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(From Hope)
FIRED with a zeal peculiar, they defy | |
| The rage and rigor of a polar sky, | |
| And plant successfully sweet Sharon’s rose | |
| On icy plains and in eternal snows. | |
| Oh, blest within the enclosure of your rocks, | 5 |
| Nor herds have ye to boast, nor bleating flocks; | |
| No fertilizing streams your fields divide, | |
| That show reversed the villas on their side; | |
| No groves have ye; no cheerful sound of bird, | |
| Or voice of turtle, in your land is heard; | 10 |
| Nor grateful eglantine regales the smell | |
| Of those that walk at evening where ye dwell; | |
| But Winter, armed with terrors here unknown, | |
| Sits absolute on his unshaken throne; | |
| Piles up his stores amidst the frozen waste, | 15 |
| And bids the mountains he has built stand fast; | |
| Beckons the legions of his storms away | |
| From happier scenes, to make your land a prey, | |
| Proclaims the soil a conquest he has won, | |
| And scorns to share it with the distant sun. | 20 |
| Yet Truth is yours, remote, unenvied isle! | |
| And Peace, the genuine offspring of her smile; | |
| The pride of lettered ignorance, that binds | |
| In chains of error our accomplished minds, | |
| That decks with all the splendor of the true | 25 |
| A false religion, is unknown to you. | |
| Nature, indeed, vouchsafes for our delight | |
| The sweet vicissitudes of day and night; | |
| Soft airs and genial moisture feed and cheer | |
| Field, fruit, and flower, and every creature here: | 30 |
| But brighter beams than his who fires the skies | |
| Have risen at length on your admiring eyes, | |
| That shoot into your darkest caves the day | |
| From which our nicer optics turn away. | |
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