Whose dumb majestic pomp yet awes the world,

To animated forms of patriot zeal;

Warm in the living majesty of virtue;

Elate with fearless spirit; firm; resolved;

By fortune nor subdued, nor awed by power.

How raptured fancy burns, while warm in thought
I trace the pictured landscape; while I kiss
With pilgrim lips devout the sacred soil

Stained with the blood of heroes. Cyrnus, hail!

Hail to thy rocky, deep indented shores,

And pointed cliffs, which hear the chafing deep
Incessant foaming round their shaggy sides.
Hail to thy winding bays, thy sheltering ports
And ample harbours, which inviting stretch
Their hospitable arms to every sail :

Thy numerous streams, that bursting from the cliffs
Down the steep channeled rock impetuous pour.

With grateful murmur: on the fearful edge

Of the rude precipice, thy hamlets brown

And straw-roofed cots, which from the level vale

Scarce seen, amongst the craggy hanging cliffs
Seem like an eagle's nest aerial built.

Thy swelling mountains, brown with solemn shade

Of various trees, that wave their giant arms
O'er the rough sons of freedom; lofty pines,
And hardy fir, and ilex ever green,

And spreading chesnut, with each humbler plant,
And shrub of fragrant leaf, that clothes their sides
With living verdure; whence the clustering bee
Extracts her golden dews: the shining box,
And sweet-leaved myrtle, aromatic thyme,

The prickly juniper, and the green leaf

Which feeds the spinning worm; while glowing bright Beneath the various foliage, wildly spreads

The arbutus, and rears his scarlet fruit

Luxuriant, mantling o'er the craggy steeps;

And thy own native laurel crowns the scene.
Hail to thy savage forests, awful, deep;

Thy tangled thickets, and thy crowded woods,

The haunt of herds untamed; which sullen bound

From rock to rock with fierce unsocial air,

And wilder gaze, as conscious of the power

That loves to reign amid the lonely scenes
Of unquelled nature: precipices huge,

And tumbling torrents; trackless deserts, plains
Fenced in with guardian rocks, whose quarries teem
With shining steel, that to the cultured fields

And sunny hills which wave with bearded grain
Defends their homely produce. Liberty,

The mountain Goddess, loves to range at large
Amid such scenes, and on the iron soil

Prints her majestic step. For these she scorns
The green enameled vales, the velvet lap

Of smooth savannahs, where the pillowed head

And bowers that breathe of bliss. For these, when first

This isle emerging like a beauteous gem

From the dark bosom of the Tyrrhene main

Reared its fair front, she marked it for her own,

And with her spirit warmed.

Her genuine sons,

A broken remnant, from the generous stock
Of ancient Greece, from Sparta's sad remains,
True to their high descent, preserved unquenched
The sacred fire through many a barbarous age:
Whom, nor the iron rod of cruel Carthage,
Nor the dread sceptre of imperial Rome,
Nor bloody Goth, nor grisly Saracen,

Nor the long galling yoke of proud Liguria,
Could crush into subjection. Still unquelled
They rose superior, bursting from their chains,
And claimed man's dearest birthright, liberty :
And long, through many a hard unequal strife
Maintained the glorious conflict; long withstood,

With single arm, the whole collected force

Of haughty Genoa, and ambitious Gaul.

And shall withstand it-Trust the faithful Muse!

It is not in the force of mortal arm,

Scarcely in fate, to bind the struggling soul

That galled by wanton power, indignant swells

Against oppression; breathing great revenge,
Careless of life, determined to be free.

And favouring Heaven approves for see the Man,
Born to exalt his own, and give mankind

A glimpse of higher natures: just, as great;
The soul of council, and the nerve of war;
Of high unshaken spirit, tempered sweet
With soft urbanity, and polished grace,
And attic wit, and gay unstudied smiles:
Whom Heaven in some propitious hour endowed
With every purer virtue: gave him all

That lifts the hero, or adorns the man.

Gave him the eye sublime; the searching glance, Keen, scanning deep, that smites the guilty soul As with a beam from heaven; on his brow

Serene, and spacious front, set the broad seal

Of dignity and rule; then smiled benign

On this fair pattern of a God below,

High wrought, and breathed into his swelling breast

The large ambitious wish to save his country.