Those who alone thy towers behold
Quivering through aereal gold,
As I now behold them here,
Would imagine not they were 145
Sepulchres, where human forms,
Like pollution-nourished worms,
To the corpse of greatness cling,
Murdered, and now mouldering: 
But if Freedom should awake 150
In her omnipotence, and shake
From the Celtic Anarch’s hold
All the keys of dungeons cold,
Where a hundred cities lie
Chained like thee, ingloriously, 155
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou and they!—­ 160
Clouds which stain truth’s rising day
By her sun consumed away—­
Earth can spare ye:  while like flowers,
In the waste of years and hours,
From your dust new nations spring 165
With more kindly blossoming.

Perish—­let there only be
Floating o’er thy hearthless sea
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally, 170
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan;—­
That a tempest-cleaving Swan
Of the songs of Albion, 175
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung 180
From his lips like music flung
O’er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror:—­what though yet
Poesy’s unfailing River,
Which through Albion winds forever 185
Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred Poet’s grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled? 
What though thou with all thy dead
Scarce can for this fame repay 190
Aught thine own? oh, rather say
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunlike soul? 
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander’s wasting springs; 195
As divinest Shakespeare’s might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged ’mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch’s urn, 200
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp by which the heart
Sees things unearthly;—­so thou art,
Mighty spirit—­so shall be
The City that did refuge thee. 205