Classic Poem

Genius of Freedom's favour'd isles!
Lo, on yonder cliff she smiles;
Smile, as spreads the bright'ning blaze,
Lucid reason's liberal rays!

The tomes that wasting times defy,
And Fancy's retrospective eye,
Still forms the phalanx firm and free,
When listening on the rock's rough side,
As dulcet, on the aerial tide,
From oaken groves that distant rung;
As Inspiration's minstrel sung
The loud prophetic strain,
The bliss that Freedom's hand bestows,
The gen'rous flame that awes her foes,
And pour'd it not in vain.

Such as o'er the trackless heath,
Unharrass'd yet in fields of death,
Unfetter'd Freedom ran;
Ere yet the moated rampart knew
Oppression's callous steel-clad crew,
Her foes, and those of man!

'Twas now, by dread contention drest,
The fair assumed the hostile crest,
The pointed spear, the shield,
Now taught the gen'rous breast to glow,
Assert its right, direct the blow,
And dare the tented field.

Awhile to desolation doom'd,
As either rose alternate bloom'd
In discord's hated hue;
And freedom, Britain, pining, saw
Progressive slaughter's iron paw,
The fatal field bestrew.

Yet peace again her reign renews,
And commerce op'd her boundless views,
Hence the blissful union broke
The feudal despot's galling yoke,
Fair freedom's dome Britannia's offspring grace,
And hail a chieftain from her genuine race.

Hence the glorious theme was sung;
Hence her hills and vallies rung,
The sounds her torrents still retain,
And tell it to the ambient main!
Triumphant Thames proclaims it far,
Responsive roars the Delawar;
Old Ocean pleased returns the strain,
And pours it on the polished Seine.

Hail, all hail, the godlike ray,
That sparkles, kindles into day;
Gallia feeds the gen'rous flame,
Soars to raise the human name,
Spurns a tyrant's mad decrees,
Nor rears a myriad for one fiend's caprice.

The breast that boasts the beam benign
Exalts the social to divine,
Where love of public virtue glows,
From private worth the blessing flows;
This constitutes the general good,
As confluent streams compose the flood.

Yet, Panton, tho' the shield be thine,
Where Britain's regal roses bloom,

And Emlyn, Cowryd's patriot line
That brav'd awhile their country's doom;
For these, beyond the domes of death,
The braided laurel Cambria leads,
Her happier hour entwines a wreath
For virtues that adorn the shades.