Classic Poem

Delightful land — ah, now with general voice
Thy village sons and daughters may rejoice ...
For now on Gallia's plains the peasant knows
Those equal rights impartial Heaven bestows.
He now, by Freedom's ray illumined, taught
Some self-respect, some energy of thought,
Discerns the blessings that to all belong,
And lives to guard his humble shed from wrong.
Auspicious Liberty! in vain thy foes
Deride thy ardour, and thy force oppose;
In vain refuse to mark thy spreading light,
While, like the mole they hide their heads in night,
Or hope their eloquence with taper-ray
Can dim the blaze of philosophic day —
Those reasoners who pretend that each abuse,
Sanctioned by precedent, has some blest use!
Does then some chemic power to Time belong,
Extracting by some process right from wrong?
Must feudal governments for ever last
(Those gothic piles, the works of ages past) —
Nor may obtrusive Reason boldly scan,
Far less reform, the rude misshapen plan:
The winding labyrinths, the hostile towers
(Whence danger threatens, and where horror lowers),
The jealous drawbridge, and the moat profound,
The lonely dungeon in the caverned ground,
The sullen dome above those central caves
Where lives one despot, and a host of slaves?
Ah, Freedom, on this renovated shore
That fabric frights the moral world no more!
Shook to its basis by thy powerful spell,
Its triple walls in massy fragments fell;
While, rising from the hideous wreck, appears
The temple thy firm arm sublimely rears —
Of fair proportions, and of simple grace,
A mansion worthy of the human race.
For me, the witness of those scenes, whose birth
Forms a new era in the storied earth,
Oft, while with glowing breast those scenes I view,
They lead, ah friend beloved, my thoughts to you!
Ah, still each fine emotion they impart
With your idea mingles in my heart —
You, whose warm bosom, whose expanded mind,
Have shared this glorious triumph of mankind —
You, whom I oft have heard, with generous zeal,
With all that truth can urge or pity feel,
Refute the pompous argument, that tried
The common cause of millions to deride ...