Shakespeare, "born for British minds alone, / To them has Fancy's boundless empire shewn"

— Grant [née MacVicar], Anne (1755-1838)


Place of Publication
Edinburgh
Publisher
Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown
Date
1814
Metaphor
Shakespeare, "born for British minds alone, / To them has Fancy's boundless empire shewn"
Metaphor in Context
Our language, lineage, faith, are still the same,
The torch that kindled Freedom's holy flame
To light the western world, from British altars came;
For them our sages think, our poets sing,
They quaff, unchanged, the British muse's spring;
Our Shakspeare, born for British minds alone,
To them has Fancy's boundless empire shewn;

And, mounted high on Milton's wing sublime,
They pass the "flaming bounds of space and time;"
A feeble scion from our ancient stock,
Unfixed and shrinking from each foreign shock,
Still bending to each blast that ruder blew,
Beneath our fostering care her empire grew,
With British blood we dewed their weakly stem,
Our patriots planned, our heroes died for them:
Her root was fixed, her branches spread at length,
Her sons, exulting, gloried in her strength,
No longer brooked a distant lord's command,
But wrenched the rod of power from Britain's hand;
Yet many a British heart rejoiced to see
The kindred bonds dissolved, the sons of freemen free.
The patriot race, who first from Britain came,
And graced their land with England's honoured name,
Still to their parent turn a kindling eye,
And bless the Island-home of liberty.
O'er all their coasts, the wise, the learned, the good,
Resist o'erwhelming Faction's headlong flood;
But, when wild Faction's hurricane is past,
The learned, the wise, the good, prevail at last;
While Error, like some wandering comet flies,
Whose short-lived brightness dazzles vulgar eyes,
Fair Truth, like some mild star's propitious rays,
Creates no wonder, and excites no gaze,
Still burns with steady light its useful flame,
And passing ages find it still the same.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "empire" and "mind" in HDIS (Poetry)
Date of Entry
08/11/2004

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.