Elate the simple villager shall see,
Contentment’s inoffensive revelry;
Then, once again shall o’er the foaming tide,
The swelling sail of commerce fearless ride,
With bounteous hand shall plenty grace our shore,
And cheerless want’s complaint be known no more. 
Then hear a nation’s pray’r, lov’d goddess, hear! 
Wipe the wan cheek, deep-lav’d by many a tear;
Nature, the triumph foul of horror o’er,
Shall raise her frame to scenes of blood no more;
Pale recollection shall recall her woes,
Again shall paint her agonizing throes: 
These, o’er the earth thine empire firm shall raise,
Unaw’d by war’s destructive storms, the bliss of future
     days.

SONNET

TO CHARITY.

Oh! best belov’d of heaven, on earth bestow’d
  To raise the pilgrim, sunk with ghastly fears,
  To cool his burning wounds, to wipe his tears,
And strew with amaranths his thorny road. 
Alas! how long has superstition hurl’d
  Thine altars down, thine attributes revil’d,
  The hearts of men with witchcrafts foul beguil’d,
And spread his empire o’er the vassal world? 
But truth returns! she spreads resistless day;
  And mark, the monster’s cloud-wrapt fabric falls—­
  He shrinks—­he trembles ’mid his inmost halls,
And all his damn’d illusions melt away! 
The charm dissolv’d—­immortal, fair, and free,
Thy holy fanes shall rise, celestial Charity!

PROLOGUE,

TO PUBLIC READINGS AT A YOUNG GENTLEMEN’S ACADEMY.

Once more we venture here, to prove our worth,
And ask indulgence kind, to tempt us forth: 
Seek not perfection from our essays green,
That, in man’s noblest works, has never been,
Nor is, nor e’er will be; a work exempt
From fault to form, as well might man attempt
T’explore the vast infinity of space,
Or fix mechanic boundaries to grace. 
Hard is the finish’d Speaker’s task; what then
Must be our danger, to pursue the pen
Of the ’rapt Bard, through all his varied turns,
Where joy extatic smiles, or sorrow mourns? 
Where Richard’s soul, red in the murtherous lave,
Shrinks from the night-yawn’d tenants of the grave,
While coward conscience still affrights his eye,
Still groans the dagger’d sound, “despair and die.” 
And hapless Juliet’s unextinguish’d flame,
Gives to the tomb she mock’d, her beauteous frame;
Yet diff’rent far, where Claudio sees return’d
To life, and love, the maid too rashly spurn’d;
Or Falstaff, in his sympathetic scroll,
Forth to the Wives of Windsor pours his soul. 
Again, forsaking mirth’s fantastic rites,
The Muse to follow, through her nobler flights,
Where Milton paints angelic hosts in arms,
And Heaven’s wide champaign rings with dire alarms,
Till ’vengeful justice wings its dreadful way,
And hurls the apostate from the face of day. 
Immortal Bards! high o’er oblivion’s shroud
Their names shall live, pre-eminent and proud,
Who snatch’d the keys of mystery from time,
This world too little for their Muse sublime!