The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

Miscellany

FROM A LONDON PAPER.

REMONSTRANCE.

After a conversation with Lord John Russell,

in which he had intimated some idea of giving

up all political pursuits:

What! thou, with thy genius, thy youth, and

thy fame;

Thou, born of a RUSSELL, whose instinct to

run

The accustom'd career of thy sires is the

same

As the eagle's to soar with his eyes on the

sun—

Whose nobility comes to thee, stamp'd with a

seal,

Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er

set;

With the blood of the race, offered up for the

weal

Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom

yet:

Shalt thou be faint-hearted and turn from the

strife,

From the mighty arena, where all that is

grand,

And devoted, and pure, and adorning in life,

Is for high-thoughted spirits like thine to

command?

Oh! no, never dream it—while good men despair,

Between tyrants and traitors, and timid men

bow,

Never think for an instant thy country can

spare

Such a light from her darkening horizon as

thou!

With a spirit as meek as the gentlest of

those

Who in life's sunny valley lie shelter'd and

warm,

Yet bold and heroick as ever yet rose

To the top-cliffs of Fortune and breasted her

storm;

With an ardour for liberty, fresh, as in youth,

It first kindles the bard, and gives life to

his lyre,

Yet mellowed ev'n now, by that mildness of

truth,

Which tempers, but chills not the patriot's

fire;

With an eloquence—not like those rills from a

height,

Which sparkle, and foam, and in Vapour are

o'er.

But a current, that works out its way into

light

Through the filtering recesses of thought and

of lore—

Thus gifted, thou never canst sleep in the

shade;

If the stirrings of Genius, the music of

Fame,

And the charms of thy cause have not power

to persuade,

Yet, think how to freedom thou'rt pledged

by thy Name.

Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree,

Set apart for the awe and its service divine,

All the branches that spring from the old Russell

tree

Are by Liberty claim'd for the use of her

shrine.

T. MOORE.

Padua, 1819.