The Commencement of the Nineteenth Century.

NOBLE friend! say where may Freedom banished,
Where may stricken Peace a refuge find,
Now the century in storm has vanished,

And the next in carnage stalks behind?
All old bonds of nations rent asunder;

All old forms swift hastening to decline; Nor can Ocean stay the battle's thunder, Nor the Nile-God, nor the ancient Rhine. Two gigantic rival states, contending

For the sole dominion of the world, O'er all laws, all birthrights else, impending, Have the trident and the lightning hurl'd. Every land to them must mete its treasure; And, like Brennus in those ruder days, Here the Frank his ponderous falchion's measure In the wavering scale of justice lays; There his fleets the Briton, rich and mighty,

Polypus-like, stretches o'er the deep, And the kingdom of free Amphitrite, Closes as his own peculiar keep.

To the South-pole's hidden constellations

In his restless, boundless, course he flies,