Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashioned, fresh from Nature's hand, 330
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagined right, above control,
While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.

Thine, Freedom, thine the blessings pictured here; 335
Thine are those charms that dazzle and endear:
Too blest indeed, were such without alloy:
But fostered even by Freedom ills annoy:
That independence Britons prize too high
Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie; 340
The self-dependent lordlings[41] stand alone,
All claims that bind and sweeten life unknown.
Here, by the bonds of nature feebly held,
Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled;[42]
Ferments arise, imprisoned factions roar, 345
Repressed ambition struggles round her shore,
Till, over-wrought, the general system feels
Its motions stop, or frenzy fire the wheels.

Nor this the worst. As nature's ties decay,
As duty, love, and honor fail to sway, 350
Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,
Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
Hence all obedience bows to these alone,
And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown:
Till time may come, when, stripped of all her charms, 355
The land of scholars and the nurse of arms,
Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
Where kings have toiled and poets wrote for fame,
One sink of level avarice[43] shall lie,
And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonored die. 360

Yet think not, thus when Freedom's ills I state,
I mean to flatter kings, or court the great:
Ye powers of truth that bid my soul aspire,
Far from my bosom drive the low desire.
And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel 365
The rabble's rage and tyrant's angry steel;
Thou transitory flower, alike undone
By proud contempt or favor's fostering sun,
Still may thy blooms the changeful clime endure!
I only would repress them to secure: 370
For just experience tells, in every soil,
That those who think must govern those that toil;[44]
And all that Freedom's highest aims can reach
Is but to lay proportioned loads on each.
Hence, should one order disproportioned grow, 375
Its double weight must ruin all below.

O then how blind to all that truth requires,
Who think it freedom