And tyrants foul, and trembling slaves,
Pollute their shores, and curse their waves?
Far other charms than these possess,
Oh Thames! thy verdant margin bless :
Where peace, with freedom hand-in-hand,
Walks forth along the sparkling strand,
And cheerful toil, and glowing health,
Proclaim a patriot nation's wealth.
The blood-stained scourge no tyrants wield:
No groaning slaves invert the field:
But willing labor's careful train
Crowns all thy banks with waving grain,
With beauty decks thy sylvan shades,
With livelier green invests thy glades,
And grace, and bloom, and plenty, pours
On thy sweet meads and willowy shores.
The plain, where herds unnumbered rove,
The laurelled path, the beechen grove,
The lonely oak's expansive pride,*
The spire, through distant trees descried,
The cot, with woodbine wreathed around,
The field, with waving corn embrowned,
The fall, that turns the frequent mill,
The seat, that crowns the woodland hill,
The sculptured arch, the regal dome,
The fisher's willow-mantled home,
The classic temple, flower-entwined,
In quick succession charm the mind,
In the first edition :
The oak, in lonely grandeur free,
Lord of the forest and the sea;
The spreading plain, the cultured hill,
The tranquil cot, the restless mill,
The lonely hamlet, calm and still:
The village-spire, the busy town,
The shelving bank, the rising down,
The fisher's boat, the peasant's home,
The woodland seat, the regal dome,
In quick succession rise, to charm
The mind with virtuous feelings warm
Till, where thy widening, &c.
Till, where thy widening current glides
To mingle with the turbid tides,
Thy spacious breast displays unfurled
The ensigns of the assembled world.
Throned in Augusta's ample port,
Imperial commerce holds her court,
And Britain's power sublimes :
To her the breath of every breeze
Conveys the wealth of subject seas,
And tributary climes.
Adventurous courage guides the helm
From every port of every realm:
Through gales that rage, and waves that whelm,
Unnumbered vessels ride:
Till all their various ensigns fly,
Beneath Britannia's milder sky,
Where roves, oh Thames ! the patriot's eye
O'er thy refulgent tide.
The treasures of the earth are thine:
For thee Golcondian diamonds shine:
For thee, amid the dreary mine,
The patient sufferers toil :
Thy sailors roam, a dauntless host,
From northern seas to India's coast,
And bear the richest stores they boast
To bless their native soil.
O'er states and empires, near and far,
While rolls the fiery surge of war,
Thy country's wealth and power increase,
Thy vales and cities smile in peace:
And still, before thy gentle gales,
The laden bark of commerce sails;
And down thy flood, in youthful pride,
Those mighty vessels sternly glide,
Destined, amid the tempest's rattle,
To hurl the thunder-bolt of battle,
To guard, in danger's hottest hour,
Britannia's old prescriptive power,
And through winds, floods, and fire, maintain
Her native empire of the main.
The mystic nymph, whose ken sublime
Reads the dark tales of eldest time,
Scarce, through the mist of years, descries
Augusta's infant glory rise.
A race, from all the world estranged,
Wild as the uncultured plains they ranged,
Here raised of yore their dwellings rude,
Beside the forest-solitude.
For then, as old traditions tell,
Where science now and splendor dwell,
Along the stream's wild margin spread
A lofty forest's mazes dread.*
None dared, with step profane, impress
Those labyrinths of loneliness,
Where dismal trees, of giant-size,+
Entwined their tortuous boughs on high,
Nor hailed the cheerful morn's uprise,
Nor glowed beneath the evening sky.
The dire religion of the scene
The rustic's trembling mind alarmed:
For oft, the parting boughs between,
'Twas said, a dreadful form was seen,
Of horrid eye, and threatening mien,
With lightning-brand and thunder armed.
Not there, in sunshine-chequered shade,
The sylvan nymphs aud genii strayed;
But horror reigned, and darkness drear,
And silence, and mysterious fear:
And superstitious rites were done,
Those haunted glens and dells among,"
That never felt the genial sun,
Nor heard the wild bird's vernal song:
To gods malign the incense-pyre
Was kindled with unearthly fire,
The existence of this forest is attested by Fitzstephen. Some vestiges of it remained in the reign of Henry the Second.
+ Several lines in this description are imitated from Virgil, Lucan, and Tasco. En. viii. 249. Phars. iii. 399. Ger. lib. xiii. pr.
And human blood had oft bedewed
Their ghastly altars, dark and rude.
There feebly fell, at noon-tide bright,
A dim, discolored, dismal light,
Such as a lamp's pale glimmerings shed
Amid the marsions of the dead.
The Druid's self, who dared to lead
The rites barbaric gods decreed,
Beneath the gloom half-trembling stood As if he almost feared to mark,
In all his awful terrors dark,
The mighty monarch of the wood.
The Roman came: the blast of war
Re-echoed wide o'er hill and dell:
Beneath the storm, that blazed afar,
The noblest chiefs of Albion fell.
The Druids shunned its rage awhile
In sylvan Mona's haunted isle,
Till on their groves of ancient oak
The hostile fires of ruin broke,
Gaunt superstition howling fled,
With all her train of monsters dread:
The gods of terror, death and gloom,
Cowered to the mightier gods of Rome.
The Druids looked, with eyes of fear,
From Mona's woods of gloom severe :
They saw the foe advancing near,
The death-fires blazing high:
Till on their groves of ancient oak
The smouldering flames of ruin broke,
And rolled abroad the volumed smoke
Like storm-clouds on the sky.
When desolation's fiery blast
O'er Mona's sacred groves had past;
When circles rude of shapeless stone,
With lichens grey and moss o'ergrown
And ashes black, remained alone,
To point the mystic scene,
Where once the Druids poured the hy ra
In sacrificial vestments grim,
What time the morning-radiance dim
Shot through the branches green.
When to the dust, &c.
And circles rude of shapeless stone,
With lichens grey and moss o'ergrown,
Alone remained to point the scene,
Where erst Andraste's rites had been.
When to the dust their pride was driven;
When waste and bare their haunts appeared;
No more the oracles of heaven,
By gods beloved, by men revered,
No refuge left but death or flight,
They rushed, unbidden, to the tomb,
Or veiled their heads in caves of night,
And forests of congenial gloom.
There stalked, in murky darkness wide,
Revenge, despair, and outraged pride:
Funereal songs, and ghastly cries,
Rose to their dire divinities.
Oft, in their feverish dreams, again
Their groves and temples graced the plain;
And stern Andraste's fiery form
Called from its caves the slumbering storm,
And whelmed, with thunder-rolling hand,
The flying Roman's impious band.
It chanced, amid that forest's shade,
That frowned where now Augusta towers,
Amongst our Britons," says Mr. Baxter, as quoted by Mr. Davies, Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, p. 617, "even of the present day, Andras is a popular name of the goddess Malen, or the lady, whom the vulgar call Y Vall, that is, Fauna Fatua, and Mamy Drug, the Devil's dam, or Y Wrach, the old hag. That name corresponded not regarded her as a flying spectre. In the fables only with Hecate, Bellona, and Enyo, but also with Bona Dea, the great mother of the gods, and the terrestrial Venus. of the populace, she is styled Y Vad Ddu Hyll, that is Bona Furva Effera, and on the other hand, Y Vad Velen, that is, Helena, or Bona Flava. Agreeably to an ancient rite, the old Britons cruelly offered human sacrifices to this Andrasta: whence, as Dion relates, The memory of this our amazon, Vondicea (Boadicea), invoked her with imprecations, previous to her engagement with the Romans. goddess, or fury, remains to the present day; for men in a passion growl at each other, Mae rhyw Andras arnochwi: Some Andrasta possesses you."
|