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our mandates for the certain death

       Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,

       And women, that would groan to see a child

       Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,

       The best amusement for our morning meal!

       The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers

       From curses, who knows scarcely words enough

       To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,

       Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute

       And technical in victories and defeats,

       And all our dainty terms for fratricide;

       Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues

       Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which

       We join no feeling and attach no form!

       As if the soldier died without a wound;

       As if the fibres of this godlike frame

       Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch,

       Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,

       Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;

       As though he had no wife to pine for him,

       No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days

       Are coming on us, O my countrymen!

       And what if all-avenging Providence,

       Strong and retributive, should make us know

       The meaning of our words, force us to feel

       The desolation and the agony

       Of our fierce doings?

      Spare us yet awhile,

       Father and God! O, spare us yet awhile!

       Oh! let not English women drag their flight

       Fainting beneath the burthen of their babes,

       Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday

       Laughed at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all

       Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms

       Which grew up with you round the same fireside,

       And all who ever heard the Sabbath-bells

       Without the Infidel’s scorn, make yourselves pure!

       Stand forth! be men! repel an impious foe,

       Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,

       Who laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth

       With deeds of murder; and still promising

       Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,

       Poison life’s amities, and cheat the heart

       Of faith and quiet hope, and all that soothes,

       And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;

       Render them back upon the insulted ocean,

       And let them toss as idly on its waves

       As the vile seaweed, which some mountain-blast

       Swept from our shores! And oh! may we return

       Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,

       Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung

       So fierce a foe to frenzy!

      I have told,

       O Britons! O my brethren! I have told

       Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.

       Nor deem my zeal or fractious or mistimed;

       For never can true courage dwell with them

       Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look

       At their own vices. We have been too long

       Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,

       Groaning with restless enmity, expect

       All change from change of constituted power;

       As if a Government had been a robe

       On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged

       Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe

       Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach

       A radical causation to a few

       Poor drudges of chastising Providence,

       Who borrow all their hues and qualities

       From our own folly and rank wickedness,

       Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,

       Dote with a mad idolatry; and all

       Who will not fall before their images,

       And yield them worship, they are enemies

       Even of their country!

      Such have I been deemed. -

       But, O dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!

       Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy

       To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,

       A husband, and a father! who revere

       All bonds of natural love, and find them all

       Within the limits ot thy rocky shores.

       O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!

       How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy

       To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,

       Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,

       Have drunk in all my intellectual life,

       All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,

       All adoration of the God in nature,

       All lovely and all honourable things,

       Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel

       The joy and greatness of its future being?

       There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul

       Unborrowed from my country! O divine

       And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole

       And most magnificent temple, in the which

       I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,

       Loving the God that made me! -

      May my fears,

       My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts

       And menace of the vengeful enemy

       Pass like the gust, that roared and died away

       In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard

       In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

      But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad

       The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze:

       The light has left the summit of the hill,

       Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,

       Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,

       Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!

       On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,

       Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled

       From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,

       I find myself upon the brow, and pause

       Startled! And after lonely sojourning

       In such a quiet and surrounded nook,

       This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,

       Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty

       Of that huge amphitheatre of rich

      

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