Even not yon sail, that, from the sky-mixt wave,
Dawns on the sight, and wafts the
A freight of future glory to my shore;
Even not the flattering view of golden days,
And rising periods yet of bright renown,
Beneath the  and their endless line
Thro' late revolving time, can sooth my rage;
While, unchastis'd, the insulting  dares
Infest the trading flood, full of vain War
Despise my Navies, and my Merchants seize;
As, trusting to false peace, they fearless roam
The world of waters wild, made, by the toil,
And liberal blood of glorious ages, mine:
Nor bursts my sleeping thunder on their head.
Whence this unwonted patience? this weak doubt?
This tame beseeching of rejected peace?
This meek forbearance? this unnative fear,
To generous  never known before?
And fail'd my Fleets for this; on  tides
To float, unactive, with the veering winds?
The mockery of war! while hot disease,
And sloth distemper'd, swept off burning crowds,
For action ardent; and amid the deep,
Inglorious, sunk them in a watry grave.
There now they lie beneath the rowling flood,
Far from their friends, and country unaveng'd;
And back the weeping war-ship comes again,
Dispirited, and thin; her sons asham'd
Thus idly to review their native shore;
With not one glory sparkling in their eye,
One triumph on their tongue. A passenger,
The violated Merchant comes along;
That far-sought wealth, for which the noxious gale
He drew, and sweat beneath Equator suns,
By lawless force detain'd; a force that soon
Would melt away, and every spoil resign,
Were once the  lyon heard to roar.
Whence is it that the proud  thus,
In their own well-asserted element,
Dares rouze to wrath the Masters of the Main?
Who told him, that the big incumbent war
Would not, ere this, have roll'd his trembling ports
In smoaky ruin? and his guilty stores,
Won by the ravage of a butcher'd world,
Yet unatton'd, sunk in the swallowing deep,
Or led the glittering prize into the