GIBBON! if sterner patriots than thyself
With firmer foot have stampt our English soil;
If Poesy stood high above thy reach,
She stood with only one on either hand
Upon the cliffs of Albion tall and strong:
Meanwhile gregarious songsters trampt around
On plashy meadow-land, mid noisome flowers
Sprung from the rankness of flush city-drains.
In other regions graver History
Meets her own Muse; nor walk they far below.
The rivulets and mountain-rills of Greece
Will have dried up while Avon stil runs on;
And those four rivers freshening Paradise
Gush yet, tho’ Paradise had long been lost
Had not one man restored it; he was ours.
Not song alone detain’d him, tho’ the song
Came from the lips of Angels upon his,
But strenuous action when his country call’d
Drew him from those old groves and that repose
In which the enchantress Italy lulls all.
No Delphic laurel’s trembling glimmery leaves
Checkered thy gravel-walk; ’twas evener ground,
Altho’ mid shafts and cornices o’ergrown
With nettles, and palatial caverns choakt
With rubbish from obliterated names.
There are who blame thee for too stately step
And words resounding from inflated cheek.
Words have their proper places, just like men.
I listen to, nor venture to reprove,
Large language swelling under gilded domes,
Byzantine, Syrian, Persepolitan,
Or where the world’s drunk master lay in dust.
Fabricius heard and spake another tongue,
And such the calm Cornelia taught her boys,
Such Scipio, Cæsar, Tullius, marshaling,
Cimber and wilder Scot were humanized,
And, far as flew the Eagles, all was Rome.
Thou lookedst down complacently where brawl’d
The vulgar factions that infest our streets,
And turnedst the black vizor into glass
Thro’ which men saw the murderer and the cheat
In diadem and cowl. Erectly stood,
After like work with fiercer hand perform’d,
Milton, as Adam pure, as Michael strong,
When brave Britannia struck her bravest blow,
When monstrous forms, half-reptile and half-man,
Snatcht up the hissing snakes from off Hell’s floor
And flung them with blind fury at her crest.
Two valiant men sprang up, of equal force,
Protector and Defender each alike.
Milton amid the bitter sleet drove on,
Shieldbearer to the statelier one who struck
That deadly blow which saved our prostrate sires
And gave them (short the space!) to breathe once more.
History hath beheld no pile ascend
So lofty, large, symmetrical, as thine,
Since proud Patavium gave Rome’s earlier chiefs
To shine again in virtues and in arms.
Another rises from the couch of pain,
Wounded, and worne with service and with years,
To share fraternal glory, and ward off
(Alas, to mortal hand what vain essay!)
The shafts of Envy.
May Thucydides,
Recalled to life among us, close his page
Ere come the Pestilence, ere come the shame
Of impotent and Syracusan war!
Lately (how strange the vision!) o’er my sleep
War stole, in bandages untinged with wounds,
Wheezing and limping on fat nurse’s arm
To take a draught of air before the tent,
And, for each step too fast or wide, rebuked.
Peace stood with folded arms nor ventured near,
But Scorn ran closer, and a shout went up
From north and south above the Euxine wave.