THOU'lt rue thy fathers' sins, not thine, Till built the temples be, replaced The statues, foul and smoke-defaced, -- Roman, -- and reared each tottering shrine. Thou rul'st but under heaven's hand. Thence all beginnings come, all ends. Neglected, mark what woes it sends On this our miserable land. Twice Pacorus and Monaeses foiled Our luckless onset: huge their glee, When to their necklaces they see Hanging the wealth of Rome despoiled. Dacian and AEthiop nigh laid low Our state, with civil feuds o'errun; One with his fleet dismayed her, one Smote her with arrows from his bow. A guilty age polluted first Our beds, hearths, families: from that source Derived, the foul stream, gathering force, O'er the broad land, a torrent, burst. Pleased, now, the maiden learns to move To soft Greek airs: already knows -- Fresh from the nursery -- how to pose Her graceful limbs; and dreams of love: Next, while her lord drinks deep, invites Her gallants in: nor singles one, Into whose guilty arms to run, Stealthy and swift, when dim the lights: No! in her lord's sight up springs she: Alike at some small tradesman's beck, As his who walks a Spanish deck And barters wealth for infamy. -- Were those lads of such parents bred Who dyed the seas with Punic blood? Pyrrhus, Antiochus withstood, And Hannibal, the nation's dread? Rude soldiers' sons, a rugged kind, They brake the soil with Sabine spade: Or shouldered stakes their axe had made To a right rigorous mother's mind, What time the shadows of the rocks Change, as the sun's departing car Sends on the hours that sweetest are, And men unyoke the wearied ox. Time mars not -- what? A spoiler he. Our sires were not so brave a breed As @3their@1 sires: we, a worse, succeed; To raise up sons more base than we. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE ADOPTED CHILD by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS ON A GREEK VASE by FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 3. TO THE CUCKOO by MARK AKENSIDE BIRTHDAY LINES TO AGNES BAILLIE by JOANNA BAILLIE TO MY WIFE by WILLIAM ROSE BENET ONE THAT'S ON THE SEA by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD THE POET by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT SONNET ON MOOR PARK - WRITTEN AT LEE PRIORY, AUGUST 10, 1826 by SAMUEL EGERTON BRYDGES |