The poem
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre, For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, And stifled thee, their minister. I know Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.