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(From Amyntor and Theodora)
FAR in the watery waste, where his broad wave, | |
| From world to world, the vast Atlantic rolls | |
| On from the piny shores of Labrador | |
| To frozen Thulé east, her airy height | |
| Aloft to heaven remotest Kilda lifts; | 5 |
| Last of the sea-girt Hebrides, that guard, | |
| In filial train, Britannia’s parent coast. | |
| Thrice happy land! though freezing on the verge | |
| Of arctic skies, yet blameless still of arts | |
| That polish to deprave each softer clime; | 10 |
| With simple nature, simple virtue blest! | |
| Beyond Ambition’s walk; where never War | |
| Upreared his sanguine standard, nor unsheathed | |
| For wealth or power the desolating sword; | |
| Where Luxury, soft siren, who around | 15 |
| To thousand nations deals her nectared cup | |
| Of pleasing bane, that soothes at once and kills, | |
| Is yet a name unknown. But calm content | |
| That lives to reason; ancient faith that binds | |
| The plain community of guileless hearts | 20 |
| In love and union; innocence of ill | |
| Their guardian genius: these the powers that rule | |
| This little world, to all its sons secure; | |
| Man’s happiest life; the soul serene and sound | |
| From passion’s rage, the body from disease. | 25 |
| Red on each cheek behold the rose of health; | |
| Firm in each sinew vigor’s pliant spring, | |
| By temperance braced to peril and to pain | |
| Amid the floods they stem, or on the steep | |
| Of upright rocks their straining steps surmount, | 30 |
| For food or pastime. These light up their morn, | |
| And close their eve in slumbers sweetly deep, | |
| Beneath the north, within the circling swell | |
| Of ocean’s raging sound. But last and best, | |
| What avarice, what ambition shall not know, | 35 |
| True liberty is theirs, the heaven-sent guest, | |
| Who in the cave, or on the uncultured wild, | |
| With independence dwells; and peace of mind, | |
| In youth, in age, their sun that never sets. | |
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