True, we have lost an empire--let it pass.
True, we may thank the perfidy of France
That picked the jewel out of England's crown,
With all the cunning of an envious shrew.
And let that pass--'twas but a trick of state.
A brave man knows no malice, but at once
Forgets in peace the injuries of war,
And gives his direst foe a friend's embrace.
And shamed as we have been, to the very beard
Braved and defied, and in our own sea proved
Too weak for those decisive blows that once
Insured us mastery there, we yet retain
Some small pre-eminence, we justly boast
At least superior jockeyship, and claim
The honours of the turf as all our own.
Go then, well worthy of the praise ye seek,
And show the shame ye might conceal at home,
In foreign eyes!--be grooms, and win the plate,
Where once your nobler fathers won a crown!--
'Tis generous to communicate your skill
To those that need it. Folly is soon learned,
And, under such preceptors, who can fail?

There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know. The shifts and turns,
The expedients and inventions multiform
To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms
Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win--
To arrest the fleeting images that fill
The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast,