FOR THE NEW-YEAR 1762.

God of slaughter, quit the scene,
     Lay the crested helmet by;
Love commands, and beauty’s queen
     Rules the power who rules the sky.
Janus, with well-omen’d grace,
     Mounts the year’s revolving car,
And forward turns his smiling face,
     And longs to close the gates of war.
Enough of glory Albion knows—
Come, ye powers of sweet repose,
     On downy pinions move!
Let the war-worn legions own
Your gentler sway, and from the throne
     Receive the laws of love!

Yet, if justice still requires
     Roman arts, and Roman souls,
Britain breathes her wonted fires,
     And her wonted thunders rolls.
Added to our fairer isle
     Gallia mourns her bulwark gone:
Conquest pays the price of toil,
     Either India is our own.
Ye sons of freedom, grasp the sword;
Pour, ye rich, th’ imprison’d hoard,
     And teach it how to shine:
Each selfish, each contracted aim
To glory’s more exalted claim
     Let luxury resign.

     You too, ye British dames, may share
If not the toils, and dangers of the war,
At least its glory. From the Baltic shore,
     From Runic virtue’s native shore,
     Fraught with the tales of ancient lore,
Behold a fair instructress come!
When the fierce * female tyrant of the north
     Claim’d every realm her conquering arms could gain,
When discord, red with slaughter, issuing forth,
     Saw Albert struggling with the victor’s chain;
The storm beat high and shook the coast,
     Th’ exhausted treasures of the land
Could scarce supply th’ embattled host,
          Or pay th’ insulting foe’s demand.
     What then could beauty do? † She gave
     Her treasur’d tribute to the brave,
To her own softness join’d the manly heart,
     Sustain’d the soldier’s drooping arms,
     Confided in her genuine charms,
And yielded every ornament of art.
     —We want them not. Yet, O ye fair,
          Should Gallia, obstinately vain,
     To her own ruin urge despair,
And brave th’ acknowledg’d masters of the main:
Should she through ling’ring years protract her fall,
Through seas of blood to her destruction wade,
     Say, could ye feel the generous call,
And own the fair example here pourtray’d?
          Doubtless ye could. The royal dame
     Would plead her dear adopted country’s cause,
     And each indignant breast unite its flame,
To save the land of liberty and laws.

* Margaret de Waldemar, commonly called the Semiramis of the North.

† In the year 1395, the ladies of Mecklenburgh to support tbeir Duke Albert’s pretensions to the crown of Sweden, and to redeem him when he was taken prisoner, gave up all their jewels to the public; for which they afterwards received great emoluments and privileges, particularly the right of succession in fiefs, wbich had before been appropriated to males only.