_New Morality._ From mental mists to purge a nation’s eyes; To animate the weak, unite the wise; To trace the deep infection that pervades The crowded town, and taints the rural shades; To mark how wide extends the mighty waste O’er the fair realms of Science, Learning, Taste; To drive and scatter all the brood of lies, And chase the varying falsehood as it flies; The long arrears of ridicule to pay, To drag reluctant dulness back to day; 10 Much yet remains.—To you these themes belong, Ye favoured sons of virtue and of song! Say, is the field too narrow? are the times Barren of folly, and devoid of crimes? Yet, venial vices, in a milder age, Could rouse the warmth of POPE’S satiric rage: The doating miser, and the lavish heir, The follies and the foibles of the fair, Sir Job, Sir Balaam, and old Euclio’s thrift, And Sappho’s diamonds with her dirty shift, 20 Blunt, Charteris, Hopkins,—meaner subjects fired The keen-eyed Poet; while the Muse inspired Her ardent child—entwining, as he sate, His laurel’d chaplet with the thorns of hate. But say,—indignant does the Muse retire, Her shrine deserted, and extinct its fire? No pious hand to feed the sacred flame, No raptured soul a poet’s charge to claim? Bethink thee, GIFFORD; when some future age Shall trace the promise of thy playful page;— 30 “[310]The hand which brushed a swarm of fools away Should rouse to grasp a more reluctant prey!”— Think then, will pleaded indolence excuse The tame secession of thy languid Muse? Ah! where is now that promise? why so long Sleep the keen shafts of satire and of song? Oh! come, with taste and virtue at thy side, With ardent zeal inflamed, and patriot pride; With keen poetic glance direct the blow, And empty all thy quiver on the foe:— 40 No pause—no rest—till weltering on the ground The poisonous hydra lies, and pierced with many a wound. Thou too!—the nameless Bard,[311]—whose honest zeal For law, for morals, for the public weal, Pours down impetuous on thy country’s foes The stream of verse, and many-languaged prose; Thou too! though oft thy ill-advised dislike The guiltless head with random censure strike,— Though quaint allusions, vague and undefined, Play faintly round the ear, but mock the mind;— 50 Through the mix’d mass yet truth and learning shine, And manly vigour stamps the nervous line; And patriot warmth the generous rage inspires, And wakes and points the desultory fires!