Classic Poem

While with a strong and yet a gentle hand
You bridle faction and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves and from the foe,
Make us unite and make us conquer too.

Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.

Above the waves as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds and save the Trojan race,
So has your highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.

Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you is made a glorious state,
The seat of empire where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scotch, to fetch their doom.

The sea's our own, and now all nations greet
With bending sails each vessel of our fleet;
Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

Heaven (that has placed this island to give law,
To balance Europe and her states to awe)
In this conjunction does on Britain smile:
The greatest leader and the greatest isle!

Whether this portion of the world were rent,
By the rude ocean, from the continent,
Or thus created, it was sure designed
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.

Hither the oppressed shall henceforth resort,
Justice to crave, and succour, at your court,
And then your highness not for ours alone
But for the world's protector shall be known.

Fame, swifter than your winged navy, flies
Through every land that near the ocean lies,
Sounding your name and telling dreadful news
To all that piracy and rapine use.

With such a chief the meanest nation blessed
Might hope to lift her head above the rest:
What may be thought impossible to do
By us, embraced by the sea and you?

Lords of the world's great waste, the ocean, we
Whole forests send to reign upon the sea,
And every coast may trouble or relieve,
But none can visit us without your leave.

Angels and we have this prerogative
That none can at our happy seat arrive,
While we descend at pleasure to invade
The bad with vengeance and the good to aid.

Our little world, the image of the great,
Like that, amidst the boundless ocean set,
Of her own growth has all that nature craves,
And all that's rare as tribute from the waves.

As Egypt does not on the clouds rely,
But to the Nile owes more than to the sky,
So what our earth and what our heaven denies
Our ever-constant friend, the sea, supplies.

The taste of hot Arabia's spice we know,
Free from the scorching sun that makes it grow;
Without the worm in Persian silks we shine;
And without planting drink of every vine.

To dig for wealth we weary not our limbs:
Gold, though the heaviest metal, hither swims.
Ours is the harvest where the Indians mow:
We plough the deep and reap what others sow.

Things of the noblest kind our own soil breeds,
Stout are our men and warlike are our steeds:
Rome, though her eagle through the world had flown,
Could never make this island all her own.

Here the third Edward, and the Black Prince too,
France-conquering Henry, flourished, and now you,
For whom we stayed as did the Grecian state
Till Alexander came to urge their fate.