Courage, ungraced by these, affronts the skies,

Is but the fire without the sacrifice.

The stream, that feeds the well-spring of the heart,
Not more invigorates life's noblest part,

Than virtue quickens with a warmth divine
The powers, that sin has brought to a decline.
A. The inestimable estimate of Brown
Rose like a paper kite, and charmed the town;
But measures, planned and executed well,

Shifted the wind that raised it, and it fell.

He trod the very self-same ground you tread,
And victory refuted all he said.

B. And yet his judgment was not framed amiss; Its error, if it erred, was merely this

He thought the dying hour already come,
And a complete recovery struck him dumb.
But that effeminacy, folly, lust,

Enervate and enfeeble, and needs must,
And that a nation shamefully debased,

Will be despised and trampled on at last,

Unless sweet penitence her powers renew,

Is truth, if history itself be true.

There is a time, and justice marks the date,

For long-forbearing clemency to wait;

That hour elapsed, the incurable revolt

Is punished, and down comes the thunder-bolt.
If mercy then
put by the threatening blow,
Must she perform the same kind office now?
May she! and, if offended heaven be still
Accessible, and prayer prevail, she will.
'Tis not however insolence and noise,
The tempest of tumultuary joys,

Nor is it yet despondence and dismay
Will win her visits or engage her stay;
Prayer only, and the penitential tear,
Can call her smiling down, and fix her here.

But when a country (one that I could name)
In prostitution sinks the sense of shame;
When infamous venality, grown bold,

Writes on his bosom, to be let or sold;

When perjury, that heaven-defying vice,
Sells oaths by tale, and at the lowest price,
Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made,
To turn a penny in the way of trade;

When avarice starves (and never hides his face) Two or three millions of the human race,

And not a tongue inquires, how, where, or when,
Tho' conscience will have twinges now and then;
When profanation of the sacred cause

In all its parts, times, ministry, and laws,
Bespeaks a land, once christian, fallen, and lost,
In all, that wars against that title most,
What follows next let cities of great name,

And regions long since desolate proclaim.
Nineveh, Babylon, and ancient Rome,

Speak to the present times, and times to come;
They cry aloud in every careless ear,

Stop, while you may; suspend your mad career;

O learn from our example and our fate,

Learn wisdom and repentance ere too late,

Not only vice disposes and prepares

The mind, that slumbers sweetly in her snares, To stoop to tyranny's usurped command,

And bend her polished neck beneath his hand,
(A dire effect, by one of nature's laws

Unchangeably connected with its cause);
But Providence himself will intervene

To throw this dark displeasure over the scene.
All are his instruments; each form of war,
What burns at home, or threatens from afar,
Nature in arms, her elements at strife,

The storms, that overset the joys of life,

Are but his rods to scourge a guilty land,

And waste it at the bidding of his hand.
He gives the word, and mutiny soon roars
In all her gates, and shakes her distant shores;
The standards of all nations are unfurled;

She has one foe, and that one foe the world.
And, if he doom that people with a frown,
And mark them with a seal of wrath pressed down,

.

Obduracy takes place; callous and tough,

The reprobated race grows judgment proof:
Earth shakes beneath them, and heaven roars above;
But nothing scares them from the course they love:
To the lascivious pipe and wanton song,
That charm down fear, they frolic it along,
With' mad rapidity and unconcern,

Down to the gulph, from which is no return. '
They trust in navies, and their navies fail-
God's curse can cast away ten thousand sail!

They trust in armies, and their courage dies;

In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;

But all they trust in withers as it must,

When He commands, in whom they place no trust.
Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast
A long despised, but now victorious, host;
Tyranny sends the chain, that must abridge
The noble sweep of all their privilege;

Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock:

Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock.