There gentle music melts on every spray;

Creation’s mildest charms are there combin’d;

Extremes are only in the master’s mind.

Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,

With daring aims irregularly great.

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by,

Intent on high designs—a thoughtful band,

By forms unfashion’d, fresh from Nature’s hand,

Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,

True to imagin’d right, above control;

While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan,

And learns to venerate himself as man.

Thine, freedom, thine the blessings pictur’d here;

Thine are those charms that dazzle and endear;

Too bless’d indeed were such without alloy,

But, foster’d even by freedom, ills annoy.

That independence Britons prize too high

Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie:

The self-dependent lordlings stand alone—

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