And to the envying world proclaim,
One nation still is brave and free—
Resolv’d to conquer or to die,
True to their King, their Laws, their Liberty:
No barb’rous foe finds here an easy prey—
Un-ransom’d England spurns all foreign sway.[[25]]
The following poem has been transmitted to us, without preface or introduction, by a gentleman of the name of Ireland.[[26]] We apprehend from the peculiarities of the style, that it must be the production of a remote period. We are likewise inclined to imagine, that it may contain allusions to some former event in English history. What that event may have been, we must submit to the better judgment and superior information of our readers, from whom we impatiently expect a solution of this interesting question. The editor has been influenced solely by a sense of its poetical merit.
[Ja’far son of ’Ulbah, of the Banu-l-Hârith.
The Poet, with two companions, went forth to plunder the herds of ’Ukail, a neighbour-tribe, and was beset on his way back by detached parties of that tribe in the valley of Sahbal, whom he overcame and reached home safely.
That even when under Sahbal’s twin peaks upon us drave