The valiant are the virtuous; and, enthron’d

In valour’s heart supreme, love gentlest reigns.

When did the tender flame omnipotent,

The emanation of divinity,

Eternal with himself, illume the breast

Ignoble? Never. – In that breast impure

And grov’ling, raves a despot uncontroul’d,

Who, evil-mighty, tears the wing from thought,

Libels God’s image in the face of man,

And, melting his infirm resolve, enslaves

The human brute. None but the noble heart

Can truly love. Lo! While caparison’d,

Waits his proud steed impatient, his last kiss,

His last, last look of love, the warrior takes,

Straining the wife and mother to his soul.

Tho’ o’er the swarthy crimson of that cheek,

Steals from his azure eye of tenderness,

The griefful tear of agony and love;

Though round his heart are twin’d those little arms

That clasp his knees; yet, through the battle’s night,

That form of manliest beauty shall advance

Gigantic to the slaughter of the brave,

Shall stamp on danger, and from death’s scar hand

Invincible, wrest immortality.

Ah! hath the fleet ball pierc’d him? Is he slain?

How amiable in the arms of death,

Fire-crested war’s dread victim, he reclines!

No selfish feeling stains his final hour,

Anguish hath quench’d the dim smile on his lip,

Which mourning victory had planted there,

With trembling hand affectionate; and, oh!

The widow and the orphan at his heart

Tug, till life, love, and anguish are no more!

How beautiful, - how beautiful in death,

On hideous slaughter’s crimson breast he sleeps!

Oh! lovely, lovely is that ghastliness,

So blackly pale! and o’er his shroudless corse

Weeping, the dewy midnight loves to bathe

His dusky cheek. Though earth unhallow’d be

Thy pillow; though the peasant on thy bones

Shall tread unconscious; yet th’ unclosing eye

Of heav’n is on the spot where thou art laid.

Eternity shall listen to thy praise.

Full many a tender thought shall live for thee;

For thee the angel-tear of beauty flow;

The soldier’s widow, and the sireless maid,

(The soldier’s love,) shall think of thee and weep.

I, therefore, woo the muses to inspire

Their unrenown'd and youngest votary,

The rural bard, on rural themes intent

No longer: in the shade alone I sit,

Weaving, laborious, this devoted verse,

Proud of my theme, and plead the soldier’s cause.

Not mine the task Homeric, to array

Majestic terrors in majestic verse

Melodious, and, with shuddering pencil, paint

Gore-reeking horror’s visage, and the frown

Of carnage, stamping out the lives of men:

I sing the soldier’s worth and wrongs; I bid

Britannia prize the virtue she may need,

And rear the living bulwark of our homes,

The warrior, - not the desolation-fiend.

How sweet in peace to till our fields; in peace

To live and love! Thou, favour’d Britain, smil’st,

Safe clasp’d in hoary ocean’s strict embrace,

And tempests rock thee to sublime repose.

Mature thy hardy yeoman sinks in death

Amid his weeping kindred; o’er his tomb

No savage hireling’s robber hand hath dragg’d

War’s lifeless victim, but the mourning flower

Blooms unpolluted, blooms to perish there.

On distant, desert shores, thy soldier yet

Hath fought thy battles, and defended there,

Thy stainless matrons, and thy oaken groves,

Thy virgins angel-fair, and law, and life.

Beyond the main, and far from all he loves,

What wild affords his grave? Nor wife, nor child,

Smiles sadly on his silent face, or kneels,

To kiss his wounds, in blood that warm’d his heart.

His home is o’er the waves; and, uninterr’d,

Unhonour’d, bleach his bones. Or, whelm’d beneath

Grey ocean’s barren waters, blackest night

In wildest tempest screams, unheard by him,

Poor prisoner of the deep! Constant and cold,

The wave rolls rumbling o’er his death-blue face,

And, while vast clouds in wrathful combat war,

Rushing, snow-white, in foam o’er rocks unseen,

Lifts to the surface, and the moon’s wan light

Distracted, his dark tresses drench’d and clung;-

Alas, alas! the widow’d wretch exists

Who for those poor unvalu’d locks would give

All, save the hope to kiss them in the skies!

Then, island, led to greatness, by the hand

Of liberty; send not thy soldier forth,

A licens'd ruftian, hired to massacre!

Oh! purchase not dishonour with his blood,

BRITANNIA! oh, prophane not in his heart

Th’ etherial fire of valour! No: let heaven,

With holy joy applauding, register

The dreadless spirit’s name unstain’d, and deeds

Eternal. If he fall, wept let him sleep

Regretted, in his sepulchre sublime,

The spacious carnage-grave. If he survive,

And, crown’d with triumph, poor return to thee,

Oh! let him boast the honourable scar

Though tatter’d crimson hide it! And, oh, queen

Of ocean! though thou send him forth to scourge

Maniac ambition, when his Titan arm

Would grasp and crush the rights of human kind,

And give the earth the tomb’s tranquillity

And solitude; yet, of his precious blood

Be frugal, spill it not in wantonness,

Nor bid him war with possibility.

What, though thy billowy bulwarks fence thee round?

What? Is the wave impregnable? No, no!

The blood of valour on these rocks must stream;

The fight for home and hope must here be waged;

Destruction here must widow many a wife,

Unfather many an infant; and thy cots,

Thy towns must blaze, the flambeaus of his march.

Lo, thou, in unassisted singleness,

ENGLAND, our noble country! Thou art cast

Amid the nations, like a shatter’d boat

On stormy ocean; and hostility,

Boundless as ocean, mightier than the storm,

Hangs o’er thee, mad with victory and crime.

Hast thou not need to prize the fearless soul,

To steel thy warrior’s hand, and gird his heart,

And fill his breast with lightning? Wrong him not!

Honour thy living rampart! And reward

With tears of love, his valour and his wounds!

So shall he bulwalk thee, and in the hour

Tremendous of calamity and death,

Fight, as his fathers fought, the fear’d of old.

Why howl the anguish’d nations? Europe tears

Her tresses in distraction; on the ground

Her limbs heroic press the putrid gore

Of patriots slaugter’d in their worthiness.

Lo, nature shudders at her children’s deeds!

Pale and prodigious, with erected hair,

Lo, terror stands before the regal throne

A towering spectre! Lo, with energy

Armipotent, invincible, array’d,

The sword of hell, the man of CORSICA,

Drives o’er the nations, faint and army-curs’d,

Their herded kings before him; and the powers

Etherial from Elysium, shuddering, shriek,

Lo, earth, the whole earth, trembles at one man!

Rage ruiner unequall’d! From thy look

Armies recoil. States wither in thy frown,

And dynasties expire. BATAVIA droops

And hugs the chain. Smitten, ITALIA groans;

Again ALARIC and the robbers’ foot,

Have curs’d th’ eternal city. Who shall stay

The lightning? Wild IBERIA, in thy voice,

Proud arbiter of empires, bearing fate,

Kneels, and is lost. Whither, ah, whither, next,

Restless disturber, shall dominion-lust

Lead thine arm’d march? Blood-surfeited, and cloy’d

With conquest, where shall pause thy dire career?

Wilt thou spare none? Ah, will thou murder hope,

Warrior? Now all is thine! Strengthen to soar,

Even th’ IMPERIAL eagle droops in blood

The vanquish’d wing, and pants, expecting death.

Still, still, destroying angel, onward still?

Thou, PRUSSIA, shalt have been! You realms of frost,

Have seen the warriors of the viny land,

Assailers of the storm. Yet, victor, pause!

Plant not thy gory foot on ALBION’s shore!

Halt! Tyrant. What if freemen sojourn here?

Though rivers change their courses at thy nod,

Though thou hast crush’d the everlasting Alps,

And vanquish’d ice-helm’d winter, come not here!

Sovereign of Worlds! my father and my GOD!

With virtue, virtue, arm thy native land.

Thou, Sire Eternal, with omnipotence

Girded, and charioted on storms and night

From world to world:- thou, while the stars turn pale,

Driving the reinless lightnings, calmly see’st

Thy thundering axles shake unnumber’d orbs.

So, on the malice of her foes, looks down

The righteous state! So may the queen of isles

Smile on the tempest, and from the ruin-arm’d

Invasion, guard her pastures ocean-girt,

And dash th’ oppressor from her hallow’d shore,

And make th’ insulted sea his sepulchre.

But what corrupt, what pestilential fiend,

What hell-black demon of impurity,

Full gorg’d with gold from starving labour wrung,

Palsies the soldier’s arm, the soldier’s heart?

Shalt thou too, wither in the battle’s rage,

BRITANNIA? Oh, my country! even now,

The spirits of thy slaughter’d veterans; -

Indignant and tremendous though they stand,

Stern to denounce and clad in dreadful wrongs,

With shadowy hand uplifted to the throne

Of justice; - lo, at once, they pause, they weep,

Trembling for thee. Their wrongs are blotted out,

Their unrewarded scars, - each heart forgets

The hoary mother in her poverty,

The widow scourg’d with scorn, and pang’d with shame

That knows not guilt; - but thee, ungrateful land,

Thee they forget not, ALBION! they exclaim,

“Forgive our country! Save her! Shall she fall,

Fall, gold corrupted? fall to rise no more?

Forgive our sinking country, GOD of Hosts!”