Richmond Enquirer

The following spirited lines are from the Liverpool Chronicle of the 7th ult:

The Birth of French Liberty.

O'er the wide cover'd hill and gay valley of France
O'er the day-star of liberty rose,
Through clouds of delusion unweary'd advance,
And held its new course in the skies,
An effulgence so mild, with a lustre so bright,
All Europe with wonder survey'd,
And thro' drear domains of darkness, and dungeons of night
Content in a sphere in the blaze.

Let Burke, the eye bat, from his splendor retire,
A star too strong for his eyes;
In his pedants and tomes his routine eulogies,
Entrapt in his cobwebs like fly.
Blind frenzy and sophistry hope to proscribe
When reason opinions hath weight,
When the will ruled of millions is hung in the scale,
And the balance yet trembles with fate?

Oh! who mid the darkness of night would abide
That once basked in the sweet breeze of morn?
And who that has shrunk from the crystalline tide
To the foul cot would return?
When the bosom of beauty the throbbing heart meets,
Ah! who would the transport decline?
And who that has tasted liberty's sweets
She prize—but with life—would resign?

Hail'd 'tis over, high Heav'n the decision approves,
Oppression has assailed in vain:
To the dust she is hurled, Superstition o'erthrown
And liberty gnaws her own chain,
In the records of Time a new morn unfoldeth
All nature exults in the birth,
As creation, benign, the Creator beholds,
And writes a new charter to earth.

O, could its high import ye winds as ye blow
Oh, bear it ye waves as ye roll
From the Nation's high seat to the Huns' remotest clime,
To the ermined extremities of the Pole,
Equal rights, equal laws to the Nations around,
Peace and friendship its precepts impart;
And wherever the standard proud freedom can be found,
May he bind the diadem on his heart.

*More than forty years ago our justly revered and celebrated townsman, Mr. Roscoe, hailed the commencement of the French Revolution as an event fraught with consequences calculated to increase the liberty and happiness of mankind. The sentiments which then inspired our illustrious author, are evinced in the above verses, not less distinguished by their poetic excellence, than by the ardent love for, and devoted attachment to, those great principles which it had been the ardent object of Mr. Roscoe's life successfully to promote and defend.