Thy swift career is with the whirling orbs,
Comparing things with things, in rapture lost,
And grateful adoration, for that light
So plenteous ray'd into thy mind below,
From LIGHT HIMSELF; oh, look with pity down
On human-kind, a frail erroneous race!
Exalt the spirit of a downward world!
O'er thy dejected country chief preside,
And be her Genius call'd! her studies raise,
Correct her manners, and inspire her youth.
For, though depraved and sunk, she brought thee forth,
And glories in thy name; she points thee out
To all her sons, and bids them eye thy star:
While, in expectance of the second life,
When time shall be no more, thy sacred dust
Sleeps with her kings, and dignifies the scene.
-Et tantas audetis tollere moles?
Quos ego-sed motos præstat componere fluctus.
Post mihi non simili pœnâ commissa luetis.
Maturate fugam, regique hæc dicite vestro:
Non illi imperium pelagi, sævumque tridentem,
Sed mihi sorte datum.
As on the sea-beat shore BRITANNIA Sat,
Of her degenerate sons the faded fame,
Deep in her anxious heart, revolving sad ;
Bare was her throbbing bosom to the gale,
That, hoarse and hollow, from the bleak surge blew ;
Loose flow'd her tresses; rent her azure robe.
Hung o'er the deep, from her majestic brow
She tore the laurel, and she tore the bay.
Nor ceased the copious grief to bathe her cheek;
Nor ceased her sobs to murmur to the main.
Peace discontented, nigh departing, stretch'd
Her dove-like wings; and War, though greatly roused, Yet mourn'd his fetter'd hands: while thus the Queen Of nations spoke; and what she said the Muse Recorded, faithful, in unbidden verse :
"Even not yon sail, that, from the sky-mix'd wave, Dawns on the sight, and wafts the Royal Youth,1
1 'Royal Youth: ' Frederick, Prince of Wales, then lately arrived.
A freight of future glory, to my shore;
Even not the flattering view of golden days,
And rising periods yet of bright renown,
Beneath the Parents, and their endless line
Through late-revolving time, can soothe my rage,
While, unchastised, th' insulting Spaniard dares
Infest the trading flood, full of vain war
Despise my navies, and my merchants seize,
As, trusting to false peace, they fearless roam
The world of waters wild, made, by the toil
And liberal blood of glorious ages,
mine;
Nor bursts my sleeping thunder on their head.
Whence this unwonted patience, this weak doubt,
This tame beseeching of rejected peace,
This meek forbearance, this unnative fear,
To generous Britons never known before?
And sail'd my fleets for this ?-on Indian tides
To float, inactive, with the veering winds,
The mockery of war! while hot disease,
And sloth distemper'd, swept off burning crowds,
For action ardent; and amid the deep,
Inglorious, sunk them in a watery grave.
There now they lie beneath the rolling flood,
Far from their friends and country, unavenged;
And back the drooping war-ship comes again,
Dispirited and thin; her sons ashamed
Thus idly to re-view their native shore;
With not one glory sparkling in their eye,
One triumph on their tongue. A passenger
The violated merchant comes along;
That far-sought wealth, for which the noxious gale
He drew, and sweat beneath equator suns,
By lawless force detain'd; a force that soon
Would melt away, and every spoil resign,
Were once the British lion heard to roar.
Whence is it that the proud Iberian thus,
In their own well-asserted element,
Dares rouse to wrath the masters of the main ?
Who told him that the big incumbent war
Would not, ere this, have roll'd his trembling ports
In smoky ruin, and his guilty stores,
Won by the ravage of a butcher'd world,
Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?
"There was a time (oh, let my languid sons
Resume their spirit at the rousing thought!)
When all the pride of Spain, in one dread fleet,
Swell'd o'er the labouring surge, like a whole heaven
Of clouds, wide-roll'd before the boundless breeze.
Gaily the splendid armament along
Exultant plough'd, reflecting a red gleam,
As sunk the sun, o'er all the flaming vast;
Tall, gorgeous, and elate; drunk with the dream
Of easy conquest: while their bloated war,
Stretch'd out from sky to sky, the gather'd force
Of ages held in its capacious womb.
But soon, regardless of the cumbrous pomp,
My dauntless Britons came, a gloomy few,
With tempest black, the goodly scene deform'd,
And laid their glory waste. The bolts of Fate
Resistless thunder'd through their yielding sides;
Fierce o'er their beauty blazed the lurid flame;
And, seized in horrid grasp, or shatter'd wide,
Amid the mighty waters deep they sunk.
Then too from every promontory chill,
Rank fen, and cavern where the wild wave works,
I swept confederate winds, and swell'd a storm.
Round the glad isle, snatch'd by the vengeful blast,
The scatter'd remnants drove; on the blind shelve, And pointed rock, that marks th' indented shore, Relentless dash'd, where loud the northern main Howls through the fractured Caledonian isles.
"Such were the dawnings of my watery reign; But since, how vast it grew, how absolute, Even in those troubled times when dreadful Blake Awed angry nations with the British name, Let every humbled state, let Europe say, Sustain'd and balanced, by my naval arm. Ah! what must those immortal spirits think Of your poor shifts ?-those, for their country's good, Who faced the blackest danger, knew no fear, No mean submission, but commanded peace? Ah! how with indignation must they burn! (If aught but joy can touch ethereal breasts), With shame! with grief! to see their feeble sons Shrink from that empire o'er the conquer'd seas, For which their wisdom plann'd, their councils glow'd, And their veins bled through many a toiling age! "Oh, first of human blessings, and supreme! Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou! By whose wide tie the kindred sons of men Like brothers live, in amity combined, And unsuspicious faith; while honest Toil Gives every joy, and to those joys a right Which idle, barbarous Rapine but usurps. Pure is thy reign, when, unaccursed by blood, Nought save the sweetness of indulgent showers, Trickling distils into the vernant glebe,
Instead of mangled carcasses, sad-seen,
When the blithe sheaves lie scatter'd o'er the field; When only shining shares, the crooked knife,
And hooks imprint the vegetable wound ;
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