When virtue and merit will have a fair chance The loaves and the fishes to share, And Jefferson, you to your station advance, The man for the president's chair: When honesty, honor, experience, approved, No more in disgrace will retire; When fops from the places of trust are removed And the leaders of faction retire. [159] Text from the 1815 edition. THE POLITICAL WEATHER-COCK[160] 'Tis strange that things upon the ground Are commonly most steady found While those in station proud Are turned and twirled, or twist about, Now here and there, now in or out, Mere play things to a cloud. See yonder influential man, So late the stern Republican While interest bore him up; See him recant, abjure the cause, See him support tyrannic laws, The dregs of slavery's cup! Thus, on yon' steeple towering high, Where clouds and storms distracted fly, The weather-cock is placed; Which only while the storm does blow Is to one point of compass true, Then veers with every blast. But things are so appointed here That weather-cocks on high appear, On pinnacle displayed, While Sense, and Worth, and reasoning wights, And they who plead for Human Rights, Sit humble in the shade. [160] From the 1809 edition. REFLECTIONS[161] On the Gradual Progress of Nations from Democratical States to Despotic Empires Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!--VIRGIL. Oh fatal day! when to the Atlantic shore, European despots sent the doctrine o'er, That man's vast race was born to lick the dust; Feed on the winds, or toil through life accurst; Poor and despised, that rulers might be great And swell to monarchs, to devour the state. Whence came these ills, or from what causes grew This vortex vast, that only spares the few, Despotic sway, where every plague combined, Distracts, degrades, and swallows up mankind; Takes from the intellectual sun its light, And shrouds the world in universal night? Accuse not nature for the dreary scene, That glooms her stage or hides her heaven serene, She, equal still in all her varied ways, An equal blessing to the world displays. The suns that now on northern climates glow, Will soon retire to melt Antarctic snow, The seas she robb'd to form her clouds and rain, Return in rivers to that source again; But man, wrong'd man, borne down, deceived and vex'd, Groans on through life, bewilder'd and perplex'd; No suns on him but suns of misery shine, Now march'd to war, now grovelling in the mine. Chain'd, fetter'd, prostrate, sent from earth a slave, To seek rewards in worlds beyond the grave.