one
  Is law for all, and of that barren pride
  In them who, by immunities unjust,
  Between the sovereign and the people stand, 505
  His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold
  Daily upon me, mixed with pity too
  And love; for where hope is, there love will be
  For the abject multitude.  And when we chanced
  One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl, 510
  Who crept along fitting her languid gait
  Unto a heifer’s motion, by a cord
  Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane
  Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands
  Was busy knitting in a heartless mood 515
  Of solitude, and at the sight my friend
  In agitation said, “’Tis against ‘that’
  That we are fighting,” I with him believed
  That a benignant spirit was abroad
  Which might not be withstood, that poverty 520
  Abject as this would in a little time
  Be found no more, that we should see the earth
  Unthwarted in her wish to recompense
  The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,
  All institutes for ever blotted out 525
  That legalised exclusion, empty pomp
  Abolished, sensual state and cruel power,
  Whether by edict of the one or few;
  And finally, as sum and crown of all,
  Should see the people having a strong hand 530
  In framing their own laws; whence better days
  To all mankind.  But, these things set apart,
  Was not this single confidence enough
  To animate the mind that ever turned
  A thought to human welfare?  That henceforth 535
  Captivity by mandate without law
  Should cease; and open accusation lead
  To sentence in the hearing of the world,
  And open punishment, if not the air
  Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man 540
  Dread nothing.  From this height I shall not stoop
  To humbler matter that detained us oft
  In thought or conversation, public acts,
  And public persons, and emotions wrought
  Within the breast, as ever-varying winds 545
  Of record or report swept over us;
  But I might here, instead, repeat a tale, [X]
  Told by my Patriot friend, of sad events,
  That prove to what low depth had struck the roots,
  How widely spread the boughs, of that old tree 550
  Which, as a deadly mischief, and a foul
  And black dishonour, France was weary of.

    Oh, happy time of youthful lovers, (thus
  The story might begin).  Oh, balmy time,
  In which a love-knot, on a lady’s brow, 555
  Is fairer than the fairest star in Heaven! [Y]
  So might—­and with that prelude did begin
  The record; and, in faithful verse, was given
  The doleful sequel.