman's opiate draught
Of passive, prone obedience--then took flight
All sense of man's true dignity and right;
And Britons slept so sluggish in their chain
That Freedom's watch-voice called almost in vain.
Oh England! England! what a chance was thine,
When the last tyrant of that ill-starred line
Fled from his sullied crown and left thee free
To found thy own eternal liberty!
How nobly high in that propitious hour
Might patriot hands have raised the triple tower[4]
Of British freedom on a rock divine
Which neither force could storm nor treachery mine!
But no--the luminous, the lofty plan,
Like mighty Babel, seemed too bold for man;
The curse of jarring tongues again was given
To thwart a work which raised men nearer heaven.
While Tories marred what Whigs had scarce begun,
While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done.
The hour was lost and William with a smile
Saw Freedom weeping o'er the unfinisht pile!

Hence all the ills you suffer,--hence remain
Such galling fragments of that feudal chain[5]
Whose links, around you by the Norman flung,
Tho' loosed and broke so often, still have clung.
Hence sly Prerogative like Jove of old
Has turned his thunder into showers of gold,
Whose silent courtship wins securer joys,
Taints by degrees, and ruins without noise.
While parliaments, no more those sacred things
Which make and rule the destiny of kings.
Like loaded dice by ministers are thrown,
And each new set of sharpers cog their own.
Hence the rich oil that from the Treasury steals
Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels,
Giving the old machine such pliant play[6]
That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,
While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,
So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far;
And the duped people, hourly doomed to pay
The sums that bribe their liberties away,[7]--
Like a young eagle who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,--
See their own feathers pluckt, to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart!
But soft! methinks I hear thee proudly say,
"What! shall I listen to the impious lay
"That dares with Tory license to profane
"The bright bequests of William's glorious reign?
"Shall the great wisdom of our patriot sires,
"Whom Hawkesbury quotes and savory Birch admires,
"Be slandered thus? shall honest Steele agree
"With virtuous Rose to call us pure and free,
"Yet fail to prove it? Shall our patent pair
"Of wise state-poets waste their words in air,
"And Pye unheeded breathe his prosperous strain,
"And Canning _take the people's sense_ in vain?"

The people!--ah! that Freedom's form should stay
Where Freedom's spirit long hath past away!
That a false smile should play around the dead
And flush the features when the soul hath fled![8]
When Rome had lost her virtue with her rights,
When her foul tyrant sat on Capreae's heights,[9]
Amid his ruffian spies and doomed to death
Each noble name they blasted with their breath,--
Even then, (in mockery of that golden time,
When the Republic rose revered, sublime,
And her proud sons, diffused from zone to zone,
Gave kings to every nation but their own,)
Even then the senate and the tribunes stood,
Insulting marks, to show how high the flood
Of Freedom flowed, in glory's bygone day,
And how it ebbed,--for ever ebbed away![10]

Look but around--tho' yet a tyrant's sword
Nor haunts our sleep nor glitters o'er our board,
Tho' blood be better drawn, by modern quacks,
With Treasury leeches than with sword or axe;
Yet say, could even a prostrate tribune's power
Or a mock senate in Rome's servile hour
Insult so much the claims, the rights of man,
As doth that fettered mob, that free divan,
Of noble tools and honorable knaves,
Of pensioned patriots and privileged slaves;--
That party-colored mass which naught can warm
But rank corruption's heat--whose quickened swarm
Spread their light wings in Bribery's golden sky,
Buzz for a period, lay their eggs and die;--
That greedy vampire which from Freedom's tomb
Comes forth with all the mimicry of bloom
Upon its lifeless cheek and sucks and drains
A people's blood to feel its putrid veins!

Thou start'st, my friend, at picture drawn so dark--
"Is there no light?"--thou ask'st--"no lingering spark
"Of ancient fire to warm us? Lives there none,
"To act a Marvell's part?"[11]--alas! not one.
_To_ place and power all public spirit tends,
_In_ place and power all public spirit ends;
Like hardy plants that love the air and sky,
When _out_, 'twill thrive--but taken _in_, 'twill die!

Not bolder truths of sacred Freedom hung
From Sidney's pen or burned on Fox's tongue,
Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,
While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;
While debts at home excite their care for those
Which, dire to tell, their much-loved country owes,
And loud and upright, till their prize be known,
They thwart the King's supplies to raise their own.
But bees on flowers alighting cease their hum--
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.
And, tho' most base is he who, 'neath the shade
Of Freedom's ensign plies corruption's trade,
And makes the sacred flag he dares to show
His passport to the market of her foe,
Yet, yet, I own, so venerably dear
Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear,
That I enjoy them, tho' by traitors sung,
And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue.
Nay, when the constitution has expired,
I'll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired
To chant old "_Habeas Corpus_" by its side,
And ask in purchased ditties why it died?

See yon smooth lord whom nature's plastic pains
Would seem to've fashioned for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourisht, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of kings;--[12]
Even _he_, forsooth, (oh fraud, of all the worst!)
Dared to assume the patriot's name at first--
Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils when _first_ raised take pleasing shapes.
But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet
For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit
And withering insult--for the Union thrown
Into thy bitter cup when that alone
Of slavery's draught was wanting[13]--if for this
Revenge be sweet, thou _hast_ that daemon's bliss;
For sure 'tis more than hell's revenge to fee
That England trusts the men who've ruined thee:--
That in these awful days when every hour
Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,
When proud Napoleon like the enchanted shield
Whose light compelled each wondering foe to yield,
With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free
And dazzles Europe into slavery,--
That in this hour when patriot zeal should guide,
When Mind should rule and--Fox should _not_ have died,
All that devoted England can oppose
To enemies made fiends and friends made foes,
Is the rank refuse, the despised remains
Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains
Drove Ireland first to turn with harlot glance
Towards other shores and woo the embrace of France;--
Those hacked and tainted tools, so foully fit
For the grand artisan of mischief, Pitt,
So useless ever but in vile employ,
So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy--
Such are the men that guard thy threatened shore,
Oh England! sinking England! boast no more.

[1] England began very early to feel the effects of cruelty towards her
dependencies. "The severity of her government [says Macpherson]
contributed more to deprive her of the continental dominions of the family
of the Plantagenet than the arms of France."--See his _History_, vol.
i.

[2] "By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691[says
Burke], the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure, too, of the
first races of the English, was completely accomplished. The new English
interested was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human
affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of
oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the
effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the
victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke."
Yet this is the era to which the wise Common Council of Dublin refer us
for "invaluable blessings," etc.

[3] The drivelling correspondence between James I and his "dog Steenie"
(the Duke of Buckingham), which we find among the Hardwicke Papers,
sufficiently shows, if we wanted any such illustration, into what doting,
idiotic brains the plan at arbitrary power may enter.

[4] Tacitus has expressed his opinion, in a passage very frequently
quoted, that such a distribution of power as the theory of the British
constitution exhibits is merely a subject of bright speculation, "a system
more easily praised than practised, and which, even could it happen to
exist, would certainly not prove permanent;" and, in truth, a review of
England's annals would dispose us to agree with the great historian's
remark. For we find that at no period whatever has this balance of the
three estates existed; that the nobles predominated till the policy of
Henry VII, and his successor reduced their weight by breaking up the
feudal system of property; that the power of the Crown became then supreme
and absolute, till the bold encroachments of the Commons subverted the
fabric altogether; that the alternate ascendency of prerogative and
privilege distracted the period which followed the Restoration; and that
lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court-
influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne, which every
succeeding year increases. So that the vaunted British constitution has
never perhaps existed but in mere theory.

[5] The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the
12th of Charles II, which abolished the tenure of knight's service _in
capite_, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon
property, to the boasted provisions of Magna Charta itself. Yet even in
this act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit which has
contrived to weaken every effort of the English nation towards liberty.