Classic Poem

Warm'd by a kindred sense of England's woes,
A Caledonian muse, with pity glows:
From ruin'd hopes a saving moral takes,
And paints th' unhappy , for the happy's sake:
Scotland's new taste our meaning scene supplies,
And a first flight , on tragic pinions , tries,
Brave and long-fam'd in arms, her warlike race
Have trod the fields of death with dauntless grace!
Fierce and untir'd in blood , have nobly dar'd,
And every toil and every danger shar'd:
Now, fir'd by rising arts ; she grasps the Bays ,
And her old cant , like falling stocks , decays:
Her long-lost MUSE new-lights her antient flame ,
And our scene blazes with recover'd fame .

 We teach to-night—ah! would 'twere not too late ,
How rash-believing avarice galls a state!
What private sorrows , from wild hazards flow!
And, how false hope produces certain woe .

  THIS , the most natural business of the stage ,
Will all your generous hearts, 'tis hop'd, engage:
None can their pity for those woes conceal,
Which most, who hear , perhaps, too deeply, feel .
The rants of ruin'd kings , of mighty name ,
For pompous misery —small compassion claim:
Empires o'erturn'd, and heroes , held in chains ,
Alarm the mind, but give the heart no pains .
To ills remote from our domestic fears,
We lend our wonder , but with-hold our tears .

 Not so, when, from such passion, as our own ,
Some favourite folly's dreadful fate is shown;
There the soul bleeds for what it feels, within ,
And conscious pity shakes, at suffering sin .

 O! give attention to the moving scene:
And shun, what yet may be, by what has been.