Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 15 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 15 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
To all these accomplishments add the glowing emotions of his noble
nature, his love of virtue, his devotion to freedom, his sympathy for
the poor and downtrodden. His biographer records as “a favorite opinion
of Sir William Jones, that all men are born with _an equal capacity
for improvement_,”[581] and also reports him as saying: “I see chiefly
under the sun the two classes of men whom Solomon describes, the
oppressor and the oppressed.… I shall cultivate my fields and gardens,
and think as little as possible of monarchs or oligarchs.”[582] With
these declarations it is easy to credit Dr. Paley, who said of him,
“He was a great republican when I knew him.”[583] Like seeks like, and
a long intimacy in the family of the good Bishop of St. Asaph,[584]
ending in a happy marriage with his eldest daughter, shows how he must
have sympathized with the American cause and with the future of our
country.
Our author had been the tutor of Lord Althorp, the same who, as Earl
Spencer, became so famous a bibliophile and a patron of Dibdin, and
on the marriage of his pupil with Miss Lavinia Bingham, he was moved
to commemorate it in a poem, entitled “The Muse Recalled: an Ode
on the Nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham,
eldest Daughter of Charles Lord Lucan, March 6, 1781,”[585] which his
critic, Wraxall, calls “one of the most beautiful lyric productions in
the English language, … emulating at once the fame of Milton and of
Gray.”[586] But beyond the strain of personal sympathy, congenial to
the occasion, was a passion for America, and the prophetic spirit which
belongs to the poet. Lamenting that Freedom and Concord are repudiated
by the sons of Albion, all the Virtues disappear,--
“Truth, Justice, Reason, Valor, with them fly
To seek a purer soil, a more congenial sky.”
But the soil and sky which they seek are of the Delaware:--
“Beyond the vast Atlantic deep
A dome by viewless genii shall be raised,
The walls of adamant, compact and steep,
The portals with sky-tinctured gems emblazed:
There on a lofty throne shall Virtue stand;
To her the youth of Delaware shall kneel;
And when her smiles reign plenty o’er the land,
Bow, tyrants, bow beneath the avenging steel!
_Commerce with fleets shall mock the waves,_
_And Arts, that flourish not with slaves,_
_Dancing with every Grace and every Muse,_
_Shall bid the valleys laugh and heavenly beams diffuse._”
Wraxall remarks, that “here, in a fine frenzy of inspiration,” the
poet “seems to behold, as in a vision, the modern Washington and the
Congress met, after successfully throwing off all subjection to Great
Britain,” while “George the Third is pretty clearly designated in
the line apostrophizing tyrants.”[587] But to an American the most
captivating verses are those which open the vista of peaceful triumphs,
where Commerce and the Arts unite with every Grace and every Muse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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