r wat'ry realms should ring;
Your pearl alcoves,
Your coral groves,
Should echo theirs, and Britain's king.

As long as stars
Guide mariners,
As Carolina's virtues please,
Or suns invite
The ravish'd sight,
The British flag shall sweep the seas.

Peculiar both!
Our soil's strong growth,
And our bold natives' hardy mind;
Sure heaven bespoke
Our hearts and oak,
To give a master to mankind.

That noblest birth
Of teeming earth,
Of forests fair, that daughter proud,
To foreign coasts
Our grandeur boasts,
And Britain's pleasure speaks aloud:

Now big with war,
Sends fate from far,
If rebel realms their fate demand,
Now, sumptuous spoils
Of foreign soils
Pours in the bosom of our land.

Hence Britain lays
In scales, and weighs
The fate of kingdoms, and of kings;
And as she frowns,
Or smiles, on crowns
A night, or day of glory, springs.

Thus ocean swells
The streams and rills,
And to their borders lifts them high;
Or else withdraws
The mighty cause,
And leaves their famish'd channels dry.

How mixt, how frail,
How sure to fail,
Is every pleasure of mankind!
A damp destroys
My blooming joys,
While Britain's glory fires my mind.

For who can gaze
On restless seas,
Unstruck with life's more restless state?
Where all are tost,
And most are lost,
By tides of passion, blasts of fate?

The world's the main,
How vext! how vain!
Ambition swells, and anger foams;
May good men find,
Beneath the wind,
A noiseless shore, unruffled homes!

The public scene
Of harden'd men
Teach me, O teach me to despise!
The world few know
But to their woe,
Our crimes with our experience rise;

All tender sense
Is banish'd thence,
All maiden nature's first alarms
What shock'd before
Disgust no more,
And what disgusted has its charms.

In landscapes green
True bliss is seen,
With innocence, in shades, she sports;
In wealthy towns
Proud labour frowns,
And painted sorrow smiles in courts.

These scenes untried
Seduc'd my pride,
To fortune's arrows bar'd my breast;
Till wisdom came,
A hoary dame!
And told me pleasure was in rest.

"O may I steal
Along the vale
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere!
My