XXV. INDIGNATION OF A HIGH-MINDED SPANIARD. 1810. WE can endure that He should waste our lands, Despoil our temples, and by sword and flame Return us to the dust from which we came; Such food a Tyrant's appetite demands: And we can brook the thought that by his hands Where all the Brave lie dead. But when of bands, Of benefits, and of a future day When our enlightened minds shall bless his sway, Then, the strained heart of fortitude proves weak: Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear. XXVI. AVAUNT all specious pliancy of mind And self-respecting slowness, disinclined And piety tow'rds God. Such Men of old Were England's native growth; and, throughout Spain, Forests of such do at this day remain ; Then for that Country let our hopes be bold; XXVII. 1810. O'ERWEENING Statesmen have full long relied Which shall not fail, though poor men cleave with pride To the paternal floor; or turn aside, In the thronged City, from the walks of gain, A Soul by contemplation sanctified. There are who cannot languish in this strife, To labour, and to prayer, to nature, and to heaven.* * See Laborde's Character of the Spanish People; from him the sentiment of these two last lines is taken. XXVIII. THE FRENCH AND THE SPANISH GUERILLAS. HUNGER, and sultry heat, and nipping blast So these, and, heard of once again, are chased And newly kindled hope; but they are fled, Where now? Their sword is at the Foeman's heart! And thus from year to year his walk they thwart, And hang like dreams around his guilty bed. XXIX. SFANISH GUERILLAS, 1811. THEY seek, are sought; to daily battle led, Are Captains such as erst their Country bred Whose desperate shock the Carthaginian fled. And Mina, nourished in the studious shade, In some green Island of the western main. |