Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/107

Her rich emporium. Hence, ye happy Swains ! 535
With hospitality inflame your breast,
And emulation: the whole world receive,
And with their arts, their virtues, deck your isle.
Each clime, each sea, the spacious orb of each,
Shall join their various stores, and amply feed 540
The mighty brotherhood, while ye proceed,
Active and enterprising, or to teach
The stream a naval course, or till the wild,
Or drain the fen, or stretch the long canal,
Or plough the fertile billows of the deep: 545
Why to the narrow circle of our coast
Should we submit our limits, while each wind
Assists the stream and sail, and the wide main
Woos us in every port ? See Belgium build
Upon the foodful brine her envy'd power, 550
And half her people floating on the wave,
Expand her fishy regions: thus our Isle,
Thus only may Britannia be enlarg'd.
But whither, by the visions of the theme
Smit with sublime delight, but whither strays 555
The raptur'd Muse, forgetful of her talk ?
No common pleasure warms the gen'erous mind
When it beholds the labours of the loom ;
How widely round the globe they are dispers'd,
From little tenements by wood or croft, 560
Thro' many a slender path, how sedulous,
As rills to rivers broad, they speed their way
To public roads, to Fosse, or Watling-street,
Or Armine, ancient works ; and thence explore,
Thro' ev'ry navigable wave, the sea 565
That laps the green earth round : thro' Tyne and Tees,
Thro' Weare and Lune, and merchandising Hull,
And Swale and Aire, whose crystal waves reflect
The various colours of the tinctur'd web ;