Where the rude people, having Nature's help, Scatter'd his wilder'd slaves, and smote him back, To dash him from his height. This is the hour Their clouds, and following up his wasted strength, At which the world shall startle. Then will I Ye tricksome cherubs, ever at your play, 6 PROLOGUE TO THE DESCENT OF LIBERTY. With smile-expanded cheeks and hovering limbs,— And with a silver cloud wait on me down. A set of cherubs rise from the back-ground, and Liberty seating herself on one of the clouds, they playfully bear her up with it, the whole going off at the side-scene with a descending motion. SCENE THE FIRST. A SECLUDED spot in a wood, with a cottage on one side, and a little river running under the trees in the back-ground. A kind of twilight is in the air. Enter three Shepherds, looking cautiously about, and listening. 1st Shep. It's wandered somewhere else:-every thing's quiet. 2d Shep. Hush! Was not that, it ? 1st Shep. No; there's not a breath · I think it turn'd along the willows there. 3d Shep. Most likely : sound delights itself in water, As I have noticed often :-let's pursue it. 1st Shep. No, better not; remember what a road It led us yester eve;-'twill play no more. These spirits, bad or good (by what I've heard As if they made them merry with the awkwardness And grave mistakes of our inferior nature. Besides, the stream, you know, runs through the grounds Of fine old Eunomus, who used to set So rare a lesson to the former court, But now shuts up his sorrows in this corner; And 'twere amiss to startle his grey head E'en with a footstep. 2d Shep. 'Twere so yet methinks He might be pleased to hear of this new sound, The first, of any comfortable breath, Our wood has heard for years. I know not why, But there is such a sweetness in the touch Of this mysterious pipe that's come among us, That it forebodes, to me, some blessed change. All. There! 3d Shep. (a flourish of a small pipe heard.) "Tis overhead-I heard it plainly. 1st Shep. It comes no more. 2d Shep. But it was louder then Than it has ever been;-'twas curious too, It should return just as I spoke of change. 1st Shep. I think, with you, there must be some thing in it. Feel you no alteration? 2d Shep. What? In the air? 'Tis lighter, fresher ;-I perceiv'd it yesterday. That sick and dim, like a disease of nature, Should at the last be going? Nay,-to speak it, 3d Shep. Hush! Be cautious; You know what ears he has in every corner. 2d Shep. I care not-who is there, among us, cares? Has not he robb'd us all of something dear, Some father, brother, son, to go and do His devilish work in countries of all climate, In fainting heats, and powerless, cramping colds, Wasting away in one, stiff'ning in t'other |