from Dedication

11

Think’st thou, could he—the blind Old Man—arise
     Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
     Or be alive again—again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
     And heartless daughters—worn—and pale—and poor;
Would he adore a sultan? he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

12

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
     Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
     Transferr’d to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
     With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fix’d,
And offer poison long already mix’d.

13

An orator of such set trash of phrase
     Ineffably—legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
     Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile,—
Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze
     From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

14

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
    And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
     States to be curb’d, and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or Congress to be made—
    Cobbling at manacles for all mankind—
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.

15

If we may judge of matter by the mind,
     Emasculated to the marrow It
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
     Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters,—blind
     To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
Fearless—because no feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

16

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
     For I will never feel them;—Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
     Beneath the lie this State-thing breathed o’er thee—
Thy clanking chain, and Erin’s yet green wounds,
     Have voices—tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves—allies—kings—armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

17

Meantime—Sir Laureate—I proceed to dedicate,
     In honest simple verse, this song to you.
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
     ‘Tis that I still retain my “buff and blue”;
My politics as yet are all to educate:
    Apostasy’s so fashionable, too,
To keep one creed’s a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?