But do you thus my favourite hopes fulfil? Is France at last the standard of your skill? Alas for you! that so betray a mind Of art unconscious and to beauty blind. 60 Say, does her language your ambition raise, Her barren, trivial, unharmonious phrase, Which fetters eloquence to scantiest bounds, And maims the cadence of poetic sounds? Say, does your humble admiration choose The gentle prattle of her Comic Muse, While wits, plain-dealers, fops, and fools appear, Charged to say nought but what the king may hear? Or rather melt your sympathising hearts Won by her tragic scene's romantic arts, 70 Where old and young declaim on soft desire, And heroes never, but for love, expire? No. Though the charms of novelty, a while, Perhaps too fondly win your thoughtless smile, Yet not for you design'd indulgent fate The modes or manners of the Bourbon state. And ill your minds my partial judgment reads, And many an augury my hope misleads, If the fair maids of yonder blooming train To their light courtship would an audience deign, 80 Or those chaste matrons a Parisian wife Choose for the model of domestic life; Or if one youth of all that generous band, The strength and splendour of their native land, Would yield his portion of his country's fame, And quit old freedom's patrimonial claim, With lying smiles oppression's pomp to see, And judge of glory by a king's decree. O bless'd at home with justly-envied laws, O long the chiefs of Europe's general cause, 90 Whom heaven hath chosen at each dangerous hour To check the inroads of barbaric power, The rights of trampled nations to reclaim, And guard the social world from bonds and shame; Oh! let not luxury's fantastic charms Thus give the lie to your heroic arms: Nor for the ornaments of life embrace Dishonest lessons from that vaunting race, Whom fate's dread laws (for, in eternal fate Despotic rule was heir to freedom's hate), 100 Whom in each warlike, each commercial part, In civil council, and in pleasing art, The judge of earth predestined for your foes, And made it fame and virtue to oppose. ODE II. TO SLEEP. 1 Thou silent power, whose welcome sway Charms every anxious thought away; In whose divine oblivion drown'd, Sore pain and weary toil grow mild, Love is with kinder looks beguiled, And grief forgets her fondly cherish'd wound; Oh, whither hast thou flown, indulgent god? God of kind shadows and of healing dews, Whom dost thou touch with thy Lethaean rod? Around whose temples now thy opiate airs diffuse?