Thomas Campbell

But your wights that take no pride to wield A massy spear and well-made shield, Nor joy to draw the sword: Oh, I bring those heartless, hapless drones, Down in a trice on their marrow-bones, To call me King and Lord.

But youth’s fair form, though fallen, is ever fair, And beautiful in death the boy appears, The hero boy, that dies in blooming years: In man’s regret he lives, and woman’s tears; More sacred than in life, and lovelier far, For having …

How glorious fall the valiant, sword in hand, In front of battle for their native land!

To-morrow let us do or die.

The torrent's smoothness, ere it dash below!

O Love! in such a wilderness as this.

A stoic of the woods—a man without a tear.

The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return.

With thunders from her native oak, She quells the floods below.

Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep.

While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow.

Ye mariners of England, That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze!

What though my wingèd hours of bliss have been Like angels visits, few and far between.

Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind, But leave, oh! leave the light of Hope behind!

But sad as angels for the good man's sin, Weep to record, and blush to give it in.

O star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there, To waft us home the message of despair?

Melt and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!

That gems the starry girdle of the year.

What millions died that Caesar might be great!

Let Winter come! let polar spirits sweep The darkening world, and tempest-troubled deep!

And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.

There shall he love when genial morn appears, Like pensive Beauty smiling in her tears.

While Memory watches o'er the sad review Of joys that faded like the morning dew.

The world was sad, the garden was a wild, And man the hermit sigh'd — till woman smiled.