'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orbAscending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,That crowd away before the driving wind,More ardent as the disk emerges more,Resemble most some city in a blaze,Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting raySlides ineffectual down the snowy vale,And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry bladeStretches a length of shadow o'er the field.Mine, spindling into longitude immense,In spite of gravity, and sage remarkThat I myself am but a fleeting shade,Provokes me to a smile. With eye askanceI view the muscular proportion'd limbTransform'd to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,As they design'd to mock me, at my sideTake step for step; and, as I near approachThe cottage, walk along the plaster'd wall,Prepost'rous sight! the legs without the man.The verdure of the plain lies buried deepBeneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,Of late unsightly and unseen, now shineConspicuous, and, in bright apparel cladAnd fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.The cattle mourn in corners where the fenceScreens them, and seem half petrified to sleepIn unrecumbent sadness. There they waitTheir wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,Fretful if unsupply'd; but silent, meek,And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,His broad keen knife into the solid mass:Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,With such undeviating and even forceHe severs it away: no needless care,Lest storms should overset the leaning pileDeciduous, or its own unbalanc'd weight.
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'Tis liberty alone that gives the flowerOf fleeting life its lustre and perfume,And we are weeds without it. All constraint,Except what wisdom lays on evil men,Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedesTheir progress in the road of science; blindsThe eyesight of discovery, and begets,In those that suffer it, a sordid mindBestial, a meagre intellect, unfitTo be the tenant of man's noble form.Thee therefore, still, blameworthy as thou art,With all thy loss of empire, and though squeez'dBy public exigence till annual foodFails for the craving hunger of the state,Thee I account still happy, and the chiefAmong the nations, seeing thou art free,My native nook of earth! . . .
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But there is yet a liberty unsungBy poets, and by senators unprais'd, Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rsOf earth and hell confederate take away;A liberty which persecution, fraud,Oppression, prisons, have no pow'r to bind;Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more.'Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from Heav'n,Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind,And seal'd with the same token. It is heldBy charter, and that charter sanction'd sureBy th' unimpeachable and awful oathAnd promise of a God. His other giftsAll bear the royal stamp that speaks them his,And are august, but this transcends them all.
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