The Works of Thomas Love Peacock

Return to the banks of the Thames. The influence of spring on the scenery of the river. The tranquil beauty of the vallies of the Thames contrasted with the sublimity of more open and elevated regions. Allusion to the war on the Danube. Ancient wars on the Thames. Its present universal peace. View of the course of the Thames. Its source near Kemble Meadow. Comparative reflections on time. Ewan. Lechlade. Radcote. Godstow nunnery: Rosamond. Oxford. Apostrophe to science. Nuneham Courtnay: Mason. The vale of Marlow. Hedsor. Cliefden. Windsor. Cooper's Hill. Runnymead. Twitnam: Pope. Richmond: Thomson. Chelsea and Greenwich. The Tower. Tilbury Fort. Hadleigh Castle. The Nore. General allusion to the illustrious characters that have adorned the banks of the Thames. A summer evening on the river at Richmond. Comparative adversion to the ancient state of the Euphrates and Araxes, at Babylon and Persepolis. Present desolation of those scenes. Reflections on the fall of nations. Conclusion.

133

Oh Genius of that sacred urn,
Adored by all the Naiad train!
Once more my wandering steps return
To trace the precincts of thy reign:
Once more, amid my native plain,
I roam thy devious course along,
And in the oaken shade again
Awake to thee the votive song.
Dear stream! while far from thee I strayed,
The woods, that crown my natal glade,
Have mourned on all the winds of heaven
Their yellow faded foliage driven;
And winter, with tempestuous roar,
Descending on thy wasted shore,
Has seen thy turbid current flow
A deluge of dissolving snow.

But now, in spring's more soft control,
Thy troubled waves subside,
And through a narrower channel roll
A brighter, gentler tide.
Emerging now in light serene,
The meadows spread their robes of green,

134

The weeping willow droops to lave
Its leafy tresses in the wave;
The poplar and the towering pine
Their hospitable shade combine;

Qua pinus ingens albaque populus
Umbram hospitalem consociare amant
Ramis, et obliquo laborat
Lympha fugax trepidare rivo.

Horatius.

And, flying like the flying day,
The silent river rolls away.

Not here, in dreadful grandeur piled,
The mountain's pathless masses rise,
Where wandering fancy's lonely child
Might meet the spirit of the skies:
Not here, from misty summits hoar,
Where shattered firs are rooted strong,
With headlong force and thundering roar
The bursting torrent foams along:
Sublime the charms such scenes contain:
For nature on her mountain reign
Delights the treasures to dispense
Of all her wild magnificence:
But thou art sweet, my native stream!
Thy waves in liquid lustre play,
And glitter in the morning beam,
And chime to rest the closing day:
While the vast mountain's dizzy steep
The whirlwind's eddying rage assails,
The gentlest zephyrs softly sweep
The verdure of thy sheltered vales:
While o'er the wild and whitening seas
The unbridled north triumphant roars,
Thy stream scarce ripples in the breeze,
That bends the willow on thy shores:

135

And thus, while war o'er Europe flings
Destruction from his crimson wings,
While Danube's wasted banks around
The steps of mingling foes resound,
Thy pure waves wash a stainless soil,
To crown a patriot people's toil.

Yet on these shores, in elder days,
Arose the battle's maddening blaze:
Even here, where now so softly swells
The music of the village-bells,
The painted savage rolled to war
The terrors of the scythed car,
And wide around, with fire and sword,
The devastating Roman poured:
Here shouted o'er the battle-plain
The Pict, the Saxon, and the Dane:
And many a long succeeding year
Saw the fierce Norman's proud career,
The deadly hate of feudal foes,
The stain that dyed the pallid rose,
And all the sanguinary spoil
Of foreign and intestine broil.

But now, through banks from strife remote,
Thy crystal waters wind along,
Responsive to the wild bird's note,
Or lonely boatman's careless song.
Oh! ne'er may thy sweet echoes swell
Again with war's demoniac yell!
Oh! ne'er again may civil strife

136

Here aim the steel at kindred life!
Ne'er may those deeds of night and crime,
That stain the rolls of feudal time,
Again pollute these meads and groves,
Where science dwells, and beauty roves!
And should some foreign tyrant's band
Descend to waste the beauteous land,
Thy swelling current, eddying red,
Shall roll away the impious dead.

Let fancy lead, from Trewsbury Mead,

The Thames rises in a field called Trewsbury Mead, near the villages of Tarlton and Kemble, in Gloucestershire.

With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep,
Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep,
To where the wide-expanding Nore
Beholds thee, with tumultuous roar,
Conclude thy devious race,
And rush, with Medway's confluent wave,
To seek, where mightier billows rave,
Thy giant-sire's embrace.

Where Kemble's wood-embosomed spire
Adorns the solitary glade,
And ancient trees, in green attire,
Diffuse a deep and pleasant shade,

I am slightly indebted, in this stanza, to one of Ariosto's most exquisite descriptions:

La fonte discorrea per mezzo un prato,
D'arbori antiqui e di bell' ombre adorno,
Che i viandanti col mormorio grato
A bere invita, e a far seco soggiorno.
Un culto monticel dal manco lato
Le difende il calor del mezzo giorno.
Quivi, come i begli occhi prima torse,
D'un cavalier la giovane s'accorse:
D'un cavalier, che all' ombra d'un boschetto,
Nel margin verde, a bianco, e rosso, e giallo,
Sedea pensoso, tacito, e soletto,
Sopra quel chiaro e liquido cristallo.

Thy bounteous urn, light-murmuring, flings
The treasures of its infant springs,
And fast, beneath its native hill,
Impels the silver-sparkling rill,
With flag-flowers fringed and whispering reeds,
Along the many-colored meads.

137

Thames! when, beside thy secret source
Remembrance points the mighty course
Thy defluent waters keep;
Advancing, with perpetual flow,
Through banks still widening as they go,
To mingle with the deep;
Emblemed in thee, my thoughts survey
Unruffled childhood's peaceful hours,
And blooming youth's delightful way
Through sunny fields and roseate bowers;
And thus the scenes of life expand
Till death draws forth, with steady hand,
Our names from his capacious urn;
And dooms alike the base and good,
To pass that all-absorbing flood,
O'er which is no return.

Whence is the ample stream of time?

“Whence is the stream of years? whither do they roll along? where have they hid, in mist, their many-colored sides?” Ossian.

Can fancy's mightiest spell display,
Where first began its flow sublime,
Or where its onward waves shall stray?
What gifted hand shall pierce the clouds
Oblivion's fatal magic rears,
And lift the sable veil, that shrouds
The current of the distant years?
The sage with doubt the past surveys,
Through mists which memory half dispels:
And on the course of future days
Impenetrable darkness dwells.

138

The present rolls in light: awhile
We hail its evanescent smile,
Rejoicing as it flies:
Ephemera on the summer-stream,
Heedless of the descending beam,
And distant lowering skies.
False joys, with fading flowerets crowned,
And hope, too late delusive found,
And fancy's meteor-ray,
And all the passions, light and vain,
That fill ambition's fatal train,
Attend our downward way.
Some struggle on, by tempests driven:
To some a gentler course is given:
All down the self-same stream are rolled:
Their day is passed—their tale is told.

Youth flies, as bloom forsakes the grove,
When icy winter blows:
And transient are the smiles of love,
As dew-drops on the rose.
Nor may we call those things our own,

------ tamquam
Sit proprium quidquam, puncto quod mobilis horæ,
Nunc prece, nunc pretio, nunc vi, nunc sorte suprema,
Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura.

Horatius.

Which, ere the new-born day be flown,
By chance, or fraud, or lawless might,
Or sterner death's supreme award,
Will change their momentary lord,
And own another's right.
As oceans now o'er quicksands roar,
Where fields and hamlets smiled of yore;
As now the purple heather blows,
Where once impervious forests rose;

139

So perish from the burthened ground
The monuments of human toil:
Where cities shone, where castles frowned,
The careless ploughman turns the soil.

How many a chief, whose kindling mind
Convulsed this earthly scene,
Has sunk, forgotten by mankind,
As though he ne'er had been!
Even so the chiefs of modern days,
On whom admiring nations gaze,
Shall sink, by common fate oppressed:
Their name, their place, remembered not:
Not one grey stone to point the spot
Of their eternal rest.

Flow proudly, Thames! the emblem bright
And witness of succeeding years!
Flow on, in freedom's sacred light,
Nor stained with blood, nor swelled with tears.
Sweet is thy course, and clear, and still,
By Ewan's old neglected mill:
Green shores thy narrow stream confine,
Where blooms the modest eglantine,
And hawthorn-boughs o'ershadowing spread,
To canopy thy infant bed.
Now peaceful hamlets wandering through,
And fields in beauty ever new,
Where Lechlade sees thy current strong
First waft the unlaboring bark along;

140

Thy copious waters hold their way
Tow'rds Radcote's arches, old and grey,
Where triumphed erst the rebel host,
When hapless Richard's hopes were lost,
And Oxford sought, with humbled pride,
Existence from thy guardian tide.

Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland, the favorite of Richard the Second, was defeated in the vicinity of Radcote by the Earl of Derby, in the year 1387, and escaped by swimming with his horse across the river.

The wild-flower waves, in lonely bloom,
On Godstow's desolated wall:
There thin shades flit through twilight gloom,
And murmured accents feebly fall.
The aged hazel nurtures there
Its hollow fruit, so seeming fair,
And lightly throws its humble shade,
Where Rosamonda's form is laid.

A small chapel, and a wall, enclosing an ample space, are all now remaining of Godstow Nunnery. A hazel grows near the chapel, the fruit of which is always apparently perfect, but is invariably found to be hollow.

This nunnery derives its chief interest from having been the burial-place of the beautiful Rosamond, who appears, after her death, to have been regarded as a saint.

The rose of earth, the sweetest flower
That ever graced a monarch's breast,
In vernal beauty's loveliest hour,
Beneath that sod was laid to rest.
In vain, the bower of love around,
The Dædalëan path was wound:
Alas! that jealous hate should find
The clue for love alone designed!

The venomed bowl,—the mandate dire,—
The menaced steel's uplifted glare,—
The tear, that quenched the blue eye's fire,—
The humble, ineffectual prayer:—
All these shall live, recorded long
In tragic and romantic song,
And long a moral charm impart,

141

To melt and purify the heart.
A nation's gem, a monarch's pride,
In youth, in loveliness, she died:
The morning sun's ascending ray
Saw none so fair, so blest, so gay:
Ere evening came, her funeral knell
Was tolled by Godstow's convent bell.

The marble tomb, the illumined shrine,
Their unavailing splendor gave:
Where slept in earth the maid divine,
The votive silk was seen to wave.
To her, as to a martyred saint,
His vows the weeping pilgrim poured:
The drooping traveller, sad and faint,
Knelt there, and found his strength restored:
To that fair shrine, in solemn hour,
Fond youths and blushing maidens came,
And gathered from its mystic power
A brighter, purer, holier flame:
The lightest heart with awe could feel
The charm her hovering spirit shed:
But superstition's impious zeal
Distilled its venom on the dead!

A fanatical priest, Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, visiting the nunnery at Godstow, and observing a tomb, covered with silk, and splendidly illuminated, which he found, on inquiry, to be the tomb of Rosamond, commanded her to be taken up, and buried without the church, lest the Christian religion should grow into contempt. This brutal order was instantly obeyed:—“but the chaste sisters,” says Speed, “gathered her bones, and put them in a perfumed bag, enclosing them so in lead, and laid them again in the church, under a fair large grave-stone, about whose edges a fillet of brass was inlaid, and thereon written her name and praise: these bones were at the suppression of the nunnery so found.”—

The illumined shrine has passed away:
The sculptured stone in dust is laid:
But when the midnight breezes play
Amid the barren hazel's shade,
The lone enthusiast, lingering near,
The youth, whom slighted passion grieves,

142

Through fancy's magic spell may hear
A spirit in the whispering leaves;
And dimly see, while mortals sleep,
Sad forms of cloistered maidens move,
The transient dreams of life to weep,
The fading flowers of youth and love!

Now, rising o'er the level plain,
Mid academic groves enshrined,
The Gothic tower, the Grecian fane,
Ascend, in solemn state combined.
Science, beneath those classic spires,
Illumes her watch-lamp's orient fires,
And pours its everlasting rays
On archives of primeval days.
To her capacious view unfurled,
The mental and material world
Their secrets deep display:
She measures nature's ample plan,
To hold the light of truth to man,
And guide his erring way.

Oh sun-crowned science! child of heaven!
To wandering man by angels given!
Still, nymph divine! on mortal sight
Diffuse thy intellectual light,
Till all the nations own thy sway,
And drink with joy the streams of day!
Yet lovest thou, maid! alone to rove
In cloister dim, or polished grove,

143

Where academic domes are seen
Emerging grey through foliage green?
Oh! hast thou not thy hermit seat,
Embosomed deep in mountains vast,
Where some fair valley's still retreat
Repels the north's impetuous blast?
The falling stream there murmurs by:
The tufted pine waves broad and high:
And musing silence sits beneath,
Where scarce a zephyr bends the heath,
And hears the breezes, loud and strong,
Resound the topmost boughs among.
There peace her vestal lamp displays,
Undimmed by mad ambition's blaze,
And shuns, in the sequestered glen,
The storms that shake the haunts of men,
Where mean intrigue, and sordid gain,
And phrensied war's ensanguined reign,
And narrow cares, and wrathful strife,
Dry up the sweetest springs of life.

Oh! might my steps, that darkly roam,
Attain at last thy mountain home,
And rest, from earthly trammels free,
With peace, and liberty, and thee!
Around while faction's tempests sweep,
Like whirlwinds o'er the wintry deep,
And, down the headlong vortex torn,
The vain, misjudging crowd is borne;
'Twere sweet to mark, re-echoing far,
The rage of the eternal war,

144

That dimly heard, at distance swelling,
Endears, but not disturbs, thy dwelling.

But sweeter yet, oh trebly sweet!
Were those blest paths of calm retreat,
Might mutual love's endearing smile
The lonely hours of life beguile!
Love, whose celestial breath exhales
Fresh fragrance on the vernal gales;
Whose starry torch and kindling eye
Add lustre to the summer sky;
Whose voice of music cheers the day,
When autumn's wasting breezes sway;
Whose magic flame the bosom warms,
When freezing winter wakes in storms!

Not in the glittering halls of pride,
Where spleen and sullen pomp reside,
Around though Paphian odors breathe,
And fashion twines her fading wreath,
Young fancy wakes her native grace,
Nor love elects his dwelling-place.
But in the lone, romantic dell,
Where the rural virtues dwell,
Where the sylvan genii roam,
Mutual love may find a home.
Hope, with raptured eye, is there,
Weaving wreaths of pictured air:
Smiling fancy there is found,
Tripping light on fairy ground,
Listening oft, in pine-walks dim,
To the wood-nymph's evening hymn.

145

But whither roams the devious song,
While Thames, unheeded, flows along,
And, sinking o'er the level mead,
The classic domes and spires recede?
The dashing oar the wave divides:
The light bark down the current glides:
The furrowed stream, that round it curls,
In many a murmuring eddy whirls.
Succeeding each as each retires,
Wood-mantled hills, and tufted spires,
Groves, villas, islets, cultured plains,
Towers, cities, palaces, and fanes,
As holds the stream its swift career,
Arise, and pass, and disappear.

O'er Nuneham Courtnay's flowery glades
Soft breezes wave their fragrant wings,
And still, amid the haunted shades,
The tragic harp of Mason rings.
Yon votive urn, yon drooping flowers,
Disclose the minstrel's favorite bowers,
Where first he tuned, in sylvan peace,
To British themes the lyre of Greece.
Delight shall check the expanded sail
In woody Marlow's winding vale:
And fond regret for scenes so fair
With backward gaze shall linger there,
Till rise romantic Hedsor's hills,
And Cliefden's groves, and springs, and rills,
Where hapless Villars, doomed to prove
The ills that wait on lawless love,

146

In festal mirth, and choral song,
Impelled the summer-hours along,
Nor marked, where scowled expectant by
Despair, and shame, and poverty.

The Norman king's embattled towers
Look proudly o'er the subject plain,
Where, deep in Windsor's regal bowers,
The sylvan muses hold their reign.
From groves of oak, whose branches hoar
Have heard primeval tempests roar,
Beneath the moon's pale ray they pass
Along the shore's unbending grass,
And songs of gratulation raise,
To speak a patriot monarch's praise.

Sweetly, on yon poetic hill,
Strains of unearthly music breathe,
Where Denham's spirit, hovering still,
Weaves his wild harp's aërial wreath.
And sweetly, on the mead below,
The fragrant gales of summer blow:
While flowers shall spring, while Thames shall flow,
That mead shall live in memory,
Where valor, on the tented field,
Triumphant raised his patriot shield,
The voice of truth to kings revealed,
And broke the chains of tyranny.

The stream expands: the meadows fly:
The stately swan sails proudly by:

147

Full, clear, and bright, with devious flow,
The rapid waters murmuring go.
Now open Twitnam's classic shores,
Where yet the moral muse deplores
Her Pope's unrivalled lay:
Unmoved by wealth, unawed by state,
He held to scorn the little great,
And taught life's better way.
Though tasteless folly's impious hand
Has wrecked the scenes his genius planned;—
Though low his fairy grot is laid,
And lost his willow's pensive shade;—
Yet shall the ever-murmuring stream,
That lapt his soul in fancy's dream,
Its vales with verdure cease to crown,
Ere fade one ray of his renown.

Fair groves, and villas glittering bright,
Arise on Richmond's beauteous height;
Where yet fond echo warbles o'er
The heaven-taught songs she learned of yore.
From mortals veiled, mid waving reeds,
The airy lyre of Thomson sighs,
And whispers to the hills and meads:
In yonder grave a Druid lies!
The seasons there, in fixed return,
Around their minstrel's holy urn
Perennial chaplets twine:
Oh! never shall their changes greet,
Immortal bard! a song more sweet,
A soul more pure than thine!

148

Oh Thames! in conscious glory glide
By those fair piles that crown thy tide,
Where, worn with toil, from tumult far,
The veteran hero rests from war.
Here, marked by many a well-fought field,
On high the soldier hangs his shield;
The seaman there has furled his sail,
Long rent by many an adverse gale.
Remembered perils, braved and past,—
The raging fight, the whelming blast,
The hidden rock, the stormy shore,
The mountain-breaker's deepening roar,—
Recalled by fancy's spell divine,
Endear their evening's calm decline,
And teach their children, listening near,
To emulate their sires' career.

But swiftly urge the gliding bark,
By yon stern walls and chambers dark,
Where guilt and woe, in night concealed,
Unthought, unwitnessed, unrevealed,
Through lengthened ages scowling stood,
Mid shrieks of death, and tears of blood.
No heart may think, no tongue declare,
The fearful mysteries hidden there:
Justice averts her trembling eye,
And mercy weeps, and hastens by.

Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa:
Misericordia e giustizia gli sdegna:
Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.

Dante.

Long has the tempest's rage been spent
On yon unshaken battlement,
Memorial proud of days sublime,

149

Whose splendor mocks the power of time.
There, when the distant war-storm roared,
While patriot thousands round her poured,
The British heroine grasped her sword,
To trace the paths of victory:
But in the rage of naval fight,
The island-genius reared his might,
And stamped, in characters of light,
His own immortal destiny.

Ascending dark, on uplands brown,
The ivied walls of Hadleigh frown:
High on the lonely mouldering tower
Forms of departed ages lower.
But deeper, broader, louder, glide
The waves of the descending tide;
And soon, where winds unfettered roar,
Where Medway seeks the opening Nore,
Where breakers lash the dark-red steep,

The red cliffs of the isle of Sheppy.

The barks of Britain stem the deep.

Oh king of streams! when, wandering slow,
I trace thy current's ceaseless flow,
And mark, with venerating gaze,
Reflected on thy liquid breast,
The monuments of ancient days,
Where sages, bards, and statesmen rest;
Who, waking erst the ethereal mind,
Instructed, charmed, and blessed mankind
The rays of fancy pierce the gloom

150

That shrouds the precincts of the tomb,
And call again to life and light
The forms long wrapped in central night.
From abbies grey and castles old,
Through mouldering portals backward rolled,
Glide dimly forth, with silent tread,
The shades of the illustrious dead.
Still dear to them their native shore,
The woods and fields they loved of yore;
And still, by farthest realms revered,
Subsists the rock-built tower they reared,
Though lightnings round its summit glow,
And foaming surges burst below.

Thames! I have roamed, at evening hours,
Near beauteous Richmond's courtly bowers,
When, mild and pale, the moon-beams fell
On hill and islet, grove and dell;
And many a skiff, with fleecy sail
Expanded to the western gale,
Traced on thy breast, serenely-bright,
The lengthening line of silver light;
And many an oar, with measured dash
Accordant to the boatman's song,
Bade thy pellucid surface flash,
And whirl, in glittering rings, along;
While from the broad and dripping blade
The clear drops fell, in sparkling showers,
Bright as the crystal gems, displayed
In Amphitrite's coral bowers.

151

There beauty wooed the breeze of night,
Beneath the silken canopy,
And touched, with flying fingers light,
The thrilling chords of melody.
It seemed, that music's inmost soul
Was breathed upon the wandering airs,
Charming to rest, with sweet control,
All human passions, pains, and cares.
Enthusiast voices joined the sound,
And poured such soothing strains around,
That well might ardent fancy deem,
The sylphs had led their viewless band,
To warble o'er the lovely stream
The sweetest songs of fairyland.
Now, breathing wild, with raptured swell,
They floated o'er the silent tide;
Now, soft and low, the accents fell,
And, seeming mystic tales to tell,
In heavenly murmurs died.

Yet that sweet scene of pensive joy
Gave mournful recollections birth,
And called to fancy's wild employ
The certain destinies of earth.
I seemed to hear, in wakening thought,
While those wild minstrel accents rung,
Whate'er historic truth had taught,
Or philosophic bards had sung.
Methought a voice, severe and strange,
Whispered of fate, and time, and change,

152

And bade my wandering mind recall,
How nations rise, and fade, and fall.

Thus fair, of old, Euphrates rolled,
By Babylon's imperial site:
The lute's soft swell, with magic spell,
Breathed rapture on the listening night:
Love-whispering youths and maidens fair
In festal pomp assembled there,
Where to the stream's responsive moan
The desert-gale now sighs alone.

Still changeless, through the fertile plain,
Araxes, loud-resounding, flows,
Where gorgeous despots fixed their reign,
And Chil-minar's proud domes arose.

“The plain of Persepolis is watered by the great river Araxes, or Bendemir. The ancient palace of the kings of Persia, called by the inhabitants Chil-minar, i.e. forty columns, is situated at the foot of the mountain: the walls of this stately building are still standing on three sides; and it has the mountain on the east.” Universal History.

High on his gem-emblazoned throne
Sate kneeling Persia's earthly god:
Fair slaves and satraps round him shone,
And nations trembled at his nod:
The mighty voice of Asia's fate
Went forth from every golden gate.
Now pensive steps the wrecks explore,
That skirt the solitary shore:
The time-worn column mouldering falls,
And tempests rock the roofless walls.

Perchance, when many a distant year,
Urged by the hand of fate, has flown,
Where moonbeams rest on ruins drear,
The musing sage may rove alone;

153

And many an awful thought sublime
May fill his soul, when memory shews,
That there, in days of elder time,
The world's metropolis arose;
Where now, by mouldering walls, he sees
The silent Thames unheeded flow,
And only hears the river-breeze,
Through reeds and willows whispering low.

Where are the states of ancient fame?
Athens, and Sparta's victor-name,
And all that propped, in war and peace,
The arms, and nobler arts, of Greece?
All-grasping Rome, that proudly hurled
Her mandates o'er the prostrate world,
Long heard mankind her chains deplore,
And fell, as Carthage fell before.

Sanazzaro, in his poem De partu Virginis, has a fine passage on the fallen state of Carthage, which Tasso has imitated in the Gerusalemme Liberata:

Et qui vertentes inmania saxa juvencos
Flectit arans, qua devictæ Carthaginis arces
Procubuere, jacentque infausto in litore turres
Eversæ. Quantum illa metus, quantum illa laborum
Urbs dedit insultans Latio et Laurentibus arvis!
Nunc passim vix reliquias, vix nomina servans,
Obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis.
Et querimur genus infelix humana labare
Membra ævo, quum regna palam moriantur, et urbes.
Giace l'alta Cartago: appena i segni
Dell'alte sue ruine il lido serba.
Muojono le città; muojono i regni;
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba:
E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.
O nostra mente cupida e superba!

Is this the crown, the final meed,
To man's sublimest toils decreed?
Must all, from glory's radiant height,
Descend alike the paths of night?
Must she, whose voice of power resounds
On utmost ocean's loneliest bounds,
In darkness meet the whelming doom
That crushed the sovereign strength of Rome,
And o'er the proudest states of old
The storms of desolation rolled?

Time, the foe of man's dominion,
Wheels around in ceaseless flight,

154

Scattering from his hoary pinion
Shades of everlasting night.
Still, beneath his frown appalling,
Man and all his works decay:
Still, before him, swiftly-falling,
Kings and kingdoms pass away.

Cannot the hand of patriot zeal,
The heart that seeks the public weal,
The comprehensive mind,
Retard awhile the storms of fate,
That, swift or slow, or soon or late,
Shall hurl to ruin every state,
And leave no trace behind?

Oh Britain! oh my native land!
To science, art, and freedom dear!
Whose sails o'er farthest seas expand,
And brave the tempest's dread career!
When comes that hour, as come it must,
That sinks thy glory in the dust,
May no degenerate Briton live,
Beneath a stranger's chain to toil,
And to a haughty conqueror give
The produce of thy sacred soil!
Oh! dwells there one, on all thy plains,
If British blood distend his veins,
Who would not burn thy fame to save,
Or perish in his country's grave?

Ah! sure, if skill and courage true
Can check destruction's headlong way,

155

Still shall thy power its course pursue,
Nor sink, but with the world's decay.
Long as the cliff that girds thine isle
The bursting surf of ocean stems,
Shall commerce, wealth, and plenty smile
Along the silver-eddying Thames:

Ποταμος περ ευρροος, ΑΡΓΨΡΟΔΙΝΗΣ.

Homerus.

Still shall thine empire's fabric stand,
Admired and feared from land to land,
Through every circling age renewed,
Unchanged, unshaken, unsubdued;
As rocks resist the wildest breeze,
That sweeps thy tributary seas.

University of Virginia Library

II. PART II

ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND PART