And thinks’t thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,
While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore? 
To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof? 
So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,
Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe. 
Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here, [5]
There, the heart-witherings of unuttered fear,
And that sad death, whence most affection bleeds,
Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes. 
Thy baseless wealth dissolves in air away,
Like mists that melt before the morning ray: 
No more on crowded mart or busy street
Friends, meeting friends, with cheerful hurry greet;
Sad, on the ground thy princely merchants bend
Their altered looks, and evil days portend,
And fold their arms, and watch with anxious breast
The tempest blackening in the distant West.

Yes, thou must droop; thy Midas dream is o’er;
The golden tide of Commerce leaves thy shore,
Leaves thee to prove the alternate ills that haunt [6]
Enfeebling Luxury and ghastly Want;
Leaves thee, perhaps, to visit distant lands,
And deal the gifts of Heaven with equal hands.

Yet, O my Country, name beloved, revered,
By every tie that binds the soul endeared,
Whose image to my infant senses came
Mixt with Religion’s light and Freedom’s holy flame! 
If prayers may not avert, if ’tis thy fate
To rank amongst the names that once were great,
Not like the dim cold Crescent shalt thou fade,
Thy debt to Science and the Muse unpaid;
Thine are the laws surrounding states revere,
Thine the full harvest of the mental year,
Thine the bright stars in Glory’s sky that shine, [7]
And arts that make it life to live are thine. 
If westward streams the light that leaves thy shores,
Still from thy lamp the streaming radiance pours. 
Wide spreads thy race from Ganges to the pole,
O’er half the western world thy accents roll: 
Nations beyond the Apalachian hills
Thy hand has planted and thy spirit fills: 
Soon as their gradual progress shall impart
The finer sense of morals and of art,
Thy stores of knowledge the new states shall know,
And think thy thoughts, and with thy fancy glow;
Thy Lockes, thy Paleys shall instruct their youth,
Thy leading star direct their search for truth;
Beneath the spreading Platan’s tent-like shade, [8]
Or by Missouri’s rushing waters laid,
“Old father Thames” shall be the Poets’ theme,
Of Hagley’s woods the enamoured virgin dream,
And Milton’s tones the raptured ear enthrall,
Mixt with the roar of Niagara’s fall;
In Thomson’s glass the ingenuous youth shall learn