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 gor'd without a pang; as if the wretch, Pass'd off to Heaven, translated and not kill'd;- Are coming on us, O my countrymen ! Strong and retributive, should make us know The meaning of our words, force us to feel Of our fierce doings? Spare us yet awhile, Father and God! Oh! spare us yet awhile! Laugh'd at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all Which grew up with you round the same fire-side, Without the infidel's scorn, make yourselves pure! As the vile sea-weed, which some mountain-blast Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung I have told, O Britons! O my brethren! I have told At their own vices. We have been too long All change from change of constituted power; On which our vice and wretchedness were tagg'd Poor drudges of chastising Providence, Who borrow all their hues and qualities From our own folly and rank wickedness, Which gave them birth and nurse them. Others, mean while, 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 deem'd 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 of 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, All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts, All adoration of the God in Nature, All lovely and all honorable things, May my fears, My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts Pass like the gust, that roar'd and died away In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard In this low dell, bow'd not the delicate grass. But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad In such a quiet and surrounded nook, This burst of prospect, here the shadowy Main, Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms And close behind them, hidden from my view, Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe And my babe's mother dwell in peace! With light And quicken'd footsteps thitherward I tend, |