Classic Poem

T REACHERY'S apologist, whose numbers rung,
But yesterday, remonstrant in my ear;
You to whom England seems a mistress dear,
Insatiable of honey from your tongue:
Because I crouch not fawning slaves among,
How is my service proved the less sincere?
Have not I also deemed her without peer?
Her beauty have not I too seen and sung?
But for the love I bore her lofty ways,
What were to me her stumblings and her slips?
And lovely is she still, her maiden lips
Blanched with the sea-foam that around her plays!
But on her brow's benignant star whose rays
Lit them that sat in darkness, lo! the eclipse.