Virtue’s own champion, now refused to fight? Is the deliverer turn’d th’ oppressor now? Has the reformer dropt the dangerous vow? Or has the patriot’s bosom lost its heat, And forced him, shivering, to a snug retreat? Is such the grievous lapse of human pride? Is such the victory of the worth untried? “Here will I pause, and then review the shame 360 Of Harry Bland, to hear his parent’s name. That mild, that modest boy, whom well we knew, In him long time the secret sorrow grew; He wept alone; then to his friend confess’d The grievous fears that his pure mind oppress’d; And thus, when terror o’er his shame obtain’d A painful conquest, he his case explain’d; And first his favourite question’d--‘Willie, tell, Do all the wicked people go to hell?’ “Willie with caution answer’d, ‘Yes, they do, 370 Or else repent; but what is this to you?’ ‘O! yes, dear friend:’ he then his tale began-- ‘He fear’d his father was a wicked man, Nor had repented of his naughty life; The wife he had indeed was not a wife, Not as my mother was; the servants all Call her a name--I’ll whisper what they call. She saw me weep, and ask’d, in high disdain, If tears could bring my mother back again? This I could bear, but not when she pretends 380 Such fond regard, and what I speak commends; Talks of my learning, fawning wretch! and tries To make me love her,--love! when I despise. Indeed I had it in my heart to say Words of reproach, before I came away; And then my father’s look is not the same, He puts his anger on to hide his shame.’ “With all these feelings delicate and nice, This dread of infamy, this scorn of vice, He left the school, accepting, though with pride, 390 His father’s aid--but there would not reside; He married then a lovely maid, approved Of every heart as worthy to be loved; Mild as the morn in summer, firm as truth, And graced with wisdom in the bloom of youth. “How is it, men, when they in judgment sit On the same fault, now censure, now acquit? Is it not thus, that _here_ we view the sin, And _there_ the powerful cause that drew us in? ’Tis not that men are to the evil blind, 400 But that a different object fills the mind. In judging others we can see too well Their grievous fall, but not how grieved they fell; Judging ourselves, we to our minds recall, Not how we fell, but how we grieved to fall. Or could this man, so vex’d in early time, By this strong feeling for his father’s crime; Who to the parent’s sin was barely just, And mix’d with filial fear the man’s disgust-- Could he, without some strong delusion, quit 410 The path of duty, and to shame submit? Cast off the virtue he so highly prized, ‘And be the very creature he despised?’