The Works of Henry Fielding/Liberty. To George Lyttleton, Esq.

by Henry Fielding

TO Lyttleton the muse this off'ring pays;
Who sings of liberty, must sing his praise.
This man, ye grateful Britons, all revere;
Here raise your altars, bring your incense here.
To him the praise, the blessings which ye owe,
More than their sires your grateful sons shall know.
O! for thy country's good and glory born!
Whom Nature vied with fortune to adorn!
Brave, tho' no soldier; without titles, great;
Fear'd without pow'r; and envied, without state.
Accept the muse whom truth inspires to sing,
Who soars, tho' weakly, on an honest wing.

   See Liberty, bright goddess, comes along,
Rais'd at thy name, she animates the song.
Thy name, which Lacedemon had approv'd,
Rome had adored, and Brutus' self had lov'd.

   Come then, bright maid, my glowing breast inspire;
Breathe in my lines, and kindle all thy fire.

   Behold, she cries, the groves, the woods, the plains,
Where nature dictates, see how freedom reigns;
The herd, promiscuous, o'er the mountain strays;
Nor begs this beast the other's leave to graze.
Each freely dares his appetite to treat,
Nor fears the steed to neigh, the flock to bleat.

   Did God, who freedom to these creatures gave,
Form his own image, man, to be a slave?

   But men, it seems, to laws of compact yield;
While nature only governs in the field.
Curse on all laws which liberty subdue,
And make the many wretched for the few.

   However deaf to shame, to reason blind,
Men dare assert all falsehoods of mankind;
The public never were, when free, such elves
To covet laws pernicious to themselves.
Presumptuous pow'r assumes the public voice,
And what it makes our fate, pretends our choice.

   To whom did pow'r original belong?
Was it not first extorted by the strong?
And thus began, where it will end, in wrong.

   These scorn'd to pow'r another claim than might,
And in ability established right.

   At length a second nobler sort arose,
Friends to the weak, and to oppression foes;
With warm humanity their bosoms glow'd,
They felt to nature their great strength they ow'd.
And as some elder born of noble rate,
To whom devolves his father's rich estate,
Becomes a kind protector to the rest,
Nor sees unmov'd the younger branch distress'd,
So these, with strength whom nature deign'd to grace,
Became the guardians of their weaker race;
Forc'd tyrant power to bend its stubborn knee,
Broke the hard chain, and set the people free.
O'er abject slaves they scorn'd inglorious sway,
But taught the grateful freed man to obey;
And thus, by giving liberty, enjoy'd
What the first hop'd from liberty destroy'd.

   To such the weak for their protection flew,
Hence right to pow'r and laws by compact grew.
With zeal embracing their deliverer's cause,
They bear his arms, and listen to his laws.
Thus pow'r superior strength superior wears,
In honour chief, as first in toils and cares.
The people pow'r, to keep their freedom, gave,
And he who had it was the only slave.

   But fortune wills to wisest human schemes,
The fate that torrents bring to purest streams,
Which from clear fountains soon polluted run,
Thus ends in evil what from good begun.

   For now the savage host, o'erthrown and slain,
New titles, by new methods, kings obtain.
To priests and lawyers soon their arts applied,
The people these, and those the Gods belied.
The Gods, unheard, to power successors name,
And silent crowds their rights divine proclaim.
Hence all the evils which mankind have known,
The priest's dark mystery, the tyrant's throne;
Hence lords, and ministers, and such sad things;
And hence the strange divinity of kings.
Hail, Liberty! Boon worthy of the skies,
Like fabled Venus fair, like Pallas wise.
Thro' thee the citizen braves war's alarms,
Tho' neither bred to fight, nor paid for arms;
Thro' thee, the laurel crown'd the victor's brow,
Who serv'd before his country at the plough:
Thro' thee (what most must to thy praise appear)
Proud senates scorn'd not to seek virtue there.

   O thou, than health or riches dearer far,
Thou gentle breath of peace, and soul of war;
Thou that hast taught the desert sweets to yield,
And shame the fair Campania's fertile field;
Hast shown the peasant glory, and call'd forth
Wealth from the barren sand, and heroes from the north!

   The southern skies, without thee, to no end
In the cool breeze, or genial show'rs descend:
Possess'd of thee, the Vandal, and the Hun,
Enjoy their frost, nor mourn the distant sun.

   As poets Samos, and the Cyprian grove,
Once gave to Juno, and the Queen of Love:
Be thine Britannia: ever friendly smile,
And fix thy seat eternal in this isle.
Thy sacred name no Romans now adore,
And Greece attends thy glorious call no more.
To thy Britannia, then, thy fire transfer,
Give all thy virtue, all thy force to her;
Revolve, attentive, all her annals o'er,
See how her sons have lov'd thee heretofore.
While the base sword oppress'd Iberia draws,
And slavish Gauls dare fight against thy cause,
See Britain's youth rush forth, at thy command,
And fix thy standard in the hostile land.
With noble scorn they view the crowded field,
And force unequal multitudes to yield.
So wolves large flocks, so lions herds survey,
Not foes more num'rous, but a richer prey.
O! teach us to withstand, as they withstood,
Nor lose the purchase of our fathers' blood.
Ne'er blush that sun that saw in Blenheim's plain
Streams of our blood, and mountains of our slain;
Or that of old beheld all France to yield
In Agincourt or Cressy's glorious field;
Where freedom Churchill, Henry, Edward gave,
Ne'er blush that sun to see a British slave.

   As industry might from the bee be taught,
So might oppression from the hive be brought:
Behold the little race laborious stray,
And from each flow'r the hard-wrought sweets convey,
That in warm ease in winter they may dwell,
And each enjoy the riches of its cell.
Behold th' excising pow'r of man despoil
These little wretches of their care and toil.
Death's the reward of all their labour lost,
Careful in vain, and provident to their cost.

   But thou, great liberty, keep Britain free,
Nor let men use us as we use the bee.
Let not base drones upon our honey thrive,
And suffocate the maker in his hive.