THE PHANTOM LAND. 413 



<e What was I dreaming of? my intellect 

 Surely was wandering ! and I talked of things 

 That really never happened? I suspect 

 My troubled fancy spread too wide her wings. 

 I now remember dying. Yes ! though decked 

 In purple once, on Death's shore I am wrecked, 

 Aad share the doom too oft the lot of kings. 



" And now I come to look back on the past, 



My conscience tells me that I stand accused. 



I see now where I missed it. I have cast 



My cares too much on others, and misused 



My ill-earned power and wealth by war amassed, 



Myself regarding first, my people last, 



Whose love, whose zeal, whose faith I have abused. 



" I thought myself a good king, and my friends 

 Kept up the sweet delusion in my mind; 

 But conscience now deliberately rends 

 The false veil from before me, and I find 

 (O what a dagger to my soul it sends !) 

 I have let bad men rule me, whose sole ends 

 .Were party power and private good combined. 



" These hands are guilty hands ! they have oppressed 



A people that deserved a milder sway. 



My ears have been too deaf to the distressed, 



My eyes too fond of glory's dazzling ray, 



And worse than all each national request, 



Though fair and proper, I have made my jest, 



Mocking expectancy with dull delay. 



" O ! if the monarch of a nation free 

 Hopes to lie easy on his bed of down, 

 The public good his first regard must be, 

 And public love the chief gem in his crown. 

 The nation is not form'd for him but he 

 For the nation; and in just the same degree 

 In which he serves it he deserves renown. 



" Columbia ! I oppressed thee ; and that act 



Embitters at this moment most my soul ; 



But though on war's red platform thou wast racked, 



Till I made blood instead of tear-drops roll 



From thy faint eyelids though thy towns I sacked, 



And the fierce bloodhounds of the wild unpacked, 



In vain I tried thy spirit to control. 



" The vengeful serpents in thy cradle placed, 

 Thy infant fingers strangled. I am glad 

 The machinations of this heart debased 

 On thee no permanent dark influence had ; 

 They have return'd on me their gall I taste 

 And with forlorn insanity they waste 

 My blind existence desolate and sad. 

 M.M. No. 106. 3 H 



