With dull and daily dissonance, repeats Of gondolas and to the busy hum Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Were but the overbeating of the heart, And flow of too much happiness, which needs The aid of age to turn its course apart From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 30 Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. But these are better than the gloomy errors, The weeds of nations in their last decay, When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors, And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay; And Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death, When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, 40 Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away; And then he talks of life, and how again seek; All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate, Although they humbled. With the kingly few The many felt, for from all days and climes She was the voyager's worship; - even her crimes 110 Were of the softer order born of Love, She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead, Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and Bequeath'd, a heritage of heart and hand, And proud distinction from each other land, Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion, As if his senseless sceptre were a wand 140 Full of the magic of exploded science,Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime, Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag, But gladden'd where her harmless conquests May strike to those whose red right hands spread; have bought |