| |
| THOU, Liberty, thou art my theme; | |
| Not such as idle poets dream, | |
| Who trick thee up a heathen goddess | |
| That a fantastic cap and rod has; | |
| Such stale conceits are poor and silly; | 5 |
| I paint thee out, a Highland filly, | |
| A sturdy, stubborn, handsome dapple, | |
| As sleek’s a mouse, as round’s an apple, | |
| That when thou pleasest canst do wonders; | |
| But when thy luckless rider blunders, | 10 |
| Or if thy fancy should demur there, | |
| Wilt break thy neck ere thou go further. | |
| |
| These things premised, I sing a Fox, | |
| Was caught among his native rocks, | |
| And to a dirty kennel chained, | 15 |
| How he his liberty regained. | |
| |
| Glenriddell! Whig without a stain, | |
| A Whig in principle and grain, | |
| Could’st thou enslave a free-born creature, | |
| A native denizen of Nature? | 20 |
| How could’st thou, with a heart so good, | |
| (A better ne’er was sluiced with blood!) | |
| Nail a poor devil to a tree, | |
| That ne’er did harm to thine or thee? | |
| |
| The staunchest Whig Glenriddell was, | 25 |
| Quite frantic in his country’s cause; | |
| And oft was Reynard’s prison passing, | |
| And with his brother-Whigs canvassing | |
| The Rights of Men, the Powers of Women, | |
| With all the dignity of Freemen. | 30 |
| |
| Sir Reynard daily heard debates | |
| Of Princes’, Kings’, and Nations’ fates, | |
| With many rueful, bloody stories | |
| Of Tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories: | |
| From liberty how angels fell, | 35 |
| That now are galley-slaves in hell; | |
| How Nimrod first the trade began | |
| Of binding Slavery’s chains on Man; | |
| How fell Semiramis—G—d d-mn her! | |
| Did first, with sacrilegious hammer, | 40 |
| (All ills till then were trivial matters) | |
| For Man dethron’d forge hen-peck fetters; | |
| |
| How Xerxes, that abandoned Tory, | |
| Thought cutting throats was reaping glory, | |
| Until the stubborn Whigs of Sparta | 45 |
| Taught him great Nature’s Magna Charta; | |
| How mighty Rome her fiat hurl’d | |
| Resistless o’er a bowing world, | |
| And, kinder than they did desire, | |
| Polish’d mankind with sword and fire; | 50 |
| With much, too tedious to relate, | |
| Of ancient and of modern date, | |
| But ending still, how Billy Pitt | |
| (Unlucky boy!) with wicked wit, | |
| Has gagg’d old Britain, drain’d her coffer, | 55 |
| As butchers bind and bleed a heifer, | |
| |
| Thus wily Reynard by degrees, | |
| In kennel listening at his ease, | |
| Suck’d in a mighty stock of knowledge, | |
| As much as some folks at a College; | 60 |
| Knew Britain’s rights and constitution, | |
| Her aggrandisement, diminution, | |
| How fortune wrought us good from evil; | |
| Let no man, then, despise the Devil, | |
| As who should say, ‘I never can need him,’ | 65 |
Since we to scoundrels owe our freedom.
· · · · · · | |
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