By holy zeal inspired, and led by fame,
To thee, once favourite isle, with joy I came;
What time the Goth, the Vandal, and the Hun,
Had my own native Italy[1] o’errun. 
Ierne, to the world’s remotest parts,
Renown’d for valour, policy, and arts. 
  Hither from Colchos,[2] with the fleecy ore,
Jason arrived two thousand years before. 
Thee, happy island, Pallas call’d her own,
When haughty Britain was a land unknown:[3]
From thee, with pride, the Caledonians trace[4]
The glorious founder of their kingly race: 
Thy martial sons, whom now they dare despise,
Did once their land subdue and civilize;
Their dress, their language, and the Scottish name,
Confess the soil from whence the victors came. 
Well may they boast that ancient blood which runs
Within their veins, who are thy younger sons. 
A conquest and a colony from thee,
The mother-kingdom left her children free;
From thee no mark of slavery they felt: 
Not so with thee thy base invaders dealt;
Invited here to vengeful Morrough’s aid,[5]
Those whom they could not conquer they betray’d. 
Britain, by thee we fell, ungrateful isle! 
Not by thy valour, but superior guile: 
Britain, with shame, confess this land of mine
First taught thee human knowledge and divine;
My prelates and my students, sent from hence,
Made your sons converts both to God and sense: 
Not like the pastors of thy ravenous breed,
Who come to fleece the flocks, and not to feed. 
  Wretched Ierne! with what grief I see
The fatal changes time has made in thee! 
The Christian rites I introduced in vain: 
Lo! infidelity return’d again! 
Freedom and virtue in thy sons I found,
Who now in vice and slavery are drown’d. 
  By faith and prayer, this crosier in my hand,
I drove the venom’d serpent from thy land: 
The shepherd in his bower might sleep or sing,[6]
Nor dread the adder’s tooth, nor scorpion’s sting. 
  With omens oft I strove to warn thy swains,
Omens, the types of thy impending chains. 
I sent the magpie from the British soil,
With restless beak thy blooming fruit to spoil;
To din thine ears with unharmonious clack,
And haunt thy holy walls in white and black. 
What else are those thou seest in bishop’s gear,
Who crop the nurseries of learning here;
Aspiring, greedy, full of senseless prate,
Devour the church, and chatter to the state? 
  As you grew more degenerate and base,
I sent you millions of the croaking race;
Emblems of insects vile, who spread their spawn
Through all thy land, in armour, fur, and lawn;
A nauseous brood, that fills your senate walls,
And in the chambers of your viceroy crawls! 
  See, where that new devouring vermin runs,
Sent in my anger from the land of Huns! 
With harpy-claws it undermines the ground,
And sudden spreads a numerous offspring round. 
Th’ amphibious tyrant, with his ravenous band,