Thanks to the Powers that yet maintain their sway, And have renewed the tributary Lay. Truths of the heart flock in with eager pace, And FANCY greets them with a fond embrace; 25 Swift as the rising sun his beams extends She shoots the tidings forth to distant friends; Their gifts she hails (deemed precious, as they prove For the unconscious Babe so prompt a love!)--[773] But from this peaceful centre of delight 30 Vague sympathies have urged her to take flight: Rapt[774] into upper regions, like the bee That sucks from mountain heath her honey fee; Or, like the warbling lark intent to shroud His head in sunbeams or a bowery cloud, 35 She soars--and here and there her pinions rest On proud towers, like this humble cottage, blest With a new visitant, an infant guest-- Towers where red streamers flout the breezy sky In pomp foreseen by her creative eye, 40 When feasts shall crowd the hall, and steeple bells Glad proclamation make, and heights and dells Catch the blithe music as it sinks and swells,[775] And harboured ships, whose pride is on the sea, Shall hoist their topmost flags in sign of glee, 45 Honouring the hope of noble ancestry. But who (though neither reckoning ills assigned By Nature, nor reviewing in the mind The track that was, and is, and must be, worn With weary feet by all of woman born)-- 50 Shall _now_ by such a gift with joy be moved, Nor feel the fulness of that joy reproved? Not He, whose last faint memory will command The truth that Britain was his native land;[776] Whose infant soul was tutored to confide 55 In the cleansed faith for which her martyrs died; Whose boyish ear the voice of her renown With rapture thrilled; whose Youth revered the crown Of Saxon liberty that Alfred wore,[777] Alfred, dear Babe, thy great Progenitor! 60 --Not He, who from her mellowed practice drew His social sense of just, and fair, and true; And saw, thereafter, on the soil of France Rash Polity begin her maniac dance,[778] Foundations broken up, the deeps run wild, 65 Nor grieved to see (himself not unbeguiled)-- Woke from the dream, the dreamer to upbraid, And learn how sanguine expectations fade When novel trusts by folly are betrayed,-- To see Presumption, turning pale, refrain 70 From further havoc, but repent in vain,-- Good aims lie down, and perish in the road Where guilt had urged them on with ceaseless goad. Proofs thickening round her that on public ends Domestic virtue vitally depends, 75 That civic strife can turn the happiest hearth