Classic Poem

Yes —our sequester'd vales have heard
The voice of Freedom's chosen bard;
He bids forsake the groves and streams,
He points the Muse to loftier themes;
To themes that Grecian lays inspir'd,
To themes that Grecian heroes fir'd,
To themes that Albion's druid sung,
Their mountains bleak and oak-crown'd rocks among.

Begone, ye amorous trifling train!
Forbear your soft enervate strain;
Your idle tales of wanton loves,
Of wounds and fiames, and darts and doves
Begone, and in the Gallic land,
Where Folly leads her laughing band,
Along the gaudy banks of Seine
Mix in the light dance on the flowery plain.

Not that I scorn the love-taught lay,
Where Nature speaks in Nature's way,
Where Truth dictates, and Reason guides,
And spotless Chastity presides:
But sure a nobler love inspires,
A nobler praise awaits the song,
That glows with Freedom's sacred fires,
And marks the bounds of right and wrong;
For those who plead their country's cause,
Shall grateful time reserve a just applause,
And bear their fame through ages yet unborn,
Bright as the sun, and fragrant as the morn.

Are there who breathe in British air,
And wish a tyrant's yoke to bear?
O hence, ye servile race, remove,
And taste the slavery ye love;
Where causeless wars and varied woes
Are gifts unbounded power bestows,
Where pines the swain on richest soils,
And fell Oppression frowns though Nature smiles
On winding Ligris' verdant side,
Or where the Rhone devolves his tide,
Some sweet sequester'd scene explore,
Where vine-clad hills surround the shore;
There thoughtless, indolent, and gay,
They sport the smiling hours away
Ambition calls, their king commands,
They march, they fight, they fall, in foreign lands.
Not so, where on the azure main
Extends our Albion's happy plain;
Her sons, a race sublime of soul,
Nor fear, nor lawless force control:
Who serves in peace or serves in war,
Attends but where his choice inclines;
Each makes his nation's fame his care,
And this performs what that designs:
Beneath fair Freedom's favouring smile,
The' uninjur'd peasant tills a kindly soil;
Resound, ye vallies! while your shepherds sing,
A free-born people, and a father-king.
By each ferocious Norman's reign,
Each haughty Tudor's galling chain,
And all the ills for thee design'd
In every gloomy Stuart's mind;
Till injur'd freedom wafted o'er
Her guardian from the Belgic shore;
By every former frown of fate,
O prize, Britannia! prize thy present state.
Whoe'er or heart or hand employ'd
To gain the bliss by thee enjoy'd;
Or bold in war thy standard rear'd;
Who bold were in thy senate heard,
Or nobly suffer'd for thy cause,
The victims of perverted laws;
To these the honours due decree,
And raise the storied arch to Liberty.

Conspicuous on the trophied ground,
With these her chosen train around,
The sculptor's art with nicest care
Should place her image, heavenly fair:
While Commerce, fraught with gems and ores,
The gifts of many a distant land,
And labour crown'd with rural stores,
Sustain her throne on either hand;
Oppression bound shall rage in vain,
And Persecution struggle with her chain;
And proud Iberia's shatter'd helm appear,
And trampled papal crowns, and Gallia's broken spear.