WHO comes -- with rapture greeted, and caressed With frantic love -- his kingdom to regain? Him Virtue's Nurse, Adversity, in vain Received, and fostered in her iron breast: For all she taught of hardiest and of best, Or would have taught, by discipline of pain And long privation, now dissolves amain, Or is remembered only to give zest To wantonness. -- Away, Circean revels! But for what gain? if England soon must sink Into a gulf which all distinction levels -- That bigotry may swallow the good name, And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame, By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DECISION (APRIL 14, 1861) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS I SIT AND SEW by ALICE RUTH MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON NATURE (2) by RALPH WALDO EMERSON TO DAISIES, NOT TO SHUT TOO SOON by ROBERT HERRICK SONNET TO MASTER GABRIELL HARVEY, DOCTOR OF LAWES by EDMUND SPENSER INVITATION TO PETERHEAD by JAMES HAY BEATTIE |