England

William Cowper (1731–1800)

From “The Timepiece”: “The Task,” Book. II.

ENGLAND, with all thy faults, I love thee still,—

My country! and, while yet a nook is left

Where English minds and manners may be found,

Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime

Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed

With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,

I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,

And fields without a flower, for warmer France

With all her vines; nor for Ausonia’s groves

Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers.

To shake thy senate, and from height sublime

Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire

Upon thy foes, was never meant my task:

But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake

Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart

As any thunderer there. And I can feel

Thy follies too; and with a just disdain

Frown at effeminates whose very looks

Reflect dishonor on the land I love.

How, in the name of soldiership and sense,

Should England prosper, when such things, as smooth

And tender as a girl, all essenced o’er

With odors, and as profligate as sweet,

Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath,

And love when they should fight,—when such as these

Presume to lay their hand upon the ark

Of her magnificent and awful cause?

Time was when it was praise and boast enough

In every clime, and travel where we might,

That we were born her children. Praise enough

To fill the ambition of a private man,

That Chatham’s language was his mother tongue,

And Wolfe’s great name compatriot with his own.