Classic Poem

Aloft, in pendant clusters; which in malt's
Fermenting tuns insus'd, to mellow age
Preserves the potent draught. Thine to the plant,
To whose tough stringy stalks thy num'rous fleets
Owe their strong cordage: with her sister stem,
Her fairer sister, whence Minerva's tribe,
T'enfold in softness beauty's lovely limbs,
Present their woven texture: and from whence,
A second birth, grows the papyrean leaf,
A tablet firm, on which the painter bard
Delineates thought, and to the wondering eye
Embodies vocal air, and groups the sound.
With various blessings teems thy fruitful womb.
Lo! from the depth of many a yawning mine,
Thy fossil treasures rise. Thy blazing hearths
From deep sulphureous pits, consumeless stores
Of fuel boast. The oil-imbibing earth,
The fuller's mill assisting, safe defies
All foreign rivals in the clothier's art.
The builder's stone thy numerous quarries hide;
With lime, its close concomitant. The hills,
The barren hills of Derby's wildest peak,
In lead abound; soft, fusile, malleable;
Whose ample sheets my venerable domes,
From rough inclement storms of wind and rain,
In safety clothe. Devona's ancient mines,
Whose treasures tempted first Phaenicia's sons
To court thy commerce, still exhaustless, yield
The valued ore, from whence, Britannia, thou
Thine honour'd name deriv'st. Nor want'st thou store
Of that all-useful metal, the support
Of ev'ry art mechanic. Hence arise
In Dean's large forest numerous' glowing kilns,
The rough rude ore calcining; whence convey'd
To the fierce furnace, its intenser heat
Melts the hard mass, which flows an iron stream,
On sandy beds below: and stiffening there,
A pondrous lump, but to the hammer tam'd,
Takes from the forge, in bars, its final form.
But the glad muse, from subterranean caves
Emerging, views with wonder and delight,
What numerous products still remain unsung.
With fish abound thy streams, thy sheltering woods
To fowl give friendly covert! and thy plains
The cloven footed race, in various herds,
Range undisturb'd. Fair Flora's sweetest buds
Blow on thy beauteous bosom; and her fruits
Pomona pours in plenty on thy lap.
Thou to the dyer's tinging cauldron giv'st
The yellow-staining weed, luteola;
The glastum brown, with which thy naked sons
In ancient time their hardy limbs distain'd;
Nor the rich rubia does thine hand withhold.
Grateful and salutary spring the plants
Which crown thy numerous gardens, and invite
To health and temperance, in the simple meal,
Unstain'd with murder, undefil'd with blood,
Unpoison'd with rich sauces, to provoke
Th' unwilling appetite to gluttony.
For this the bulbous esculents their roots
With sweetness fill; for this, with cooling juice
The green herb spreads its leaves; and opening buds,
And flowers and seeds, with various flavours tempt
Th' enfanguin'd palate from its savage feast.
Nor hath the god of physic and of day
Forgot to shed kind influence on thy plants
Medicinal. Lo! from his beaming rays
Their various energies to every herb
Imparted flow. He the salubrious leaf
Of cordial sage, the purple-flowering head
Of fragrant lavender, enlivening mint,
Valerian's fetid smell, endows benign
With their cephalic virtues. He the root
Of broad angelica, and tusted flower
Of creeping camomile, impregnates deep
With powers carminative. In every brake
Worm wood and centaury, their bitter juice,
To aid digestion's sickly powes, refine.
The smooth althaea its balsamic wave
Indulgent pours. Eryngo's strengthening root
Surrounds thy sea-girt isle, restorative,
Fair queen of love, to thy enfeebled sons,
Hypericum, beneath each shelt'ring bush,
Its healing virtue modestly conceals.
Thy friendly soil to liquorice imparts
Its dulcet moisture, whence the labouring lungs
Of panting asthma find a sure relief,
The fearlet poppy, on thy painted fields.
Bows his somniferous head, inviting soon
To peaceful slumber the disorder'd mind:
Lo, from the baum's exhilarating leaf,
The moping fiend, black melancholy, flies;
And burning sebris, with its lenient stood,
Cools her hot entrails; or embathes her limbs
In sudorific streams, that cleansing slow
From saffron's friendly spring. Thou too can'st boast
The blessed thistle, whose rejective power
Relieves the loaded viscera; and to thee
The rose, the violet their emolient leaves
On every bush, on every bank, display.
These are thy products, fair Britannia, these
The copious blessings, which thy env'd sons
Divided and distinguish'd from the world,
Secure and free, beneath just laws, enjoy,
Nor dread the ravage of destructive war;
Nor black contagion's pestilential breath;
Nor rending earth's convulsions, — fields, flocks, towns,
Swallow'd abrupt, in ruin's frightful jaws:
Nor worse, far worse than all, the iron hand
Of lawless power, stretch'd o'er precarious wealth,
Lands, liberty, and life, the wanton prey
Of its enormous, unresisted gripe.
But further now in vegetation's paths,
Through cultur'd fields, and woods, and waving crops
The weary'd muse forbears to wind her walk.
To flocks and herds her future strains aspire,
And let the listening hinds instructed hear
The closing precepts of her labour'd song.
Lo! on the other side yon flanting hill,
Beneath a spreading oak's broad foliage, sits,
The shepherd swain, and patient by his side
His watchful dog; while round the nibbling flocks
Spread their white fleeces o'er the verdant slope,
A lanscape pleasing to the painter's eye.
Mark his maternal care. The tender race,