LINES, &c.
By
THOMAS PAINE,
THE Rain pours down, the City looks forlorn,
And gloomy subjects suit the howling morn,
Close by my sire, with door and window fast,
And safely shelter'd from the driving blast,
To gayer thoughts, I bid a days adieu,
To spend a scene of solitude with you.
So oft has black Revenge engros'd the care,
Of all the leisure hours man finds to spare;
So oft has guilt in all her thousand dens,
Call'd for the vengeance of chastising Pens;
That while, I fain would ease my heart on you,
No thought is left untold, no passion new.
From flight to flight the mental path appears,
Worn with the steps of near six thousand years,
And fill
d througout with every scene of pain.
From CAIN to G*****, and back from G***** to CAIN.
Alike in cruelty, alike in hate,
In guilt alike, but more alike in fate,
Both curs'd supremely for the blood they drew,
Each from the rising world, while each was new.
Go second CAIN, true likeness of the first,
And strew thy blasted head with homely dust
In ashes sit—in wretched sack-cloth weep
And with unpitied sorrows cease to slee
,
Go haunt the tombs, and single out the place
Where earth itself shall suffer a disgrace.
Go spell the letters on some mouldring urn,
And ask if he who sleeps there can return.
Go count the numbers that in sile
lie,
And learn by study what it is to die,
For sure that heart—if any heart you own
Conceits that man expires without a Groan:
That he who lives receives from you a grace,
Or death is nothing but a change of place:
That peace is dull, that joy from sorrow springs,
And War the Royal raree shew of things,
Else why these s
enes that wound the feeling mind
This sport of death—this Cockpit of Mankind.
Why sobs the widow in perpetual pain?
Why cries the Orphan?—"Oh my Father's slain"
Why hangs the Sire his paralytic head?
And nods with manly grief—"My Son is dead."
Why drops the tears from off the sisters cheek?
And sweetly tells the sorrows she would speak,
Or why in lonely steps does pensive John?
To all the neighbours tell, "Poor masters gone."
Oh could I paint the passion, I can feel,
Or point a horror that would wound like steel
To thy unfeeling, unrelenting mind
I'd send a torture and relieve mankind.
Thou that art husband, father, brother, all
The tender names which kindred learn to call.
Yet like an image carv'd in massey stone,
Thou bear'st the shape, but sentiment has't none,
Allied by dust and figure, not by mind,
Thou only herd'st, but liv'st not with mankind.
And prone to love, like some outrageous ape,
Thou know'st each class of beings by their shape.
Since then no hopes to civilize remain
And all petitions have gone forth in vain,
One prayer is left which dreads no proud reply,
That
he
who made thee breath will make thee die.
COMMON SENSE.
Passages for Insertion in the
Hiatuses.
In the INTRODUCTION.
No. 1. "by the
King and Parliament
they have" Page 2
No. 2. "reject the
oppressions o
either" —
No. 3. "nor a General
as in England
a man" Page 11
No. 4. "In
England the king
hath little" —
No. 5. "by the
king
and h
s" page 13
No. 6. "made known,
I rejected the hardened, sullen-temper'd Pha
aoh of England for ever; and disdained the wretch that with the pretended title of
"FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE▪ "
can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul!
—Bu
Page 17
No. 7. —"And
as he hath shewn h
mself such an inveterate enemy to
Liberty▪
and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power
—Is he? or is he not a proper man"
No. 8. "petitioning.—
We are already greater than the king wishes us to be: and will he not endeavour hereafter to make us less?—
To bring the" —
No. 9. "l
ws, or
whether the King, the greatest enemy we have, or can have, shall tell us, "There shall be no
laws
but such as I like?—
But" —
No. 10. "dangerous
and fatal
than it" Page 18
No. 11. "policy
in the king
at this" —
No. 12. "reinstating
himself in
the government of the Provinces in order
that he may accomplish by fraud and subtity in the long run, what he cannot do by force and violence in the short one: Reconciliation and Ruin are nearly related.
Secondly."
No. 13. havock of mankind,
like the royal brute of Great-Britain. —
Yet that" Page 20
No. 14. "eternal tyranny,
by keeping vacant the seat of Government. —
There are" —
No. 15. the tyranny but the TYRANT—Stand forth!" Page 21
No. 16. it cam
ut,
the King's Speech made"
Page 28
No. 17. "revenge. And
the king's speech,
instead of terrify." —
No. 18. naturally follows,
that the king's speech, as being a piece of finished villainy,
deserved"
No. 19. "that
the king's speech
hath not before" —
No. 20. "The
speech,
if it may be" —
No. 21. "of
kings;
for a
Nature" —
No. 22. "The
speech
hath one" —
No. 23. "savage than the
King of Great-Britain.
— Sir" Page 28
No. 24. "like a worm.
However it matters very little now, what the king either says or does. He has w
cke
broken through every moral and human obligation;
Nature
and
Conscience
underfoot; and by a steady and constitutional spirit of insolence and cruelty, procured for himself an universal hatred!—
It it now" Page 29
No. 25. "the
King
and his worthless" Page 30
No. 26. "authority under
him
whom ye
No. 27. "tell the
wretch
his
s, and warn"
No. 28. "a proof that the
man
whom ye are so"