Mouth all their wrongs, and all their rage obey;
     Till owned their guide and trusted with their power,
     He mocked their hopes in one decisive hour;
     Then, tired and yielding, led them to the chain,
     And quenched the spirit we provoked in vain.” 
     But thou, Supreme, by whose eternal hands
     Fair Liberty’s heroic empire stands;
     Whose thunders the rebellious deep control,
     And quell the triumphs of the traitor’s soul,
     O turn this dreadful omen far away! 
     On Freedom’s foes their own attempts repay;
     Relume her sacred fire so near suppressed,
     And fix her shrine in every Roman breast: 
     Though bold corruption boast around the land,
     “Let virtue, if she can, my baits withstand!”
     Though bolder now she urge the accursed claim,
     Gay with her trophies raised on Curio’s shame;
     Yet some there are who scorn her impious mirth,
     Who know what conscience and a heart are worth.

     ASPIRATIONS AFTER THE INFINITE

     From (Pleasures of the Imagination)

     Who that, from Alpine heights, his laboring eye
     Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey
     Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave
     Thro’ mountains, plains, thro’ empires black with shade,
     And continents of sand, will turn his gaze
     To mark the windings of a scanty rill
     That murmurs at his feet?  The high-born soul
     Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing
     Beneath its native quarry.  Tired of earth
     And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
     Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
     Rides on the volleyed lightning through the heavens;
     Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast,
     Sweeps the long tract of day.  Then high she soars
     The blue profound, and, hovering round the sun,
     Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
     Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway
     Bend the reluctant planets to absolve
     The fated rounds of Time.  Thence, far effused,
     She darts her swiftness up the long career
     Of devious comets; through its burning signs
     Exulting measures the perennial wheel
     Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars,
     Whose blended light, as with a milky zone,
     Invests the orient.  Now, amazed she views
     The empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold
     Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode;
     And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
     Has traveled the profound six thousand years,
     Nor yet arrived in sight of mortal things. 
     Even on the barriers of the world, untired
     She meditates the eternal depth below;
     Till half-recoiling, down the headlong steep
     She plunges; soon o’erwhelmed and swallowed up
     In that immense of being.  There her hopes