Who comes with rapture greeted, and caressed
With frantic love, his kingdom to regain?
Him Virtue’s Nurse, Adversity, in vain
Received, and fostered in her iron breast:
For all she taught of hardiest and of best,
Or would have taught, by discipline of pain
And long privation, now dissolves amain,
Or is remembered only to give zest
To wantonness. Away, Circean revels!
But for what gain? if England soon must sink
Into a gulf which all distinction levels
That bigotry may swallow the good name,
And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame,
By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink!
Read all of William Wordsworth's poems · About William Wordsworth
More by William Wordsworth
- Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - IV - Latitudinarianism
- Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - IX - William The Third
- Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - V - Walton's Book Of Lives
- Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - VI - Clerical Integrity
- Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - VII - Persecution Of The Scottish Covenanters
Write poetry? Submit your poem to Poetry Catalog