The nations not so blest as thee

Must in their turn to tyrants fall, While thou shalt flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
And work their woe and thy renown.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles thine!'

The Muses, still with Freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle, with matchless beauty crown'd
And manly hearts to guard the fair:-
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!
Britons never shall be slaves!

IN IMITATION OF THE THIRD SATIRE
OF JUVENAL
-Quis iniquae

Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?
Juv. 1. 30, 1.

(Who so patient of the unjust town, so unfeeling as to restrain himself?)

Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel,
When injured Thales' bids the town farewell,
Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice com-
mend,

(I praise the hermit, but regret the friend,)
Who now resolves, from vice and London far, 5
To breathe in distant fields a purer air;
And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore,
Give to St. David3 one true Briton more.

For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land,

11

15

20

Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?5
There none are swept by sudden fate away,
But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay:
Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead."
While Thales waits the wherry that contains
Of dissipated wealth the small remains,
On Thames's banks in silent thought we stood,
Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood;
Struck with the seat that gave Eliza birth,
We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth;
In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew,
And call Britannia's glories back to view;
Behold her cross triumphant on the main,
The guard of Commerce and the dread of Spain,
1 Presumably Johnson's unfortunate friend Richard
Savage, the poet, who was forced to retire from London
to Swansea in Wales.

2 Ancient name of Wales. Patron saint of Wales.

4 Ireland.

25

5 In Johnson's time, one of the most fashionable streets of London.

• Queen Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, 1533.

gay,

Where once the harass'd Briton found repose,
And safe in poverty defy'd his foes;

Some secret cell, ye Pow'rs indulgent give.
Let - live here, for has learn'd to live. 50
Here let those reign, whom pensions can incite
To vote a patriot black, a courtier white;
Explain their country's dear-bought rights
away,

And plead for pirates in the face of day;

With slavish tenets taint our poison'd youth, 55
And lend a lie the confidence of truth.
Let such raise palaces, and manors buy,
Collect a tax, or farm a lottery;9

With warbling eunuchs fill our licens'd stage, 10
And lull to servitude a thoughtless age.

60

"Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold?

What check restrain your thirst of pow'r and gold?

Behold rebellious Virtue quite o'erthrown,

Behold our fame, our wealth, our lives your

12

Despise a fool in half his pension dress'd,
And strive in vain to laugh at Clodio's jest."
"Others, with softer smiles and subtler art, 75
Can sap the principles, or taint the heart;
With more address a lover's note convey,
Or bribe a virgin's innocence away.

Well may they rise, while I, whose rustic tongue

Ne'er knew to puzzle right, or varnish wrong, 80 Spurn'd as a beggar, dreaded as a spy,

Live unregarded, unlamented die.

"For what but social guilt the friend endears? Who shares Orgilio's13 crimes, his fortune shares.

"The cheated nation's happy fav'rites, see! Mark whom the great caress, who frown on me! LONDON! the needy villain's gen'ral home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome; With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state. Forgive my transports on a theme like this, I cannot bear a French metropolis. "Illustrious EDWARD! 16 from the realms of day,

100

105

The land of heroes and of saints survey;
Nor hope the British lineaments to trace,
The rustic grandeur, or the surly grace;
But, lost in thoughtless ease and empty show,
Behold the warrior dwindled to a beau;
Sense, freedom, piety, refin'd away,
Of France the mimic, and of Spain the prey.
"All that at home no more can beg or steal,
Or like a gibbet" better than a wheel; 18
Hiss'd from the stage, or hooted from the court,
Their air, their dress, their politics import;
Obsequious, artful, voluble, and gay,

110

On Britain's fond credulity they prey.
No gainful trade their industry can 'scape,
They sing, they dance, clean shoes, their
fiddles scrape:

All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows,
And, bid him go to hell, to hell he goes.

"Ah! what avails it that, from slav'ry far,

115

I draw the breath of life in English air;
Was early taught a Briton's right to prize,
And lisp the tale of Henry's victories; 19

120

12 There is a bragging character of this name, given to strange oaths, in Cibber's play, Love makes a Man. Johnson may, however, have had one of his own contemporaries in mind.

13 A personification of the pride of wealth.

14 The Duke of Marlborough (d. 1722) who has been called "the greatest and meanest of mankind."

15 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (d. 1687) was one of the most extravagant and profligate of the courtiers of Charles II.

16 Edward III., illustrious because of his exploits in France.

17-18 The Gibbet was an English, the wheel a French mode of execution.

19 Henry V.'s victories in France, especially at Agin

court.