Classic Poem

Hail! muse of my Lancastria fair;
No more may lie the bleeding flowers;
Born but to breathe one native air,
They intertwine in their own bowers.
Red rose and white, commingling well,
Another beauty shall be born,
And all shall praise and love to tell
They have escaped the wounding thorn.
No more in England's genial vales
Vex'd feud or civil broil prevails;
Then all unite, as if in one--
Let all be free beneath the sun!

In by-gone years the tyrants reigned,
And with a cruel hand held sway;
With blood of innocence were stained
The savage lictors of the day.
On the three isles--the world-renowned--
The triune home of famous men,
The visage of the statesman frowned,
And none durst use the tongue or pen.
Unnumber'd pris'ners of the state--
Unnumber'd martyrs met their fate;
The victims of suspended laws,
Their lives devote to virtue's cause.

Then our Sardanapalus loved,
And drank his wine and ate his fill,
While Sidmouth, placid and unmoved,
Sent forth his myrmidons of ill.
Now bloom the vallies of the free,
And clouds of darkness flee the land;
Britannia smiles o'er land and sea,
To exercise a mild command.
There beams around another sun,
Dread times are numbered with the gone;
The moaning voice of Castlereagh,
In his blood welt'ring at North Cray,
Sounds in mine ears his myriad crimes--
A tragic tale of other times.

In city Metropolitan
Behold a Crystal Palace rise,
That beggars every ancient fane,
In high commercial mysteries:
Now realised is Chaucer's dream
Upon this moral battlefield:
From Baltic and from Ganges' stream,
The universal nations yield:
Freedom and Commerce here shake hands,
And nation, nation understands;
No more confounded are the tongues;
For love and friendship righteth wrongs;
Disorder, order soon appears;
The human face an aspect wears,
As if were not the lictor's rod,
And men deserved the smiles of God.

The fairy palace of old times
Had taught my heart the better way;
Yet other themes provoke my rhymes,
And rouse me from the lethargy,
That peaceful meditations brought,
To lull me in the outward sense;--
Hence, diabolic evils, wrought
Within the halls of indolence!
Ah! may I speak from wounded pride,
With feelings unto rage allied--
When nature cries to all around,
In the expressive bleeding wound?

Peace would extend her realms afar,
Mid mild ameliorated laws,
The stains incarnadine of war,
To cleanse in Christian mercy's cause;
A princely word of love to man
Had called each nation and each clime--
Each creed and colour, dark and wan,
To grace his own Victoria's time.
They met--not on Marengo's plain,
Where, erst lay thousands madly slain--
But near his own adopted home:
Oh! noble words--"Come, hither, come--
Come, to the kingdom of my bride;
See, Queen and Subject, side by side,

"Lo! view the arts of peace awhile!
The product of the loom and mine;
Lo! view the arts triumphant smile
In this emporium crystalline.
Mechanic, or artificer,
Ploughman, or poet, may behold--
Clerk, merchant, auditor, or peer,
May view much more than mines of gold,--
What dextrous hand, or cultured mind,
Our natural gifts by heaven designed,
Can work, or mould, or form at will,
By efforts of superior skill:
Here are the treasures of the earth,
What mother Nature brings to birth.

"Come, to this land of chaste delight,
And in her consecrated halls
Behold what charms the human sight,
Yet ne'er the human heart appals;
The civil bond in each degree
Reciprocating mine and thine,
In welfare liberal and free--
Oh what a glorious work divine!
Oh may the arts of love and peace
Make every savage warfare cease!
Come, to the kingdom of my bride--
See, Queen and Subject, side by side.'