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

 Her rich emporium. Hence, ye happy Swains ! 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 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: 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, 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 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, 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 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 ;