I could have wisht your spirits redoubled in my breast,
To give my verse applause to time’s eternal rest.
Thus scarcely said the Muse, but hovering while she hung
Upon the[57] Celtic wastes, the sea-nymphs loudly sung:
‘O ever-happy isles, your heads so high that bear,
‘By nature strongly fenc’d, which never need to fear
‘On Neptune’s watry realms when Eölus raiseth wars,
‘And every billow bounds, as though to quench the stars:
‘Fair Jersey first of these here scatter’d in the deep,
‘Peculiarly that boasts thy double-horned sheep: