Accomplish’d thus he wing’d his way,
    And zealous roved from pole to pole, 50
  The rolls of right eternal to display,
    And warm with patriot thoughts the aspiring soul;
  On desert isles ’twas he that raised
    Those spires that gild the Adriatic wave,[2]
  Where Tyranny beheld, amazed,
    Fair Freedom’s temple where he mark’d her grave: 
  He steel’d the blunt Batavian’s arms
    To burst the Iberian’s double chain;
  And cities rear’d, and planted farms,
    Won from the skirts of Neptune’s wide domain.[3] 60
  He with the generous rustics sate
    On Uri’s rocks[4] in close divan;
  And wing’d that arrow sure as fate,
    Which ascertain’d the sacred rights of man.

  STROPHE.

  Arabia’s scorching sands he cross’d,
    Where blasted Nature pants supine,
  Conductor of her tribes adust
    To Freedom’s adamantine shrine;
  And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast,
    He snatch’d from under fell Oppression’s wing, 70
  And taught amidst the dreary waste
    The all-cheering hymns of liberty to sing. 
  He virtue finds, like precious ore,
    Diffused through every baser mould;
  E’en now he stands on Calvi’s rocky shore,[5]
    And turns the dross of Corsica to gold. 
  He, guardian Genius! taught my youth
    Pomp’s tinsel livery to despise;
  My lips, by him chastised to truth,
    Ne’er paid that homage which my heart denies. 80

  ANTISTROPHE.

  Those sculptured halls my feet shall never tread,
    Where varnish’d Vice and Vanity, combined
  To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread,
    And forge vile shackles for the freeborn mind;
  While Insolence his wrinkled front uprears,
    And all the flowers of spurious Fancy blow;
  And Title his ill-woven chaplet wears,
    Full often wreath’d around the miscreant’s brow;
  Where ever-dimpling Falsehood, pert and vain,
    Presents her cup of stale Profession’s froth; 90
  And pale Disease, with all his bloated train,
    Torments the sons of gluttony and sloth.

  STROPHE.

  In Fortune’s car behold that minion ride,
    With either India’s glittering spoils oppress’d;
  So moves the sumpter-mule in harness’d pride,
    That bears the treasure which he cannot taste. 
  For him let venal bards disgrace the bay,
    And hireling minstrels wake the tinkling string;
  Her sensual snares let faithless Pleasure lay;
    And jingling bells fantastic Folly ring; 100
  Disquiet, doubt, and dread shall intervene,
    And Nature, still to all her feelings just,
  In vengeance hang a damp on every scene,
    Shook from the baneful pinions of Disgust.

  ANTISTROPHE.