Poem by Joseph Addison

Immortality

O Liberty! thou goddess, heavenly bright,
profuse of bliss and pregnant with delight,
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling Plenty leads thy smiling train.
Eased of her load Subjection grows more light,
And Poverty looks cheerful in thy sight.
Giv'st beauty to the sun and pleasures to the day.
thee, goddess, thee, Britannia's isle adores!
How oft has she exhausted all her stores!
How oft on fields of death thy presence sought,
Nor thinks the mighty prize too dearly bought!
On foreign mountains may the sun refine
the grape's soft juice and mellow it in wine.
With citron groves adorn a distant soil.
And the fat olives swell with floods of oil.
We envy not the warmer clime, that lies
in ten degrees of more indulgent skies;
Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,
Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine.
'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains shine.

1. To Sir Godfrey Kneller, on his Picture of the King
2. An Ode for St. Cecilia's Day
3. A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, at Oxford
4. The Lord My Pasture Shall Prepare
5. To Mr. Dryden

Katharine Tynan Immortality ("So I have sunk my roots in earth")

Print

2720 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version