| |
From “The Timepiece”: “The Task,” Book. II.
ENGLAND, with all thy faults, I love thee still,— | |
| My country! and, while yet a nook is left | |
| Where English minds and manners may be found, | |
| Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime | |
| Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed | 5 |
| With dripping rains, or withered by a frost, | |
| I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies, | |
| And fields without a flower, for warmer France | |
| With all her vines; nor for Ausonia’s groves | |
| Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers. | 10 |
| To shake thy senate, and from height sublime | |
| Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire | |
| Upon thy foes, was never meant my task: | |
| But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake | |
| Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart | 15 |
| As any thunderer there. And I can feel | |
| Thy follies too; and with a just disdain | |
| Frown at effeminates whose very looks | |
| Reflect dishonor on the land I love. | |
| How, in the name of soldiership and sense, | 20 |
| Should England prosper, when such things, as smooth | |
| And tender as a girl, all essenced o’er | |
| With odors, and as profligate as sweet, | |
| Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath, | |
| And love when they should fight,—when such as these | 25 |
| Presume to lay their hand upon the ark | |
| Of her magnificent and awful cause? | |
| Time was when it was praise and boast enough | |
| In every clime, and travel where we might, | |
| That we were born her children. Praise enough | 30 |
| To fill the ambition of a private man, | |
| That Chatham’s language was his mother tongue, | |
| And Wolfe’s great name compatriot with his own. | |
| |
