They called Thee Merry England in old time,
A happy people won for thee that name
With envy heard in many a distant clime,
And, spite of change, for me thou keep’st the same
Endearing title, a responsive chime
To the heart’s fond belief: though some there are
Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare
For inattentive Fancy, like the lime
Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask,
This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime;
These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will?
Forbid it, Heaven!—and Merry England still
Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme!
William Wordsworth.
XL
HOPE
Despond who will—I heard a voice exclaim,
‘Though fierce the assault, and shattered the defence,
It cannot be that Britain’s social frame,
The glorious work of time and providence,
Before a flying season’s rash pretence,
Should fall; that She, whose virtue put to shame,
When Europe prostrate lay, the Conqueror’s aim,
Should perish, self-subverted. Black and dense
The cloud is; but brings that a day of doom
To Liberty? Her sun is up the while,
That orb whose beams round Saxon Alfred shone:
Then laugh, ye innocent Vales! ye Streams, sweep on,
Nor let one billow of our heaven-blest Isle
Toss in the fanning wind a humbler plume.’
William Wordsworth.
SCOTT
XLI
IN MEMORIAM
(Nelson: Pitt: Fox)
To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But O my Country’s wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise;
The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,
The hand that grasped the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine,
Where glory weeps o’er Nelson’s shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,
That shrouds, O Pitt, thy hallowed tomb!