| |
| YOU ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease, | |
| Within this region I subsist, | |
| Whose spirits falter in the mist, | |
| And languish for the purple seas. | |
| |
| It is the land that freemen till, | 5 |
| That sober-suited Freedom chose, | |
| The land, where girt with friends or foes | |
| A man may speak the thing he will; | |
| |
| A land of settled government, | |
| A land of just and old renown, | 10 |
| Where Freedom slowly broadens down | |
| From precedent to precedent; | |
| |
| Where faction seldom gathers head, | |
| But, by degrees to fullness wrought, | |
| The strength of some diffusive thought | 15 |
| Hath time and space to work and spread. | |
| |
| Should banded unions persecute | |
| Opinions, and induce a time | |
| When single thought is civil crime, | |
| And individual freedom mute, | 20 |
| |
| Tho’ power should make from land to land | |
| The name of Britain trebly great— | |
| Tho’ every channel of the State | |
| Should fill and choke with golden sand— | |
| |
| Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth, | 25 |
| Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky, | |
| And I will see before I die | |
| The palms and temples of the South. | |
| |
