In truth, our Morvale (such his name) could boast Those kinglier virtues which subject us most; The ear inclined to every voice of grief, The hand that oped spontaneous to relief, The heart, whose impulse stay'd not for the mind } To freeze to doubt what charity enjoin'd, } But sprang to man's warm instinct for mankind; } Honour, truth's life-sap, with pervading power Nurturing the stem to crown it with the flower; And that true daring not alone to those Whom fault or fate has marshall'd into foes; But the rare valour that confronts with scorn The monster shape, of Vice and Folly born, Which some "the World," and some "Opinion," call, Own'd by no heart, and yet enslaving all; The bastard charter of the social state, Which crowns the base to ostracise the great; The eternal quack upon the itinerant stage, This the "good Public," that "the enlighten'd Age," Ready alike to worship and revile, To build the altar, or to light the pile; Now "Down with Stuart and the Reign of Sin," Now "Long live Charles the Second and Nell Gwynne;" Now mad for patriots--hot for revolution, Now all for hanging and the Constitution. Honour to him, who, self-complete, if lone, Carves to the grave one pathway all his own; And, heeding nought that men may think or say, Asks but his soul if doubtful of the way. IV. Such was the better nature Morvale show'd; Now view the contrast which the worse bestow'd. Large was his learning, yet so vague and mix'd It guided less the reason than unfix'd; The dauntless impulse and the kingly will, Prompted to good, but leapt the checks to ill; Quick in revenge, and passionately proud, His brightest hour still shone forth from a cloud, And none conjecture on the next could form-- So play'd the sunbeam on the verge of storm. Still young--not youthful--life had pass'd through all Age sighs, and smiles, and trembles to recall. From childhood fatherless and lone begun His fiery race, beneath as fierce a sun, Where all extremes of Love and Horror are, Soft Camdeo's lotos bark, grim Moloch's gory car; Where basks the noonday luminously calm, O'er eldest grot and immemorial palm; And in the grot, the Goddess of the Dead And the couch'd strangler, list the wanderer's tread, And where the palm leaves stir with breeze-like sigh, Sports the fell serpent with his deathful eye.