Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

103

  • From tyrants wrung, the many or the few.
  • By wealth, by titles, by ambition’s lure,
  • Not to be tempted from fair honour’s path:
  • While others, falsely flattering their Prince, [295]
  • Bold disapprov’d, or by oblique surmise
  • Their terror hinted, of the people arm’d;
  • Indignant, in the senate, he uprose,
  • And, with the well-urg’d energy of zeal,
  • Their specious, subtle sophistry disprov’d; [300]
  • The importance, the necessity display’d,
  • Of civil armies, freedom’s surest guard!
  • Nor in the senate didst thou only win
  • The palm of eloquence,1 securely bold;
  • But rear’d’st thy banners, fluttering in the wind: [305]
  • Kent,2 from each hamlet, pour’d her marshal’d swains,
  • To hurl defiance on the threatening Gaul.

  • THY foaming coppers well with fewel feed;
  • For a clear, strong, continued fire improves
  • Thy muscovado’s colour, and its grain.— [310]
  • Yet vehement heat, protracted, will consume
  • Thy vessels, whether from the martial mine,

VER. 312. Thy vessels,] The vessels, wherein the Cane-juice is reduced to Sugar by coction, are either made of iron or of copper. Each sort hath its advantages and

  1. Prize for speech. In the ancient Greek Olympics, winners were awarded palm fronds. ↩︎

  2. Kent faces France. ↩︎