Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill,
When meditation has her fill,
I just may cast my careless eyes,
Where London's spiry turrets rise;
Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain,—
Then shield me in the woods again.
Et tantas audetis tollere moles?
Quos ego-sed motos præstat componere fluctus.
Post mihi non simili pœna 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,
1 The circumstances to which the poem refers are as follows:In the summer of 1726, Admiral Hosier had been sent to the Spanish West Indies to protect our commerce, with strict injunctions to avoid reprisals; and soon afterwards the Spanish minister was abruptly recalled from the court of St. James's, leaving behind him a memorial which was described in the King's Speech, on opening the Parliament in January 1727, as very little short of a declaration of war. The Spaniards were the first to commence hostilities, by investing Gibraltar, and attacking the English flag in American waters. Early in 1728, however, preliminaries of peace were arranged and ratified at Madrid, to the undisguised delight of the English minister, who was thus enabled to close an arduous session amidst the acclamations of the people. But the exultation was brief; for, notwithstanding that this peace was formally agreed to, and the preliminaries signed, the Spaniards con
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 flowed 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, stretched
Her dove-like wings: and War, though greatly roused, Yet mourns his fettered hands. While thus the queen Of nations spoke; and what she said the muse Recorded, faithful, in unbidden verse.
"E'en not yon sail, that, from the sky-mixed wave, Dawns on the sight, and wafts the Royal Youth,1 A freight of future glory to my shore; E'en 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, the insulting Spaniard dares Infest the trading flood, full of vain war
tinued to obstruct our trade, and make prizes of our merchant ships. When Parliament met in January 1729, it was besieged by petitions from the mercantile interest, demanding redress. A committee was appointed to investigate the subject; Spain was declared by a unanimous resolution to have violated the treaty; and an address was voted to his Majesty, praying that he would obtain satisfaction for the depredations committed on his subjects. It was at this juncture Britannia appeared.
1 Frederick, Prince of Wales, then lately arrived.
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 sailed my fleets for this; on Indian tides
To float, inactive, with the veering winds?
The mockery of war! while hot disease,
And sloth distempered, 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 warship comes again,
Dispirited and thin; her sons ashamed
Thus idly to review their native shore,
With not one glory sparkling in their eye,
One triumph on their tongue.
The violated merchant comes along ;
That far sought wealth, for which the noxious gale
He drew, and sweat beneath equator suns,
By lawless force detained; 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 rolled his trembling ports
In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
Won by the ravage of a butchered 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,
Swelled o'er the labouring surge; like a whole heaven
Of clouds, wide rolled before the boundless breeze.
Gaily the splendid armament along
Exultant ploughed, 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,
Stretched out from sky to sky, the gathered force
Of ages held in its capacious womb.
But soon, regardless of the cumbrous pomp,
My dauntless Britons came, a gloomy few,
With tempests black, the goodly scene deformed,
And laid their glory waste. The bolts of fate
Resistless thundered through their yielding sides;
Fierce o'er their beauty blazed the lurid flame;
And seized in horrid grasp, or shattered 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 swelled a storm,
Round the glad isle, snatched by the vengeful blast,
The scattered remnants drove; on the blind shelve,
And pointed rock, that marks the indented shore,
Relentless dashed, 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,
E'en in those troubled times, when dreadful Blake
Awed angry nations with the British name,
Let every humbled state, let Europe say,
Sustained, 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 conquered seas,
For which their wisdom planned, their councils glowed,
And their veins bled through many a toiling age! 1
"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
1 It is the ministry of Walpole, recently lauded to the skies for transcendent patriotism, in the dedication of the lines to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, that is here charged with having brought England to this condition of degradation.
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