stant troops rejoice,
From every quarter scour the fields of air,
And to the general rendezvous repair;
Each from the mingled rout disporting turns,
And with the love of kindred plumage burns.
Thy potent will instinctive bosoms feel,
And here arranging semilunar, wheel;
Or marshalled here the painted rhomb display
Or point the wedge that cleaves th' aerial way:
Uplifted on thy wafting breath they rise;
Thou pav'st the regions of the pathless skies,
Through boundless tracts support'st the journeyed host
And point'st the voyage to the certain coast,--
Thou the sure compass and the sea they sail,
The chart, the port, the steerage, and the gale!

PROLOGUE TO 'GUSTAVUS VASA'

Britons! this night presents a state distressed:
Though brave, yet vanquished; and though great, oppressed.
Vice, ravening vulture, on her vitals preyed;
Her peers, her prelates, fell corruption swayed:
Their rights, for power, the ambitious weakly sold:
The wealthy, poorly, for superfluous gold,
Hence wasting ills, hence severing factions rose,
And gave large entrance to invading foes:
Truth, justice, honour, fled th' infected shore;
For freedom, sacred freedom, was no more.
Then, greatly rising in his country's right,
Her hero, her deliverer sprung to light:
A race of hardy northern sons he led,
Guiltless of courts, untainted and unread;
Whose inborn spirit spurned the ignoble fee,
Whose hands scorned bondage, for their hearts were free.
Ask ye what law their conquering cause confessed?--
Great Nature's law, the law within the breast:
Formed by no art, and to no sect confined,
But stamped by Heaven upon th' unlettered mind.
Such, such of old, the first born natives were
Who breathed the virtues of Britannia's air,
Their realm when mighty Caesar vainly sought,
For mightier freedom against Caesar fought,
And rudely drove the famed invader home,
To tyrannize o'er polished--venal Rome.
Our bard, exalted in a freeborn flame,
To every nation would transfer this claim:
He to no state, no climate, bounds his page,
But bids the moral beam through every age.
Then be your judgment generous as his plan;
Ye sons of freedom! save the friend of man.

From CONRADE, A FRAGMENT

What do I love--what is it that mine eyes
Turn round in search of--that my soul longs after,
But cannot quench her thirst?--'Tis Beauty, Phelin!
I see it wide beneath t