Aggressive Conquest! tempt not Freedom’s shields, For Britons still your fiercest ire can quell. Ambition, Treachery seized Iberia’s fields, And mark how freemen tyrant-bands expel! If Victory cheered us, ’twas that Spain might dwell Beneath her vine secure from despot’s frown. And if thy dauntless children battled well, No need thy Edwards, Henries left thy crown, No need, Britannia, left thy Marlborough of renown! XXXVI. Grand though thy trophies, ne’er by land or main Shall War’s barbarian triumphs wake thy pride; No blood-stained laurels shall thy forehead stain, But Peace with olive branch o’ershadowing bide, And mark the Godhead in thy empire wide. Not human anguish but new joy to Man Thy limbs shall shed in their colossal stride; Foredoomed despotic wrath and wrong to ban, And make creation square with the Eternal plan! XXXVII. As thine the curb, so thine be too the scourge, Not lightly used, but terrible in need. Earth, like Alcides, of its monsters purge, Both hydra-tyrants and the single breed! Untusk the boar, and shatter like a reed The swords resisting Justice; yet be thine With mercy to attemper strength of deed; Nor let thy Fecial seers too nice refine, But loveliest rays of Truth through all thy orbit shine. XXXVIII. Strong be thy armament as fits thy strength Of mandate powerful thy Lernæan clave; Nor pinch nor waste distort from its due length The sword of Justice which the Godhead gave. And, firstly, still, Britannia, rule the wave! With floating battlements to plough the main, Make peaceful every shore! Bid every slave, While freemen prouder swell, dash off his chain, When thy artillery’s roar is heard o’er Ocean’s plain! XXXIX. And lording o’er thy empire of the Deep, Whose noblest uses are thy virtue’s dower, Diffusing knowledge where thy navies sweep, And linking distant lands, where rolls each hour That mightiest image of surpassing power, Reign on beneficent--the Nations tell Thy commerce, like thy shore, is Freedom’s tower. Scatter with Godlike hand wide blessings--quell The factious voice abroad, the subjects who rebel. XL. Shall boys the emerald from thy circlet rend, Queen of the Nations, Mistress of the Seas? Must all thy glories thus obscurely end-- A rag of Empire fluttering to the breeze! And shall Britannia vail to such as these, Barbarian traffickers in base turmoil, The sceptre at whose wave Oppression flees? No, no; while springs a leaf o’er all her soil, Shall men too spring up there to mock Sedition’s toil! XLI.