Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud!
O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow!
The past to thee, to thee the future cries!
Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below!
Rise, God of Nature! rise.'
Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion! O my mother isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks
(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks);
And Ocean, 'mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safety to his island-child!
Hence, for many a fearless age
Has social Quiet loved thy shore!
Nor ever proud invader's rage
Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore.
Abandoned of Heaven! mad Avarice thy guide,
At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride-
'Mid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast stood,
And joined the wild yelling of Famine and Blood!
The nations curse thee!
In vain, in vain the birds of warning sing-
And hark! I hear the famished brood of prey
Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind!
Away, my soul, away!
I, unpartaking of the evil thing,
With daily prayer and daily toil
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,
Have wailed my country with a loud lament.
Now I recentre my immortal mind
In the deep sabbath of meek self-content; Cleansed from the vaporous passions that bedim God's image, sister of the seraphim.